mdrejhon

Oh shah, only if you knew. There's a lot of problems in the "gay" side of the fence too. It just depends on where you look. I'll take a D, I'll take an R, I'll buy a vowel A, and get an M, which spelled out D-R-A-M-A on Vanessa's board. But, ya, for the majority of the gays, the hookup ease is higher. BUT, finding the long-term soulmate (lifelong) is actually traditionally more challenging for many gays; especially back in the pre-equalization era. (It still is for many parts of some countries, and many other countries) Mind you, some of them are your everyday log cabin Republicians running big businesses, while others are the liberal activists baring their boobies at Pride. And all sorts of people in between. FWIW, I met my spouse online (We've been together more than 5 years; now engaged.). So online works. It was more of a date though. P.S. Yesterday, I just surprised my spouse with a birthday gift of the Skydiver's Information Manual. Full freefall course to Solo certification, all expenses paid. He starts training this coming week.

Sounds like you'll enjoy a high-altitude pull -- above the clouds in a partly cloudy sky. It is very peaceful up there. You might also consider paragliding, for more airtime under a canopy. For me, it's usually R.E.D. to help me feel balanced -- Rest, Exercise, Diet. I am very bad at some of these, working a sedate desk job. Though I used meds in '04, but a small amount only for two months as a crutch, during a period of hard times that hit me in all areas of my life. I didn't want to be resigned to depending on meds, as I am usually err on the side of avoiding meds "unless it was clearly useful and needed"...

Oh, and definitely *still* network too, wherever possible, however --unlikely--. A friend working at Walmart may still be good friends with the Walmart manager who eats lunch with somebody who needs a project manager. You'll get a lot of crap leads or advice you're not interested in, but occasionally, one of the leads ends up being a gem, or that "pathetic" lead can give you referrals to other "gem" leads! Similiar 'unlikely' situations happens to me at least a little of the time.

Did they let people vote on disapproving BOTH parties' handling?

You can still have multiple resumes regarding project manager, targetted at different kinds of industries, too. I am not entirely sure what your current situation is in other areas, or how long you have been working for, but some generic advice, based on my fight to stay employed in the last 3 years.... Resume re-do's.... If you have been looking for a long while, then a resume redo sometimes helps get things rolling faster. I hate writing and rewriting resumes, but they do more than double chances of getting the right kind of jobs, even if you strategically delete information from it (i.e. remove engineering keywords, or shorten that section, etc). Find some jargon/keywords that reduces reliance in engineering and increases in non-engineering areas. Try several approaches to the resume. Use a high-end resume-writing service to do one version (the kind that is experienced at everything from students through executives) -- tell them you want to de-tune the engineering aspects -- or bribe your best friend to try second version, and you do a third version of the same resume. Then get it all proofread by different parties. One of the resumes may actually end up being better and more ideal than each other, hopefully competently written. In the lack of ability to network, it becomes ever more important to invest a lot of painful time on getting your resume caught above the crowd, especially in the age of automated resume search algorithms... Multiple methods.... And you'll want to hit multiple methods of finding work. ... career fairs ... meeting with local agencies (even pathetic ones too) ... online sites (but do not invest more than 10% of your jobhunt time on online jobhunt) ... even re-sending a rewritten resume to the same headhunters you sent a resume to only three months ago, and even making sure you have subscriptions to certain periodicals in nearby cities, so you can keep eyes on career developments (i.e. intercity career fairs), and other unorthodox/unsual methods such as even visiting a computer/electronics convention (i.e. CES) to explore what kind of vendors you'd eventually like to work for. And of course, old-fashoned footwork (whenever applicable). And ask your recently-employed friends how they landed their job, to also target some of your current time towards their job hunt techniques. Location / Salary... And lastly, be prepared to take a cut. Sometimes it's easier than you tihnk. I took a temporary ~20% cut to work at a city 2 hours away from home. I decided to keep my old place in my old home (Ottawa), but rent a cheap $300/month room in a house in the other city (Montreal). I took the early morning train on Mondays (6:30am), spent 5 work days and 4 nights in the other city, and returned on the last train on Fridays (6:30pm). Spent the whole weekend including 3 nights in my home city, while my spouse worked in the home city. As I did not have a car at the time because I chose to save money by living the downtown lifestyle, it was nice anyway -- the train had free WiFi, I could even telecommute, I could also nap on the train too, or read a newspaper. And I only needed to spend 4 hours commuting a week (once on Monday and again on Friday) in 'productive' commute time that didn't require me to focus my eyes on a road... The cost increase of working in another city was actually doable, and was far better than staying unemployed even for one month. But of course, it's harder if you've already got a house, or was divorced, or have a huge debt, etc. Cost of living.... Some cities are also expensive, so factor that in your salary calculatoins. It's cheaper to earn $100K in a city such as Houston than $120K in New York City, since it's approximately 33% cheaper cost of living (especially far lower cost of houses in Texas). On the other hand, if you give up your car when you move to a condo or trendy apartment in downtown New York City, to take advantage of its public transit, you might free up enough cash to make the Big Apple worthwhile, etc. Presently, for the near term, I am leasing what is considered somewhat 'trendy' condo in downtown Toronto (24/7 coincerge, indoor pool, etc), which cost more but the cost was made up by not needing to pay for public transit (walking distance from work), not needing to pay for gym membership (gym and pool in building), very low bills ($50 for the heat pumped central air conditioning), not needing to have a car (until recently - since we're moving outwards soon), convenient access to shopping and social life, etc. It actually evened out to the same leftover disposable income as before. Toronto is Canada's most expensive city, but I was able to make it feel "not" that expensive. Calculate based on the amount of disposable income you will get in a specific location in a specific country (and how effective it will be for the stuff you plan to use the disposable income for) -- not based on an exact salary number. Some locations/places/countries/situations let you live like a king at $60K, while you're in the poorhouse somewhere else at $150K. Of course, if you're ballchained to some legacy debt like an underwater mortgage or a divorce settlement, that makes things THAT much harder... Lots of the advice still applies; subtract these numbers from the disposable income and calculate accordingly.

