gjhdiver

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Everything posted by gjhdiver

  1. Tonight at 9:00 on the Discovery Channel. It's the first airing of the episode filmed at Bay Area Skydiving in Byron last year. We spent the day throwing fifty pound blocks of ice out of the plane, and I spent the day strapped to Kari Byron. It's a tough job sometimes.
  2. So, I used to play the original of this game endlessly in the early 90's and was more than happy to see that Ubisoft had released the original again for the iPhone and iPad. It got me to thinking if I could get the original Mac version that I used to play. It's fun playing it again, but it would be nice to have the full screen version again. Anyone out there sitting on a Mac version ?
  3. Science, logic and reason will fly you to the moon. Religion will fly you into a building. Nuff said.
  4. That's because there's a finite number of frightened white guys in pickups able to consume this delicious nonsense.
  5. Ahh, the good old "too good to go in" argument. Tell it to Patrick DeGuarydon, Tom Piras, Rob Harris and Adrian Nicholas amongst others. It doesn't matter how great a guy this tandem instructor is, he (and you) are making the time tested mistake of mistaking luck for experience. He may be good at what he does, but he's got no common sense at all.
  6. Incorrect. No-one was asking to be allowed to engage in public displays of affection. All that was asked for was not to be discriminated against based on their sexuality. Military service is supposed to be based on honor, sacrifice and trust, yet that very military was forcing people to live a lie. There's no special right being granted here.
  7. Another pointless post as the idiotic idea of a deity circles the drain.....
  8. Seriously. Only military groupies and nerds give a shit about this sort of stuff. In the general scheme of things, I could care less. Nobody's harmed by this nonsense. It's like when I see people who pad their logbooks with thousands of jumps they don't have. It doesn't make them a skydiver, and wearing a pin doesn't make someone a Seal. Didn't the courts just rule that lying about being decorated or military service wasn't a crime in the case of the guy who claimed to be a CMOH recipient. I think their opinion boiled down to "meh".
  9. Well, someone is, but it's not TK. He wasn't present when the business started in late 1992. Jerry Bird was the first manager, then Matt O'Gwinn, then me, then TK. TK is not responsible for way that the verbal agreement was made to supply aircraft and fuel. He just has to deal with the fallout. If anyone made the mistake here, it's FFE, as they have little or no recourse to force Skydive City to use them for aircraft support. Billy doesn't really have much of a dog in this race. The best he can do is to try to start a new DZ at both DeLand and Z Hills. Good luck with that. Oh, and you're clearly a ranch hand, it shouldn't bother you too much. Remember, you guys aren't going there any more, remember ?
  10. I still don't get it. Even if everything you say about Z-Hills is true, that doesn't explain why you are opening a new DZ at Deland. Okay, so you want to operate your planes somewhere to make money - that's all well and good. But why at that particular location where there is already a drop zone, which has no bearing on what happened at Z-Hills. None of your message explains that. It looks like you're trying to punish Deland for what Z-Hills did... Please explain why you chose that location. Name recognition essentially. It's a lot easier to run a drop zone off an established airport than start afresh somewhere else. We should all remember too, that FFE was instrumental in starting up Skydive City as a competitor to George Kabeller's Phoenix Parachute Center, so we can't really get too worked up about thew morals of the situation if we are honest with ourselves. Part of the reason Billy started Skydive City with Sunshine Factory was to have somewhere to fly his planes, and somewhere for them to sell gear. When I was manager there, it was a friggin' nightmare to be honest, trying to avoid conflict with the other operation there, and FFE is correct in saying that they extended us a huge amount of credit on things like A/C leasing and fuel because we were essentially broke most of the time. However, bearing in mind that the only reason they did all of that was to have somewhere to fly, it doesn't surprise me in the least that they would turn on Skydive City if they sourced aircraft from somewhere else. The circumstances of gaining access to Z Hills airport for another operation might be a whole lot different now. I don't think the city is ready to go through the in-fighting and political nonsense that they went through during the Skydive City/Phoenix wars. Just to back TK up on another point. He's correct in stating that there was no solid legal arrangement with FFE. During my time as manager, it was all done by word of mouth also, and I never saw any written agreement between the two companies. It was just presumed that as Billy was a director and co-owner of each, it wasn't necessary. The sooner Billy disentangles himself from Skydive City and gives up, the better it will be for him and everyone else involved. Skydive City has weathered worse, and it will weather this.
  11. Probably quite a long time. From my 15 or so visits to Sweden, one thing of note is the cleanliness of their cities and their sense of civic pride. Of course, if it was here in the US, it would be fucked up by tagging before the pictures made it online.
