VTmotoMike08

Saw this one last weekend: While interviewing the passenger, the TI falls asleep in the background. After getting the interview, asking how he feels, etc then the video then cuts to the instructor, who snaps awake and pretends to be confused about what he is about to do. Vidiot asks if he remembered to take his medication this morning, TI responds "is it 1 pill every 12 hours or 12 pills ever hour?". Then he reaches into his jumpsuit and pulls out a prescription bottle that he filled with mints and pops a bunch into his mouth. The student has to be in the right mood, but they usually get a pretty good laugh. Also, there "Did you hear about the 25 dollars cash only hook up fee?"

I just got my rating and I've only done about 30 tandems in the last 3 weeks. I guess this one was about number 20. A vietnamese family came out on Father's Day 2010 to make some jumps. It was the dad and two of his children, and they brought about 20 observers. One of the children (20 years old) was deep in the last stages of unsuccessfull chemo treatment and had two weeks to live. I took the dad, one of the more experienced TI's took the sick daughter, and another took his son. He (the dad) was kinda slow on catching onto the training, but I took my time and he did great in freefall. He had been very quiet the whole time, but then he let out whoops of joy after opening

Oh man, idea... the strong ripcords cost $20, huh? I'm gonna go buy a stash of em and sell it to students for "only $30 to take home the ripcord that just saved your life!" OK... for anyone who can't take a joke, no I won't actually be doing this.

Funny that you mentioned it, I had the same thing- infinity risers (on a PD demo) that I put in my Mirage. I have not had a toggle fire in 550 jumps on my javelin risers (in my mirage). I had two in 19 jumps on the katana demo with infinity risers, and I _almost_ chopped them both! I think davelepka got the cause right. No way did I pack it unstowed, I was super careful on packing because it was a demo canopy. Anyway, I highly recommend javelin risers. I'll never jump infinity risers again. Sure they work most of the time, and the ones that come on the demo canopies are probably spanked, but my javelin risers also have 400- 500 jumps on them and have no problems at all. Infinity must have been asleep when they designed their risers, what could possibly make them think that the oversized, loose loop on the back is a good way to stow the excess line. Javelin uses an elastic band- its not rocket science. FYI, I dont use the mirage risers because they are still the cloth loops while javelin puts a stiffiner in the loop that makes it easier to grab with gloves on.

>>It imposes a "billionaire surcharge" rate of 65 percent on estates over $500,000. Sounds like someone failed math! Good to know that if I make a half million dollars, the government thinks that makes me a billionaire?!

In the specific examples that I had in mind, there was no attitude adjustment. The person stormed off in a huff, went to another DZ during the ban, jumped his velocity... and is now a very good canopy pilot who is still injury free. The point is that you only ever hear about the bannings where an experienced skydiver gets to smirk and say "I told you so" (and there are varying degrees of being a dick when doing this). There are also many where the predicted never comes to pass- whether the banning had any help in this may be up for debate. My experience has shown that the vast majority of bannings result in no attitude adjustment and also no injury. Yours may vary.

Just to give a little balance to this thread- in my five years, I've seen about 4 or 5 groundings for downsizing... faster than the S&TA did. For the most part, these people just waited it out or went to another dropzone. None have busted themselves up yet. Just goes to show that you only hear about the ones that make a good "I told you so" story. Sometimes, the people doing the grounding do get it wrong.

I was wondering if any one has a source (hopefully an online store) that sells the foam lining/ padding that most popular skydiving helmets use? It doesn't have to be designed for helmets, just has to work for them. I'm gonna call up bone head and skysystems and ask for some of theirs, but I figured that would be the most expensive route. And yes, I did a forum search. If this doesn't work, I'm off to the local bike store in search of a cheap helmet to cannibalize. My specific situation is that I've got an XL Skysystems HR2 helmet that almost fits, if the foam padding was about half as thick it would be perfect, so I'm looking for a fairly thin foam. Thanks

A simple statement such as "Applicants must be prepared to explain any gaps in their employment record" should suffice.

Helmets- you can get good protection, attractive, and comfortable. Pick any two Or maybe its attractive, comfortable and cheap. Either way, every helmet is a compromise.

Just paid $250 to Jim Crouch in west point, VA for a strong tandem rating course (examiners fee only). Then consider $155 to strong ent for the packet, $80 to the doc for a medical cert, 20 slots @23 each, fees to USPA..... I set aside a grand total to get it done and its gonna be pretty close to that.

I just got back to this thread now. $2500 sounds... completely reasonable, but not that it even matters what I think. Its the bitches that spend $40K that I was talking about.

I never said I was for biofuels/ ethanol. If you really care, search my post history. I'm pretty sure I have said several times that I think policy has been wrong in that area.

I don't think I ever called you a butt head or whatever you are accusing me over so I would appreciate the same courtesy. Anyway, I gave it a quick read. It does indeed list a lot of failures of the IPCC. However, if you think that everything they have ever done is a big lie, then that would also be wrong and you are not looking at the whole picture. Since it doesn't attempt to provide a balanced picture of the success and failures of the IPCC, I'm not interested in giving a lot of credit to an attack piece. Kinda like your personal attack on me above- I don't really care enough to respond to spite.

