FlyingRhenquest

I think if you jump out of airplanes in a regular basis, your official title is "Extreme Athlete" and you're excluded from having to live vicariously through anyone else. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Good work dude! None of that stuff you're having trouble with won't go away with practice! It's amazing how far you can progress in just a few short jumps. Good luck! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Zappa apparently liked monster movies. I'd take a zombie Frank Zappa over just about any entertainer I can think of today... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Horror movies tend to follow what the population as a whole is afraid of. In Japan it's Godzilla, the unstoppable force of nature. In the 60's and 70's it was radiation and the fear that mankind would go too far with science before he was ready. For a while it was werewolves and vampires, though vampires seem to sell more to the teenage girl demographic than the population as a whole. Zombies are, what, I guess an unknown biological threat turning us in to something that looks like us but is no longer us? I still have a short story from the old Heavy Metal Magazine stuck in my head, about a couple of boys (One a fish for a head for some reason) meeting a normal-looking little boy who claims to be a monster. They ridicule the idea and point out that he's just an ordinary little boy. "I know, " he says "but I'm a monster on the inside." So the two other boys decide they want to be monsters too, and they go around doing all manner of horrific things. When the angry mob of villagers shows up, the little boy who said he was a monster was nowhere to be found, so the mob casts the two other boys out and they end up starving to death. The last panel is the monster-boy standing over their skeletons and saying "I told you I was a monster." Monsters are easily dealt with. Your own nature, not so much. If you want a different kind of monster movie, check out Frank Zappa's "Uncle Meat" album, second disc, where they talk about trying to make the Mothers of Invention monster movie. "When she sees the monster she claims she's going to vomit. But really, it gets her hot..." I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Did you check the incidents forum? I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I've lived in a lot of places, but so far I've been in Colorado the longest and don't seem to be inclined to move again. I live in Longmont, about 10 minutes from the Mile Hi dropzone and about an hour from the Sky Venture Colorado vertical wind tunnel. There's a nice rec center here, it's not too long of a drive to get to skiing, and if you live down on the plains the fires haven't proven to be a problem so far. Though you still get a lot of smoke from them. It gets up to the mid 90s in July/August, but most of the year it's pretty mild. We do get a bit of snow in the winter, but it was sunny and 61 yesterday and the dropzone was packed! Probably going to be about the same today (I"m going to go look shortly.) I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

My findings with gloves so far: My favorites are still some light "Bionic" weight lifting gloves. They have a good grip and feel natural on my hands. I have no trouble adjusting straps while wearing them. In the winter, you can put latex gloves on underneath them and that'll keep your hands a little warmer, but I still couldn't feel my fingers when I hit the ground when it was 40 degrees (farenheit) on the ground the other day. I got some Hatch nomex flight gloves to try and they're actually very soft and feel pretty natural, but they're not much warmer than the bionic gloves and feel kind of loose. I actually like the nomex gloves for driving and wearing around in the winter, but not for skydiving. I have some 5mm neoprene wetsuit gloves, but they're too bulky and not very grippy. They're also hard to get on and off. I can't adjust straps with them on, but am able to find and pull a hacky and toggles. The only thing they really have going for them is that I could jump at any temperature my dropzone will fly at and still be able to feel my fingers at the end of the jump. So I'm still kind of looking, but for temperature protection my current thinking is "don't jump when it's 40 on the ground" and otherwise wear the Bionic gloves. I kind of like wearing them in the tunnel, too. I noticed the steel cable webbing on the floor has a number of "whiskers" that it kind of looks like you could cut yourself on. I managed to cut my hands several times in AFF, so pretty much always wear gloves for skydiving now. I might rethink this in July... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

It feels like there should be a tiny little "Waldo" in camo in there somewhere... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

You mean like this? I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Usually I'll check to make sure they're not on, which usually results in me flashing them for between a quarter and half a second. I almost never drive with them on though, except up in the mountains if there's no one around. You have to be very careful to turn them down when approaching curves up there -- last thing you want to do is be blinded by a face full of bright beams in the middle of a hairpin curve. It's usually just as easy to spot deer, elk and other critters if you watch carefully for eyeshine anyway. I almost always spot them that way before I actually see them. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Friend of mine told me only about 1 in 3 people actually make it through AFF. I gather the rest either realized the financial impact or didn't like jumping out of an airplane. I don't know if that's an actual metric somewhere or just something he observed. There's no shame in quitting if it's not for you. At least you tried it, that's more than most people will ever do. There's also the well-documented "new skydiver depression," that malaise between jumps 25 and 100 where you just kind of feel lost and don't know what to do. It hasn't seemed to have affected me -- I have very clear goals about what I want to accomplish in the next couple hundred jumps, and am not shy about joining group jumps if something interesting seems to be going on. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