Have multiple specific resumes in several different industries -- rather than one overly general resume. And be prepared to relocate. It's tons, tons, tons easier to find work if you allow yourself to be relocatable (not house-tied, etc). I've now lived in 3 different cities in the last 3 years.

After having been to enough bigway events and pulling in a track based on ground rush, often beating my flashing audible by a second or so, I can eyeball 3000' pretty accurately (+/- less than 500'). So I'd probably jump without an alti/audible on a less busy day, if I can make the jump safe to pull 'at own descretion' in a +/- 500ft range without risking others' airspace. The situation has never come up, though. Always have jumped with at least one altimeter.

Na -- not if I use DTG printing (industrial inkjet using T-Shirt waterproof inks), but that tends to fade/get fuzzy after a few washings. There's also 4-color screen printing process, but that's a little too low resolution for this design. There's also heat transfers but the quality on that can be quite bad unless it's one of the top-of-the-line films (which don't fade even after 50 washings). The bigger problem is finding the RIGHT T-shirt supplier to do the RIGHT process at the RIGHT price... That IS the challenge! I've got a few backup designs, including more monochrome designs, they're under discussion before I order them shortly.

Here's one of the drafts of the T-Shirt design for Rainbow Boogie 2011. Last year, Rainbow Boogie became Cross Keys' most popular skydiving event, so this T-Shirt runs with that theme.

Webinar's I've been in, basically runs as an audio teleconference running simultaneously with a seminar presentation running inside your web browser. Sometimes there's also video teleconference, but usually it's been audio only. For that, because I am deaf, I use it in combination with a captioning service or instant messaging chat.

Although there's good reasons to avoid Facebook, I think you've answered your own question. It's all about moderation, and adjusting your privacy settings to suit. P.S. Tip for people who generally avoid Facebook: Be selective of who you friend, to minimize distractions. You have to decide whether or not to friend skydivers or not (who you've only met once or a few times). There are reasons you might want to avoid friending skydivers. 80%-90% of my Facebook friends are skydivers I've only met once, the other 10% are close friends, etc. Nothing wrong with having many skydiver friends, but if you're avoiding Facebook and you are joining it for the sole reason of staying in touch with friends/family, then you need to come up with a friending policy of your own, and stick to it. Personally, I've decided to friend skydivers who send me friend requests, as long as I've met them at a bigway event at least once. But you might not want to, if you're more selective with Facebook.

We had two Canadian Record attempts this year. One in Perris, and another domestic one at Parachute Montreal. The domestic one was far more successful, built up almost complete (95-way) and we will be trying again next year. The Canadian Record write-up with the 95-way photo is at Peter Chapman's writeup in CSPA thread Different countries have different rules. -- The Australians need to be 75% Aussies to be an Australian record, no matter where in the world it is held. -- The Canadians need to be 100% Canadians to be a Canadian record, no matter where in the world it is held. -- Other records for certain countries, must be held domestically only.

