mr2mk1g

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Everything posted by mr2mk1g

  1. The police declared they had but in reality all they did was pull their thumb out of their arse and announce that the answer was 5. It became apparent at the inquest that they had thoroughly misunderstood their own forensic science service report and it was nowhere near as conclusive as they had lead the press to believe when they announced it was case closed. The whole Hilder case remains unanswered, with an open verdict given by the coroner.
  2. Articles this side of the pond are that it's unlikely the item would have been exposed to the elements or it would have degraded. Police are apparently working on the theory that whatever the would be assassin used to deliver the toxin had been discarded after the attack and this couple had come across it somehow. Ergo whatever the item was has somehow been protected from the elements - that could be as simple as having been under a bush or something. It doesn't appear that the authorities think there's been a new and separate attack. All just theory at this point though.
  3. It's not that hard, especially if the walls are nice and flat to start with. I just re-did one of my bathrooms. Laid 25mm (I think) structural ply on the floor first and sealed with some rubberised gloop stuff made specifically for the purpose. Get a decent tile cutter with motorised cutting wheel rather than the score and snap variety - will cut down on wastage significantly and save you from going insane. Basic rule is install the shower tray first then use that to determine the level of your first row of tiles. I use those little cross spacers but stick them in horizontally rather than faff about trying to put them into the intersection between 4 tiles and then yank them all out after the adhesive has fully set before grouting . Buy grout in powder form and use a fairly wet mix applied liberally and wipe down tiles afterwards as its going off - much quicker than the pre-mixed stuff that you have to manually scrape laboriously into every nook and cranny. Plenty of advice on youtube I'm sure.
  4. And, with the right car, fun. My second car was bought purely for the purposes of fun (and was designed and built largely for the purposes of fun).
  5. On refusing service: There's a pub round the corner from my office which had signs out all week advertising the screening of the next world cup match. It read "Uruguay v. Portugal - 30th June. No dickheads". Thought that summed their stance up nice and succinctly.
  6. I'm not sure a random CSI who does kit and docs checks in 10 years time is going to necessarily be in a position to remember him. By then he'll likely be yesterday's news, at least in many circles. Hence my suggestion to just have the CCI exercise his powers to perma-ground him and advise the BPA as much. That way, should the BPA ever receive a membership request from him, their records say 'no bueno' (assuming there is even a mechanism, in practice, to put into place the theory set out by what the ops manual says - I suspect there quite possibly isn't, for which I don't blame the BPA, it's not as if this is a regularly used provision). He'd then have the power of appeal and the onus would be on him to get the ban lifted, rather than the onus being on some random 25 year old CSI who was 15 when he was convicted and has likely never heard his name before and is simply responding to a tannoy to come do kit and docs on a busy Saturday morning. Prevents him from quietly just slipping through under the radar in 10 years time.
  7. Would have thought it would fall under Section 10 of the ops manual. Simplest way would be for Mark Bayada as CCI to simply inform the BPA that he's been permanently grounded under paragraph 7.2 so as to prevent the issue of a new card. Paragraph 7.1 says the grounding has to be for a breach of the ops manual but I'm sure we can shoe-horn attempting to murder someone into an ops manual breach somewhere - removal of reserve slinks ought to count as rigging without the appropriate packing certificate for example. Mark's supposed to endorse the old card in red ink but as you say, he's probably not a current member so that step's rather redundant. There are other provisions in paragraph 7 allowing STC to suspend people from parachuting for any safety reason. Take your point re serving his time but he tried to murder one of our own using our very sport to do so. And his sentence is life - he's never actually rehabilitated, he's only released on licence once he's served the minimum term. A life sentence does actually mean life, even if they let you out of jail after a few years. Plus if suspended he'd have a right of appeal and if STC felt he'd served his time then they could lift the suspension. If not suspended then all he has to do on release is send in his membership form and dues and hey presto he's able to turn up to a DZ and jump, assuming whoever does kit and docs in 10 years time doesn't recognise the name.
  8. Craig, is there any movement in STC to refer Cilliers to a disciplinary tribunal and strip him of his licence? Seems a fairly open and shut case for using their powers here: http://www.bpa.org.uk/forms/download/324/pdf It would be nice to know he's not going to rock up at a DZ when he gets out on parole.
  9. Agreed - I posted exactly that suggestion in the suggestions and feedback forum a couple of months back: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=4876108;sb=post_latest_reply;so=ASC;forum_view=forum_view_collapsed;;page=unread#unread We have it on a Lotus forum I'm on and it works great.
  10. Mostly foreigners and American liberals who look down at America. Foreigners? Is this an American site? I'm a Canadian liberal who appreciates the USA despite it's problems. Demographically I'm a white male hetro 60 yo. It's run by a South African, so assume the poll options are supposed to represent a leaning towards DNC, DA or EFF?
  11. mr2mk1g

