Akokisa

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Posts posted by Akokisa

  1. Had one piss on my canopy once. It smelled bad forever after. And every time I packed it and had to smell it, I got mad all over again. There should be a death sentence for dogs whose owners allow them to piss on parachute gear.

    The latest incident wasn't so bad. I kept a lucky rabbit foot attached to the outside of my gear bag. I came back from a jump to find a dog chewing on it, and had worked it down to just a nub. Without my lucky rabbit foot, a streak of bad luck followed, all because of that darn dog.

    Control your freakin' dogs!

  2. Quote

    And you paid the monthly fee? :D



    Heck, Compuserve charged BY THE MINUTE. You couldn't afford to stay online for hours at a time. So there were special programs that would log on, grab all the new messages and download them to your computer, then log off. Then you could read at leisure and compose replies offline. And finally log back on to send a burst transmission to upload all of your replies. So you could be in and out in just a couple of minutes to keep your fees affordable.

  5. Quote

    wasnt it debunked that the 'maya' character in real life was a man?



    In both the book and the movie, it's a female. But then, a lot of characters are changed to protect identities, so who knows... I'm sure they would hate to be identified, and have a bunch of terrorists looking for them. Whoever it is, they deserve a darned medal!

  6. Saw the movie. Liked it.

    I've also read the book "No Easy Day" about the same Bin Laden raid, and this movie was very precise in capturing the details of the book. The exact sequence of events was reenacted. Details like the military dog, the Farsi language speaker, the door that was blown that only had a concrete wall behind it, the neighbors hearing the commotion, and so on, were all there.

    I was surprised that the first hour and a half or so, of a two and a half hour movie, was spent on the intelligence hunt to find Bin Laden, and disappointed in how little time was spent showing the military preparations for the raid.

    They made it look like they just walked into the Seal Team camp one day, and said; "Tonight you're going into Pakistan to get Bin Laden". Not so. They had months to prepare, created a mock compound to practice on, and spent a great deal of effort on practicing their techniques and contingencies.

    I was also disappointed that they didn't show some of the massive military support effort that backed the mission. Like back-up helicopters, fighters circling overhead to ward off any Pakistani military response, aerial refuelers, and a horde of geeks to process the siezed computer files. And since the stealth choppers didn't have the range to get back to their base, they had to land at a makeshift secret refueling outpost in the Pakistani desert, where troops set up a fuel bladder.

    They could have also shown, but did not, the flying of Bin Laden's body to the carrier, and burial at sea.

    I was surprised at the lack of audience reaction. I expected cheering when Bin Laden was killed, but the theatre was silent. The only reaction was when the SEAL's whispered the name of one of the bad guys who was hiding around the corner, and when he peeked around the corner to see who was calling his name, they shot him. That produced giggles. It's actually a psychological technique - people are naturally curious to see who is calling their name, and the SEALs used it to expose the bad guy so they didn't have to charge into a man waiting with a gun. And the SEALs knew the names of every bad guy in the compound before they went in.

    All in all, an outstanding movie.

  7. Quote

    Seeing im new here i just wanted to ask about the "blue skies" thing is that just something u say when a skydiver has died?



    No, it's more general than that. The equivalent of "Have a nice day", or "best wishes".

  14. Quote

    No, it doesn't because it completely ignores the very serous regulations that Switzerland imposes, including rationing ammunition and periodic inspections.



    They only ration the government issued ammo which is to be preserved for military use in a militia call-up for national defense. That's supposed to remain in readiness for emergencies. However, they are free to purchase and shoot all the personal ammo they want. Even using their government-issued firearms.

  15. Quote

    Spengler was convicted in 1981 of first-degree manslaughter in the death of his grandmother and had been released on supervised parole, Pickering said.



    Granny was 92 years old, and he beat her to death with a hammer.

    What the hell was he doing out of prison?

  16. Quote

    Sure sound like another crazy who got himself a gun.



    News quote about the shooter: "He had previously served a 17-year jail sentence after being convicted of killing his grandmother."

    What the heck was he doing out of prison? And if he had served a prison sentence for murder, then he was disqualified from gun ownership. But he managed to get one anyway, and did so in a state with very tough gun laws. Gun laws don't stop murderers. The real question here seems to be: Why was this man let out of prison?

  17. Quote

    Cheap strawman. The post you're responding to said nothing about suicide. You're fabricating an easily-rebutted argument ("along with a belief that if we just took away the guns, that these folks wouldn't kill themselves"), attributing it to vague "others" you wish to vilify, and then (surprise!) rebutting the argument which you yourself created. Please stop talking to us like we're idiots.



    It wasn't about suicide, it was an illustration of how different cultures produce different results. And that is exactly on-point to the subject of this thread, with school shootings, in comparison to the Swiss.

  18. Quote

    if you want weird names, guess you never got any interest in snowboarding, skateboarding, FMX et al... :D you never heard of the esphera either :)



    Well, the first two make perfect sense and are easily understandable. The last two, I don't have a clue without looking them up, so they must be something really, really cool!

  19. Quote

    Why is there no gun violence in Japan? They have virtually no gun crime at all. No mass murders, no school shootings, no gun crime to speak of really. Nobody in Japan has a gun.

    Culture? maybe, the people in Japan have honor.



    Yep, it's the culture difference. Japan also has a much higher suicide rate than America, despite not having any guns to do it with. American suicides with guns outnumber murders with guns. So guns are often blamed for gun suicides, along with a belief that if we just took away the guns, that these folks wouldn't kill themselves. But this international disparity just shows that even if you took away the guns from Americans, they could still find ways to commit suicide.

  20. Quote

    Quote

    Why do they call doing a loop, "going to infinity"?

    the manoeuvre is called infinity tumbling.



    I'd just call it "a lot of loops", or "lot-o-loops" for short. But hey, the fancier the name you give something, the more cool it is. Like "atmonauti". Who the heck wants to go "angle flying"? Nobody. But hey man, you wanna do some atmonauti? Hell yeah! Pardon my cynicism...

  22. Quote

    UV light does degrade the nylon, especially neons, but poor packing practices will generally damage it faster.



    Yes, UV light degrades nylon. And exposure to sunlight is apparant by fading colors. And neon colors seem to fade faster than other colors. All of this is true.

    But here's a question I have. Does faded neon mean that it's weaker than faded other colors, given that they've been exposed to the same amount of sunlight? In other words, is fading color really a good indicator of the degree of weakening of fthe fabric?

    Let's say you have an orange end cell, and the next one inward is black. The orange is faded, but the black is not. Since we're not talking about a center cell that gets most of the wear and exposure during packing, those two cells should be equal in wear and exposure. So, does the fact that the orange is faded, necessarily mean it's weaker than the black? Or is this just a characteristic of that particular color, and really doesn't correlate to the degree of strength?

    Or is it that the black would be just as weak as the orange, but just doesn't show it from fading color. Therefore, we can use the neon colors as an indicator of the strength of the entire canopy?

  23. Quote

    We surpassed 2500 signatures today. Thanks so much for everyone that has supported this and I expect the City will take notice. Most of the City Council members were elected with between 200 and 400 votes. I might have to brag about our results.



    I think most of those signatures from our national and international sport, are not in a position to vote for the local city council there.