A temporary car for $1200 is hard but doable. I got myself a 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee for $1200 though I had to put some work on it. Right now I've got a brand new Elantra, which I mainly need for roadtrips / skydiving because I walk to work (only 10 minutes away) I use the subway and also have a bikeshare / autoshare (zipcar style) membership, but I eventually ended up needing my own car for roadtrips. Please try to make it through July 4 without being too down. Happy Independence Day. There are a lot of Americans worse off than you are.

We had a great time at Parachute Montreal on Canada's Day as well; more than 100 Canadians showed up and did 100-way attempts. This is how well we did (95+): Facebook Photo Also a good write up: Report by Peter Chapman at CSPA thread This is great, considering the last Record was only a 59-way. We went "Go big or go home", and didn't want to cut it to just a record-beating 65-way. Instead, we'll try again in 2012 and obliterate the old Canadian Record massively. Cheers, Mark Rejhon

As we speak, we are now squeezing about 34 into it for Canada record (June 27 to July 2, Parachute Montreal http://mission100.parachutemontreal.ca. Sitting on the floor (no benches) with seatbelt attachments to all three rails of cargo attachment points, we clearly can fit 12 skydivers deep by 3 skydivers wide, so I think 36 is the limit. Though it can get a bit tight, 36 is definitely doable. Seemed easier to fit than 24 in a Twin Otter. Didn't seem to even have difficulty taking off with what I remember is 34 with me in it, couldn't notice a difference in takeoff distance when we took off with only 18 people in the Sherpa. We are taking off from a nearby airport with an asphalt runway, instead of Parachute Montreal's grass strip. As far as I know, it's the first time that the Sherpa Shorts 330 has been ever been flown in Canada for civilian skydiving -- but I could be wrong (please correct me). Pretty impressive jump aircraft. The Lemays had some incredible connections to bring a Sherpa 330 up north...

Neutral interjection from a mostly-lurker of this thread (me): Isn't the thread's one-word topic "Homosexuality" the general for the contents of this thread?

Agreed. Even a lot of churches would agree too.

Great! So why do they have their own separate events where they exclude everyone else, as a way of celebrating the way they are? Clicky: The straight attendance of Rainbow Boogie (Bonfire) P.S. To flamebait... Why do POPS jumps exist? Exclude people under 40? Why do JTFC jumps exist? Exlude men? Why do Deaf World Record exist? Exclude hearing? And there's women's rodeo too. I presume you think those are contradictory, too, considering the facts that Rainbow Boogie welcomes straight people, and technically "more inclusive" than these groups? (P.S. I have nothing against the groups; they are worthy. Let's remember the almost $1M donated by JFTC to charities.)

I peeked at the code and found out the problem. You have incomplete quote marks, and quote marks are not recommended in the [url]'s 1. Copy and paste the whole post into Notepad 2. Search for " quote marks and delete all of them 3. Paste the result back 4. All the links should work now. 30 seconds to fix all the broken links that way. No, I did not view all the links. Though I know two of them, and they don't mind.

This is scam-the-scammer hall of fame: The P-P-P-Powerbook Prank Old, but a funny goldie.

It's a little bit late, but I felt sorry for some old veteran that accidentally posted this message in the wrong forum. Nobody even noticed him because it was a dead thread, and this guy didn't know how to post in the correct forum. Anyway, if you are able to help veteran Pat Lovetro find veteran Larry Arcadi, and know how to reach Pat, go ahead. (Even if it's too late for the reunion.)

FYI -- three members of the Men's World Record were gay.

Apparently.... Some of you need to go on the annual Saturday Evening lingerie/underwear jump load at Rainbow Boogie 2011! don't worry, boogie is 75% straight, 25% gay. There are a lot of straight girls interested. We've attracted a large number of straight girls in recent years....for some reason. EDIT: Attached. No men in this photo. Yes, "poles" involved. (It was published in Issue #5 of Blue Skies). Yes, 2 of the girls are straight. Enjoy!

This looks like lots of fun, but I wonder what happened to the glider person. He must have had quite the recoil when everybody dropped. TWANNG!

Software developer -- aka software engineer -- here. Even where I live, there's dramatic swings in salary and/or contract income (I work 2 contracts now). Some contracts for the same work earn more than twice as much as some others. My flexibility in relocating between Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal allowed me to survive the '08 recession mostly unscathed. In one place, you're offered only $30/hr, and in another place $65/hr, etc. Even for the same programming language. For example, working for a small starving startup company working C#.NET versus working for a large electric company or bank working C#.NET. One may have to work at the former first before working at the latter. to fill the resume with some useful experience. Sometimes, you even have to work much harder at the startup company. Then again, the startup company work, on the other hand, is often more fun and flexible, less bureaucratic. Even if you're doing the same programming language on very roughly similiar projects.