  12. Many presidents have not saluted at MoH ceremonies, many of them Republican. Of course, anyone who believes that an imaginary 2000 year old carpenter is keeping tabs on everyone, already has what can most kindly be described as a nodding acquaintance with reality.
  13. As do your, which is why you see all the other posters boots in your ass. As regards the original question about wingsuit tandem, it's a fucking stupid idea. It adds an extra level of complexity and danger to an already complex and dangerous activity, and gives absolutely nothing in return for that risk. It also places the TI and their DZ in a very questionable legal area with regards to consent and liability. It's not about fun for the TI, it's about the passenger. Those of use who've been around long enough have seen how bad the shitstorm gets when a bored or careless TI gets unlucky. If you're unsure, call up Bill Booth or Ted Strong and ask them what they think about it.
  14. I love Wikilieaks. Julian Assange is the sand in the gears of the arrogant governments that feed us bullshit and tell us that we are too simple minded to know the truth. He may get run over by the machinery that he's set in motion, but he's set the model. He won't be the first or the last to do this now. More please.....
  15. If I ever miss managing Z Hills, all I have to do is read this sort of stuff. I spent more time there dealing with spurious legal bullshit than skydiving. Just keep on keepin' on kicking them in the nuts TK. They'll get the message eventually.
  16. a) He won't be. No drop zone is legally liable for anything Skyride does, at least not out here in CA. You need to do your homework a little. b) Every person who work at our DZ is paid the same for everything. The DZO takes the hit on the lower rate for Skyride customers. The only reason I know who is a Skyride customer is because I do the booking. It's nice of you to consider me naive, but I ran the largest drop in the world for a few years so I have a little insight into the business model. Don't get me wrong here. I'm not unsympathetic to your complaints. However, I do feel that this battle has been lost for some time. You can try to remove Skyride, but they have proof of concept. Think of it this way. When file sharing started, they went after Napster, so peer to peer changed. Last month they shut down Limewire, which no-one has used in years. File sharing is with us now forever. The proof of concept is valid and the legal fight is about two years behind the actuality. Think of Skyride as Napster. While you're wasting time on them, someone is developing something on from it that won't be as easy to tilt at.
  17. Oh, and while we're talking about Texas, another great piece of news for us. That slimy Texas fascist Tom Delay got convicted of money laundering by a jury in his home state. He's headed to prison for a minimum of two years up to life. You really have to be a piece of shit to have your own fuck you over. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
  18. I had one of these. I sold it to David Layne at Skydive Mobile. Maybe he still has it, but I saw the Crossbow container I sold it in on eBay a couple of years ago.... I cut my OSI down to about half the length. Took some of the guessing out of the openings.....
  19. I've got over 3500 jumps on a Sabre, and about 7500 on a Stiletto. There's a reason that's it's still made, and why half of Airspeed jump them. You can't buy a better standard elliptical canopy. Anyone who thinks that a Sabre is a better swopping canopy than a Stiletto is respectfully talking out of an orifice not a million miles from their buttocks. The Sabre 2 is a nice square canopy, but it's no match for a Stiletto in the hands of someone that knows how to fly one. They are different canopies that require different approaches. If the Stiletto didn't outperform the Sabre, it wouldn't have supplanted it so quickly in the 90's.
  20. After a little back and forth, it's now official. The GOP has been blown out in California in every statewide race. Steve Cooley, the GOP's last hope at election to a statewide office, has conceded to Democrat Kamala Harris. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/24/BA1P1GH4DR.DTL It's good to live in CA.
  21. Actually. you're someone with limited grammar and writing skills, who has a bug up his ass. Your post is tedious beyond belief. Simply put, this whole Skyride thing was past tedious two years ago. You clearly don't have any power to affect the outcomes of it, otherwise you wouldn't be wasting bandwidth here. I have no dog in this fight, and I really don't care about SR one way or another. I will mention that in the 15 odd years I've worked at our drop zone, not one jumper has ever asked us to stop taking SR customers or expressed an opinion on them. It's only fait to assume that most jumpers don't really care that much as long as they are getting on planes.
  22. You should probably state what level of Belly flying you are at to get the most use from your coach.
  23. Back in the UK at our old drop zone, it was called the "Stratosplat", for the delicacy of it's less-than-tiptoe arrivals. It landed like a round with the corners cut off. Mind you, we free packed them in a roll in the container, so most of the time we hadn't quite recovered from the openings before we landed, so we didn't notice as much.
  24. If you ever get out to Byron in NorCal, you can jump mine.
  25. Translation - I was once fucked up on drugs, now I'm fucked up on religion. You just changed your crutch is all.