skydiver30960

I'm with ya. Seems womens' fashion designers will put shoulder pads into every damn suit jacket they can find, but no dress slacks with padded knees yet. Elvisio "CK ain't got nothin' on me" Rodriguez

It'd be worth some research and maybe a homebrewer can clue us in, but IIRC the amount of moonshine you can make tax free is pretty unreal. 100 gallons a year or something like that... so as long as you don't slip into high-speed production you'll burn up every brain cell you have before ATF or the IRS cares. Elvisio "georgia moon" Rodriguez

I dunno, I think the sneakers make for a "uninhibited, yet on the go and ready for action" statement. Coulda been worse, coulda been kneepads... Elvisio "nike says: just do it" Rodriguez edit to add: I'm glad they were smart and didn't put any dudes on the front row of the coaster.

What with me being allergic to cats, I would call that sweet revenge... Elvisio "zyrtec is my friend" rodriguez

Here's the whole setup for anyone interested: Hot plate (like turtlespeed's) for the heat. The lid on the pot was clamped down with clamps we popriveted onto the pot, and a bicycle tube between lid and pot made the seal. Drill a small hole in the lid to drop a thermometer (from your local homebrew shop) into the pot. Out of the lid we had a 1.5" PVC tube about 6" long packed with copper wool. My ChemEng roomate called this the reflux tube, says it helped get better distillations. This was capped and through that cap came the copper tubing. The tubing ran up, over, and down into a 6" PVC pipe (maybe two feet tall) capped at the bottom. The tubing was coiled inside this 6" PVC, which was filled with ice. The tubing came out a small hole in the bottom of the 6" PVC, which is where we collected our sweet, sweet nectar. Keep an eye on your temperature. I forget the temp at which water and alcohol azeotrope (i.e. boil off together) but it's significantly lower than 212F and you get mostly alcohol only a couple % water. The temperature in the pot will remain constant through the whole distillation. Then, once most of the alcohol is gone, the temperature will spike and you'll just start getting water (bad bad bad). As soon as you start to see the temperature rise, shut her down cuz you're done! Later; Elvisio "what I really learned in college" Rodriguez edited because I'm too stupid to use the shift key properly

Sounds like something we had running in school. Bad things are always afoot in an apartment with four engineers. Make sure you have a good condenser set up. You'll also need a thermometer to tell when the alcohol has stopped boiling off and you're down to distilling water. We tried a couple mashes, but never had much luck, because of what you're experiencing: FUNK! Four college guys living together are nasty enough. What we did was start with stuff that had already been fermented and/or distilled once before, stuff like wines (technically it's how you make brandy, but I wouldn't call what we ended up with anything that resembled brandy). Also, what we had best results with was re-distilling liquor. Remember the nasty crap you used to drink out of the big 1.5L bottles? Aristocrat vodka? Pepe Lopez and Monteczuma tequila? Nasty stuff, and if the bottle sat around open for a while it just got to tasting worse. So all our buddies always had half-finished bottles of liquor on top of their fridges. Go around, pay 'em a buck or two for half a bottle of liquor, dump it ALL into the pot, and what came out the other end of the condenser was white lightning, pure and simple. Elvisio "so many brain cells lost forever" Rodriguez

Sell, damn you, sell! Sell sell sell! Elvisio "the gf is gonna be pissed, and I like it" Rodriguez

Quote Hmmm.....the LAPD can't be reached from this area? WTF? Quote Get a White Ford Bronco and drive around town REALLY SLOWLY. That'll get plenty of LAPD attention! Elvisio "nice isotoners" Rodriguez

Let me help: Big bright yellow ball: SUN Smaller white ball: MOON Little bright specks: STARS If that isn't enough to make your professor happy, send him to me... Elvisio "I know I'm a bastard" Rodriguez

Let us know as soon as you hear anything... Dude, this is great! It's like an episode of COPS! Elvisio "bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do" Rodriguez

Although I respect the opinions of others about "unnecessary wear" and "waste of money and time" and have heard about all the studies that have been carried out that show that a reserve can be repacked for years and still open just as quickly as one that was just repacked, GET IT DONE EVERY 120 DAYS. Simple fact of the matter is that if the FAA does a ramp inspection and your shit is out of date you get off without a hitch but the pilot in command goes "up the proverbial river without means of locomotion" if you know what I mean. I'm not even going to START a debate about whether or not pencil packs are OK or not, that way lies madness. My point is, for the sake of this argument: one way or another, make sure your gear is in date... your pilots will love you for it. Elvisio "they fly so that I can fly" Rodriguez

damn, you post fast. Elvisio "hockey hockey hockey hockey" Rodriguez

After reading this thread, my Netflix queue is quite a bit more substantial... Elvisio "I said queue" Rodriguez

