Programmer

My two cents worth. You're entering Vancouver in December and you've never seen snow. Rent a car, drive to Whistler - ski resort north of Vancouver. Spend a few days there if you can afford it in time and/or money. Rent some equipment and take some ski lessons. Try skiing and snowboarding. You're going to be in the perfect place for some winter fun. Make the most of it.

Using the name of another business on your web page to fool search engines is not good marketing - unless you think that running red lights to get places faster is good driving.

"What would you call his granddaughter?" Is his granddaughter attractive ? Sorry, I got distracted for a minute there. This is a valid question. I've noticed that in skydiving and in skiing black people are underrepresented. Both sports are a bit hard to get into. They aren't as accessible as something like mountain biking where you can just get a bike and get out on a trail. I think there's a considerable feeling of " I wonder if all those white folks are going to accept me ? " We get a fair number of black tandem jumpers, but most tandem students come in groups with their friends, so they don't really have to worry about fitting in with the regular skydivers. By the way, my first jump was a tandem with a Jewish TI; Isreali in fact. And I know two African-American skydivers. They're white guys who came to America because everything's just better here.

My two cents worth: if you're only going to one island, go to Maui. There's plenty to see on the others. Kauai is spectacular, there's an active volcano on the Big Island, etc., so see as much as you can, but Maui will keep you busy for a week, or you can just relax and not be busy at all. If you do go to Maui, the Old Lahaina Luau is one of the best in the islands, but you need to make reservations a couple of weeks in advance. This thread has lots of good info. You can probably tell by reading it that there's more to see and do than you'll have time for in one trip.

This is explained in detail in my blog available at: www.ihaveanopinion_aren't_i_special.com

Two words: Myth Busters

I'm not sure how to post the link, but if you go to the Dropzone.com home page, under Ads by Google on the right side about halfway down and click on Local Sky Diving, you get sent to www.local.com and, for me, sky diving and Birmingham, AL are plugged in for the search. You can probably see the same thing if you go to www.local.com and enter sky diving for what and Birmingham, AL for where. The results page has sponsored links for Perris and Skydive Chicago, then results for Adventure Sport Skydiving and Skyride Tuscaloosa, then a lot of results for outdoor stores and stuff. USPA dropzones in Alabama aren't listed in the first 5 pages of results. The distances from Birmingham on the Google results page put the two skyride websites at the top of the list, but I can assure you there's not a dropzone 2.2 miles from downtown Birmingham.

It's not spoofed. It's a legitimate link to a skyride website.

Well, this is discouraging. The right side of the Dropzone.com homepage has "Ads by Google Local Sky Diving" that points to an online local search for skydiving in the Birmingham area. That link leads to an ad for Adventure Sport Skydiving "serving your area - Birmingham 35203" with a local phone number, 205-949-1560. A reverse lookup on Anywho shows 205-949-1560 registered to Adventure Sport Skydiving and Skyride Tuscaloosa and gives an address of 900 Appalachee St. Birmingham, Alabama. The building at 900 Appalachee is a Deltacom switching station - a low concrete building with no windows surrounded by a chain link fence topped by razor wire. Not likely you could get your money back if you booked a tandem with these guys and were dissappointed with the service.

It's hard to tell, because he has his back turned to the camera, but I think it's a human with a hat on. Sometimes they wear those to make themselves harder to identify.

Skyride does more than just web site optimization. They use meta tags with the name of competing drop zones to get to the top of a GOOGLE search along with the legitimate holder of the name. That's got to be confusing to people looking for a place to do their first tandem.

Pi is a transcendental number - it never ends and it never repeats. What's Krisanne trying to tell us?

Tell her you're not walking around; that those are the footsteps of souls of those who have gone before. Tell her you respect them and so should she. If she's not impressed with how spiritual you are, she might have to make good on her threat to move out. Darn.

It's the foul stench of corruption - activate the Bat Signal.

Lots of students have to repeat one or more AFF jumps. You can't believe you forgot to count ? I can. You're in an unfamiliar environment where there's a good bit of mental overload. Concentrating on part of the jump and forgetting something else is not at all unusual. The thing is, to get 100 jumps in your logbook, you have to jump 100 times. To log 1000 jumps, you have to jump 1000 times. In the long run, a few more or less AFF jumps won't matter. Your instructors will tell you what you did right, what you did wrong, and what to do on the next jump. Listen to them, rehearse what you can on the ground before the jump, do the best you can on that jump. That worked for everybody else here, and it will work for you, too.

This doesn't really answer your question, but it's related. Google patent 6485773.

That's actually become a pretty common theme. Here's how it works: 1) developer buys vacant property near an airport - it's cheap, most folks don't want to live next to an airport 2) developer sells houses near the airport to people who mainly don't fly, they just want an affordable house 3) now that there are a lot of people who live near the airport, developer's lawyer goes to the county commision ( or whoever ) and argues that the airport should be closed because the noise is bothering all the people who live near the airport 4) airport is closed 5) land value goes up 6) profit It would help if there was legislation that says you can't complain about airport noise if the airport was there before your house was, but most voters don't use airports. I assume you've already contacted AOPA. Sometimes they can help with things like this. Good luck.

1. Pig - they're smart and edible 2. Box jellyfish 3. Stream 4. I'm feeling somewhat confined; but, hey, I'm a carpenter. I could put a door right there. I'll kick thru the wall and go get some tools. And where is all the light coming from in a room with no windows? Someone must have stuck a bare bulb in the ceiling. And who paints a room bright white? I could totally remodel this place and make it so much more livable.

Agreed. And most of these smaller mains are in more modern containers with better pin protection, making a two-out even less likely than it would have been with '90s equipment. We're really saying the same thing here: Do everything you can to prevent having two canopies out and get a reserve that will save you when the main is gone. Sounds like a lot of replies here are in favor of using lower pack volume to get a bigger reserve into their container.

www.performancedesigns.com/docs/dualsq.pdf Did I do that right to make it clicky? Anyway, I figured most people would be familiar with PD's dual square testing and their report refers to a couple of other tests which all concluded that similar sized canopies are easier to handle in a two-out scenario. It was not my point to discuss the two-out case, but rather to point out that a one-out case is more common, so it seems to make sense to choose a reserve based on what you want it to do by itself.

Several tests have shown that you are better off with two similar sized canopies in a two-out situation. I think the more important consideration is what you've got in a one-out situation. In three years, I've seen a two-out situation one time, but I've seen a whole boatload of cutaways. I don't have a lot of skydiving experience, but from a statistical point of view I would have to go with a bigger reserve even if it's a good bit different from the main, just because you're much more likely to use each one by itself.

Grapefruit is a breakfast food.

Keep your cool. It's all a big game, and it sounds like you're holding the winning hand.

Children, Children - you can both have the marshmellow shooter. I'm going through bizarre things trying to decide between the South Park Ornament set or the Remote Control Farting Bear.......oh wait - the Cell Phone Flask! Gives a whole new meaning to drunk dial. Some good stuff here.

Bitching about stuff isn't illegal, but if the politicians would quit closing the whorehouses the people who are bitching about stuff could go get laid and quit bitching. That's my point. And the zipper thing was kind of funny.