    Isle of Dogs

    Saw it last year and had high hopes for it, especially given the cast, but whilst it was good, it wasn't as good as I expected.
  12. I hate the follow the first man down rule. You have to take your head off its swivel and watch the first guy land instead of keeping an eye out for all the other canopies. Great idea. There you are, ready to fly a nice, predictable, left hand pattern onto final and the first guy down lands in the opposite direction to what everyone had been doing all day so far. Great. Now I'm hundreds of yards from where I need to be. So is everyone else in the stack behind me. Now we all need to fly over to the other side of the landing area. And now everyone has to switch from a left hand circuit to a right hand circuit so they don't overfly the runway below 1,000ft. I prefer the follow the tetrahedron/arrow rule. Best one I've ever seen was at Kalomna in Russia. Great big orange inflatable arrow, like a bouncy castle, about 15ft long. You could see it from jump run. Tethered at the front so high winds moved it automatically but heavy enough that light and variable winds didn't. Everyone knows from before they even get out of the plane what the landing direction is going to be simply by checking the spot before climbing out. Everyone knows what their pattern is going to be. Everyone knows what everyone else's pattern is going to be. Everyone knows where they need to be in the sky to start their pattern. Everyone knows where everyone else will be trying to go in the sky to enter their patterns. No one needs to stop looking out for traffic and focus for a moment on what the guy 2,000ft below them is about to do.
  13. In my jurisdiction (England and Wales) I would be struck off / disbarred for sending that message. No ifs, no buts - gone.
  14. This thread is hilarious. Americans saying they value their freedom so much that they would rather have the Stasi than give up their AR.
  15. This. If there is a god and he/she/it gives a shit about whether we stand in a pointy building singing about how great they are or whether we have stupid little ringlets and a beard or wear a daft outfit then they're a capricious arsehole that deserves no respect or adoration. If they care more about how I've lived my life then they'll do all right by me and I'll happily eat my hat... or Kippah or Turban or whatever it's supposed to be.
  16. As far as I can tell that appeared to be the plan all along.
  17. And when doing a background check they genuinely are looking into you beyond simply a check that you've not got any criminal convictions. When I got a licence the local firearms officer came to visit my house after I had previously met and been interviewed by him when I went in to see him at the police station. He asked me if I had ever been to [town just down the road from me]. "Why yes, of course officer" [it's a seaside town close to the city where I live - pretty much everyone in the city will have been there at some point] "Well, we had a report from someone named [your name] of a disturbance outside of their house in [seaside town]" "Not me officer, must simply be someone with the same name - I've never lived there or even stayed the night there - you have my addresses for the past 10 years - but I have visited a few times to go to the beach and the like... besides, surely that was simply someone reporting a crime rather than a report about them?" "We have to check these things out and a report of a disturbance outside your house could be linked with or an indication of all sorts of things". Well he went away and a few weeks later my licence came through so I can only assume everything checked out to his satisfaction. It was a bit of a surprise however that such a seemingly inconsequential report had been found and considered when looking into me.
  18. Consider how far the pendulum will swing when there's a generation or two of kids who grew up fearing a mass shooting at school or actually experienced or know someone who experienced a mass shooting at school and had to go through biannual "active shooter drills" at school... are voters... And all the folks who remember taking their Remington to school are dead and no longer voting... I sometimes wonder if it would be sensible for gun rights advocates try looking into the future and consider whether it would actually make sense to bring in some reasonable middle ground of gun control legislation at this stage, before the nation reaches a decision for them that the 2nd amendment should itself be amended to a point where there really will be very significant controls on firearms ownership.
  19. On another forum I use there is an ignore button. If there is a poster who continually makes junk, inflammatory or just plane trolling posts you can click into their profile and click an "ignore user" button and you no longer see any of their posts. If enough people hit ignore on them they basically disappear from the forums and sooner or later they get that no one is seeing or responding to their posts at all. At that point they tend to simply drift away. It's a kind of community moderation and works really well. DZ.com could really do with an ignore user button for some of the more persistent trolls, especially if it could be made sub-forum specific.
  20. If one of my friends said he was "spending time with Jesus" I would assume (almost certainly correctly) that he was indeed simply using it as a euphemism for rubbing one out.
  21. Where in Spain? For a start, there's Skydive Spain at Seville or Skydive Empuriabrava at... well Empuriabrava. And either will be able to cater for you in English if you don't speak Spanish.
  22. Wasn't there some discussion the other week over whether or not threatening a sovereign country with nuclear annihilation was a breach of Twitter's terms of service?
  23. By being a foulmouthed cunt? [And yes, I recognise the irony in the above post, but then I'm not supposedly the 'leader of the free world'. Mods, I thought long and hard for a less offensive and yet still applicable word but sadly failed to find one, it's simply the only one that fits the man: feel free to delete if considered necessary].