>>However, such issues as optimization of traffic flow and the prevention or remediation of pollution are the domain of other disciplines. Wrong. I'm currently sitting around 40 bright professionals with civil and environmental engineering degrees who do both of those things every day. Sure, earth work calculations take less brain cells than designing a nuclear reactor. But you could dumb down any discipline by taking out the hard parts that slightly overlap other fields and leaving only the menial tasks. >>Organic for Environmentals is akin to Diff. Eq's for Civils Terrible comparison that further shows you don't really understand the discipline that you are so anxious to piss on. The environmental department at my office uses organic chemistry EVERY DAY Civil engineer steal your woman?

When I was in school, Civil Engineering was treated as the technical equivalent of Special Ed.. Professor Todd, when berating a group of Juniors who had turned in a less than stellar performance in one of his Organic Chemistry exams, told the class that they really weren't cut out for the hard sciences, and should perhaps consider Civil Engineering. Of course, Environmental majors were the ones to whom Civil was akin to Rocket Science. I would not brag about it. Irony score- perfect 10! Too bad organic chemistry is a big part of any environmental engineering curriculum. Fortunately, I have the perfect solution for you. Since you obviously can’t stand those weak minded civil and environmental engineers, you should immediately stop using all buildings, roads and utilities. On behalf of the profession, I apologize for not making things good enough for you. Then you should simply move somewhere where there are none (or little) of those. I would recommend Sudan. Once you get there, be sure to tell them that everyone who designed the American infrastructure is a “special ed student”. Be sure to tell me how the water there is, it hasn’t been fooled with by any of those dim-wit environmental engineers. Have a nice trip

So they think he is wrong. OK. Good science is repeatable. They should be able to do the same experiments themselves and come to the same conclusions. One of three things will happen: 1. They can't replicate the experiment- so his method was flawed. Therefore, discount his conclusions 2. The can replicate it and his results don't hold up- then discount his conclusions and feel free to call him a liar now that you can back it up. 3. The can replicate it and his findings are repeated- then give credit where it is due. (or forget about anything that conflicts with your current views, your choice) Then write a book about whatever you find and get rich! I don't see any reason to bring courts and lawyers into this. If you have the money for a lawsuit, then you have the money for some lab time.

Just out of curiosity, what do you have against the environmental movement? There are those who are legitimate skeptics of the science, and that's fine. I can sometimes see things from that perspective. Then there are those who seem to just hate being good stewards of the planet, and would probably intentionally harm it just because they think its funny. My experience has been that everyone who spews as much hate for environmentalism as you do has typically felt personally wronged by a particular environmental action- usually its a lost job, told they can't do something they want, can't build where they want, etc. So, why do you hate environmentalism? I'm just trying to understand where you come from, so please don't take this as an attack. I will respect your privacy if you don't want to answer, but lets refrain from the smart ass remarks. (yes, I know I just invited a smart ass remark with that last part...) And just for full disclosure, I work as an environmental engineer (water field, not atmosphere)

This is generally true. However, you are probably kidding yourself if you think your woman's "one thing" is the wedding. My experience has shown that the ones who want the big wedding also want the expensive luxury cars, the huge house full of useless consumer goods and are generally obsessed with "keeping up with the Jones". The wedding is just her "one thing" for "right now". Bottom line is that if you marry one of these women, don't expect her to be any less high maintenance after the wedding- it only gets worse from there!

didn't seem like too big a stretch in this case, at a company rather notorious for marginal working conditions. I don't know all the details but it seems there are so many variables to control before you can actually make a case for sexism. Maybe the courts will sort it out and get a good verdict... or, more likely, the side with the most expensive lawyers wins

Ya know, if you're a big enough company with enough money, someone will eventually find something to sue you for, no matter how much they have to stretch it.

2% is a general cost of living adjustment for an average worker in a good year. This year, anyone is lucky to get anything so you are particularly fortunate to get that- either business is good or you are particularly valuable. Take it and be happy.

Well, I kinda hope there isn't an earthquake that day! Needless to say I don't believe in the cleric's BS, but if there randomly happens to be a quake then....

Well then we wont know whether you have an understanding or simply have blind faith in someone else's theories. OK, so only personal origional research is valid. Upon birth, everyone should set out to learn everything about the natural world themselves or their knowledge is dismissed as "blind faith" If you require to know 100% of every detail on the origion of the universe, the only stance that you can take is agnosticism. However, that does not mean that everything else is on equal footing. I dismiss creationism because it totally disregards the scientific method, gives up on examining new evidence and says "give up on learning, just accept that God made everything!" I accept the big bang theory and evolution because it uses human observation and investigation, and everything is up for scrutiny. Even if it was wrong, the methodology is still leaps and bounds ahead of creationism's "blind faith". I would gladly change my views if presented evidence to the contrary. Creationism leaves no such room for improvement. Belief in an ancient book full of contradictions is "blind faith". The only faith (probably not the best word choice here) that my views require is hope in human inginuity to eventually fill in the details in our current theories

So we can understand, can you explain, in your own words, what you believe on how it all began? Nope, I'm not really interested in restating what is better said by experts in that field. Plenty of great books are available on the subject if you are interested. The point is that if you think the big bang says something came from nothing, you need to go back to school and ask for your money back, because the educational system has obviously failed you.