Gentlemen, Sunny speaks the truth. If you're looking for something to get the lady in the mood, this is the flick... right after the hallway scene I was pounced on in my La-Z-Boy! Elvisio "pleasantly surprised" Rodriguez

hmmm.... how to get a last minute flight from D.C. to Houston... Elvisio "frequent flyer" Rodriguez

Think? What's that? Elvisio "null set" Rodriguez

The streets will never be safe, my man... at least not as long as I have a car and an excuse to ROAD TRIP! See you soon! Elvisio "bad penny" Rodriguez

I just got back from my appt. and I'm pissed. I've always been a real "if it ain't broke don't fix it" kind of guy... So it pisses me off when the dentist says "look I know you aren't in any pain, but I can see something in here that we need to take care of." Well, OK. And it really pisses me off when the dentist says "look I know you aren't in any pain, AND I can't see it with my eyes, but the x-ray says there's something in here that we need to take care of." Dammit. But here's a new one on me (first trip to this particular dentist): "look I know you aren't in any pain, AND I can't see it with my eyes, AND it doesn't show up on the x-ray, but we have this new laser pointer thingy that we put on your tooth and it tells us if you have a cavity, so we need to get it taken care of." ... WTF!!!! It's like "hey we know you're only 30 and in perfect health, but we're going to go ahead and do a double hip replacement on you because we have a dohickey that says you'll need them done when you turn 75, so we may as well get it over with." Elvisio "getting drilled (in any sense) sucks" Rodriguez

What gives, no pictures? How can the seller expect to garner any interest without flashy pictures of the item in action? Elvisio "king of positive feedback" Rodriguez

Congrats! But be careful... keep it up and they'll start making you fly the planes instead of letting you jump out of them! Of course, even the pilot in command can jump... once per aircraft, at least... Elvisio "repacker of pilot rigs" Rodriguez

Well done. Chris B. mentioned that it was a "freefly" record and that it really tore up the old record. I am super-pumped to see skydiving shown in a POSITIVE light on a major network. Too bad it doesn't happen more often. If I see any more bad landings and normal freefall video made to sound like "he's about to die!" on shows like You Gotta See This and Real TV, I'm gonna shoot out my TV. Thanks for the heads-up! I'm glad I caught it... Elvisio "good exposure" Rodriguez

Several years ago at my birthplace DZ, a lady rolled into town and set up a bed and breakfast right at the end of our runway. I guess it was a bad case of investment research, or she only checked out the location during the week or whatever but as soon as she opened her doors she started bitching about all the loads flying on the weekend. She took it to the city council but lost because 1. the DZ brings SO much more money to the area than a lowly bed and breakfast (and had been doing so for thirty years)and 2. the DZO went to high school with a bunch of the councilmembers, so no sweat there. She even called the FAA but between the relatively tight ship the DZO runs and the (surprisingly) good relations he has with the local FSDO, no problems there either. Finally, she gave up. The DZ still gets strings of hang-up phone calls whenever we do night jumps though... Elvisio "I guess she didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night" Rodriguez

Split ring? Not sure exactly what that is but one thing I heard worked really well (but have been to lazy to try myself) is the keyring off a keychain. Is that you guys are talking about? ...just thread the keyring through the loops like you're putting a key on the ring, and the absence of the barrel eliminates the stress point that causes most of the wear. Elvisio "don't pack your keys into your main" Rodriguez

Skybytch has the order nailed, except I say go for the helmet before the altimeter. There's nothing worse on a hot summer day that having to stick your head in a ProTec that the last guy had deposited about a liter of sweat into... Elvisio "protect your melon" Rodriguez

You're a good man, Charlie Brown. Your answer lies in your own words, the part about most/all of them never having been in competition before. Even though it was an "intermediate" comp, in a sense they were 'newbies' and you helped 'em out. Good show of sportsmanship. For the record, if they were skygods, or if they shot you any attitude when you interjected, then screw 'em and let them bust all day long... Elvisio "teach your children well" Rodriguez