What's swooping? This. (Do not try this at home, that man is a trained professional!) I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I've thought I should glom on to a freefall group and do belly with them. That'd be a bit bizarre. On my last belly work in the tunnel I didn't have to get small to match fall speeds with my instructor, I just had to arch a little more. If I got small, I might be able to match speeds with someone doing heads down. As soon as it gets warm again and the crowd returns to the dropzone, I'm going to suggest this to some freefliers I know. Um... what we were talking about again? Heh heh heh. Oh yeah! Hey Snoa, did we answer your question? I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yup. I talked to the instructor administering the B license exam and he told me our DZ had an exemption from the FAA due do the starting altitude. Oxygen is available for anyone who needs it, but is not routinely used. Most of us are acclimated to higher altitudes, though as has been noted we do need to be aware of the warning signs and go on the oxygen if we need to. I don't know if this also pertains to the pilot, but I never sit close enough to him to see what he's doing. I don't know what their process is for handling visitors from sea level. My family members were doing tandems, so their TIs were able to keep an eye on them. I think I'd want to be careful if I were a visiting fun jumper, especially on the first couple days at this altitude. Likewise I suppose we should be prepared for oxygen procedures if we do jumps in the 15-20K range at other dropzones. Regulations and all! We might not actually need it, but it's not going to be harmful either. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Heh, I'm well aware of the irony. As a group we also seem to have a morbid sense of humor. But yeah, I jumped at 245 and didn't have a problem. I did pretty regularly have small bruises on my arms for my first 10-15 jumps from the opening, but I'm pretty sure that was more bad body position than anything else. They stopped happening long before I lost weight or started falling any slower. I've seen a number of guys larger than me going through the course, or jumping regularly at my DZ. There was a guy last week who had to have been a foot taller than me! I didn't even know they made them that big! They were flying the king air that day, too. I had trouble with me and two instructors getting out of that door, and I was a foot shorter! Personally I STILL have trouble keeping up with Mr. Floaty Pants, but that doesn't make it not fun to try! I CAN slow down, and I demonstrated that reasonably well in the tunnel here the other night, but I still need to think about how to do it. It doesn't just happen, like turning does. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anal_cleansing Seems like there's a cultural bias to the poll. So let me ask you, if you touched crap, would you be content to just wipe your hand with a piece of paper, or would you wash it with warm, soapy water? If you'd want to wash it, why treat your asshole any differently? Aren't you just leaving the scene while you are still dirty? That kind of leaves me wondering where the USA falls in world asshole cleanliness. If I were to guess, I'd say the Japanese probably have the cleanest assholes in the world. At least judging by the amount of R&D they seem to put into their toilets. And I believe there are still a number of countries around the world where indoor plumbing is not common. I'd be willing to bet that if you conducted a poll, "How do you think your nation would rate against other nations in anal cleanliness," people would generally answer near the top. I think if you then ran the actual numbers, you'd get a different story. This would be interesting except that we've already observed this phenomena on many other subjects; take the common Fox news assertion that the USA has the greatest health care system in the world, while in fact we rank toward the bottom of industrialized nations. Or the disbelief you're met with if you tell someone the USA imprisons more people per capita than any other country in the world. So this whole discussion merely illustrates another potential subject on which we could find this effect in action. Since this is the case, it hardly warrants more than a footnote. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Yeah... I hope I don't have to tell you this, but... 1) Please take advice on diet, exercise and nutrition from your doctor and not a bunch of guys on the internet. If you turn out to be diabetic, you'll need to take extra precautions when skydiving. Who do you talk to about that? A bunch of guys on the internet! NO! Your doctor! 2) Please take advice on skydiving from your skydiving instructor and not a bunch of guys on the internet. Hmm. Keeping that in mind, you could probably find out about your fall speed in a vertical wind tunnel. Most of the ones I found will let you fly up to 250 pounds. Find one, call them, explain your situation and if they'll let you fly there, talk to an instructor there about finding out your fall speed. At the very least, providing this information to your AFF instructors at some point in the future could prepare them for jumping with you. If you fall super-fast, they can put weights on to keep up (Yeah I know Galileo blah blah objects fall at the same speed... wind resistance doesn't work like that!) or set you up with larger instructors. And hopefully a canopy that won't explode or rip your arms off when you open at 170 mph. I never had a problem, and I think I still have some early jumps on the Neptune that show me going that fast. Uuggh... though now that I think about it, I'm very, very happy I never had to deploy a reserve at that speed *shudder*. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I only use it when I feel the person I'm talking to might think he needs permission to contact me. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

The web isn't even the new internet. If you have an IP address (Which really is only a number between 1 and 4294967295) and a TCP/IP protocol stack, there's so much more beyond port 80. You just have to go looking for it, if you dare go down that rabbit hole... That's not really the question you're asking though, is it? I'm not giving stock advice, but personally (PERSONALLY!) I'm not keen on Facebook. Google is much more of an advertising juggernaut, and their stock price reflects that. I think facebook's desperation to perform is leading to missteps that is alienating their user base. Not that I'm seeing any more traffic on google+ because of that. And I kind of like it that way. I'm using it as more of an antisocial network at the moment. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Blah blah sims blah blah avoid maneuvers that could result in line twists below your decision altitude blah blah blah. Above that is a fun place to do canopy stalls, front riser dives, maximum speed turns, etc. If you don't have experience with those things, read the sims and talk to your instructors first. Also blah blah sims blah blah notify the pilot and all skydivers on the load blah blah opening over 6000 feet blah blah blah. I don't recall the sims mentioning telling manifest, but also tell manifest. It took 11 minutes to get down when I did my sunset load high pull at 11500 back in September. During the day that might hold up the operation, especially if there are two planes flying. It was pretty cool though. There was a jet coming in on the DIA approach pattern, about 40 miles off, and I could tell his altitude was lower than mine. If your DZ will let you do a high pull every time, I'd say that's definitely more economical than hop'n pops. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

If you didn't notice any difference when you uninstalled it, may as well not re-install it. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Have you done a canopy course yet? If not, I'd suggest doing one of those. That should help you have a better idea of what you're doing on your hop and pops. Our canopy instructor talked the pilot into a couple extra thousand feet (5000 instead of 3000) so we'd have a little extra time to play with the canopy before we hit the decision altitude. Personally I enjoy flying the canopy and it's kind of nice having the whole landing area to yourself, but I'm not sure I'd want to do 50 hop'n pops all in a row. You could probably knock 10 or so out on a reasonably good day. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I was 245 when I did my AFF 1. It wasn't a problem, though I wouldn't have wanted to be much over that. I've come down from there -- having a sport you like to do is actually a great motivator to get in shape. As others said, you might have some difficulty finding someplace that'll allow you to jump until you're 18. Fortunately this is a condition that is very easy to correct. Just takes time and no other effort on your part. You could probably go be a wind tunnel rat now if you can't find a nearby dropzone and wanted to get a head start on flying. I took some hang gliding instruction back in the 90's. I definitely like skydiving more. As far as I know you can't really soar on a regular parachute canopy, but they're a lot easier to fly than the ol' student glider was. If you want to soar, it might be easier to find a paraglider instructor. Those seem to be a lot more popular. Pretty much any sport that involves flying is going to be a freakishly expensive hobby. Be sure to factor that in to your planning. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Personally I don't care for the language, although I've written plenty in it. Managers get all starry eyed when you talk about the java goals, but it really doesn't buy you that much. Most of the time your shop only has a single platform anyway, and java on its own does not insure any higher quality than any other language. People tend to assume that professional software engineers are better than average, but that's really not the case. In my experience only about 10% of programmers actually enjoy programming or go out of their way to better their skills at it. For the rest of them it's just a fat paycheck, and they're varying degrees of mediocre. So you can't really assume anything about the quality of any software you install. I feel like you probably get a higher concentration of the good programmers in open source simply because they're not paid for that stuff, and you kind of have to enjoy programming to write any. Even then, it's really easy to make the kind of mistake that leaves a computer vulnerable to attack. Java was supposed to eliminate many of the things that could cause security holes. Turns out, apparently, not so much. It does appear that they finally did achieve their goal of "write once, run anywhere." Just... for writers of malware. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Show them pictures of boobies for half an hour. Pretty sure that'll work... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?