niolosoiale

They do mention that proper administration is key in experiencing the more intense effects. Apparently it metabolizes really quick so achieving the optimal concentration is more difficult. Of course that's just what I've read and I know nothing about smoking.

Check this out. I don't exactly keep up with whats going on in the world of drugs, but this has peaked my interest. Perhaps you've heard of Salvia divinorum? Appears to be the current "in" drug as it's not illegal at the moment (you can buy plants and extracts of varying concentrations on eBay) and provides some pretty wild trips. Here's the wikipedia entry on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvia_divinorum So... anyone have any experience with it that can verify these reports? Don't be shy now {Note - put this in speaker's corner has it could turn political if anyone has any feelings about the legalization of certain drugs}

Actually it's a policy that unfortunately must be taken because of the rising ability and willingness of terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah. Terrorist used to be just street thugs that law enforcement could deal with; now these dudes are as advanced and capable as some professional militaries. You obviously suggest we just get kicked in the nuts before doing anything...that's great thinking right there. You were the kid who got pummeled in school because you couldn't stand up for yourself and take action, right? Nothing here refutes anything I said. The point of the statement, "we are losing control of the situation." It's obvious we are losing control, and pre-emptivism is merely a façade to keep the American people believing in Shrub's judgement. (And if you aren't questioning his judgement, I'm still looking for those WMD's, and don't forget... http://homepage.mac.com/brianflemming/iblog/images/bush_aircraft_carrier_photo.jpg ) It's not a matter of waiting til you get kicked in the nuts, it's a matter of making sure punching someone in the face won't get you a kick in the ass from someone else. Really, and which ones are we missing? Specifically, as of right now, privacy. SEE: Wiretaps, Patriot Act. For fuck sake, the fact that they've used the Patriot Act in court cases which had NOTHING to do with terrorism is enough to make any person who isn't a sheep cringe. "If you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about." I never thought I would hear those words from a goverment official of our country. The erosion of liberty is exactly that. An erosion. Slow, consistent, and ultimately devastating.

Fact is though, people aren't going to by an H3 over a Prius if they want to save money on gas. In the end, the numbers they throw out have no verifiably valid reference, and it's merely a "But if you look at it from this angle" Sounds to me like GM trying to say "You should actually be buying an SUV! Because we say so!"

The most rediculous thing I ever heard was some girl claiming that she only liked JIF because Peter Pan tore up her bread. This was only one of the many idiotic things she said. I'll eat either.

The problem isn't difference of opinion internally, it's difference of opinion between Shrub and other members of the world community. Contrary to popular belief, we are not best friends with everyone who has the ability to hurt us. And we are not invulnerable, everyone knows that. So he would do well to pay special attention to the countries he decides to provoke, and I do mean provoke. A policy of pre-emptivism is the policy of a madman who is losing control of a situation. Every little movement becomes an exaggerated act of aggression, and thus becomes justification for "swift action" against the situation. If you're going to attack pre-emptively, not only are you the aggressor, but you will be treated as one. Not to mention you better have some foresight. Unfortunately a lack of foresight is only one of the plagues this administration has. Fact is, America is slipping down the slippery slope, and Shrub isn't helping matters. Record spending with no plans for repayment, 2-going-on-3 wars, apparent disregard for domestic issues outside of those involving foreign entities, and waning credibility/respect in the eyes of other countries. Consider this administration the setting of the sun on the days of American supremacy. The great thing if there is ever a marked point at which we lost the top dog position, cletus will blame it on the hippies. Both may be to blame in actuality, but Shrub certainly didn't help matters. I honestly cannot see one thing he's done that has yielded more benefit than sacrifice. We as Americans don't even have the same rights and privileges we used to. The time's they are a changin'.

Not bad, but I like Josie Maran better. My scale is 1-4. 1 - Avoid looking at 2 - Don't notice 3 - Good looking but not really impressed 4 - Attractive and fascinating "Attractive and fascinating" qualifies as any time I just can't help but look at the person. Most of my 4's are people that I just can't stop looking at their face. Hair, eyes, structure... good stuff. Obviously the scale is relative to the person. Some of my 4's are 3's for others. Adriana - 3 Josie - 4

Oh yeah, I don't like wearing an uncomfortable white shirt and tie. I'm pretty sure there is a middle ground that needs to be met in comfort and presentability. And 65% polyester shirts with buttons that are too big for the holes are not the way to do that.

Too true. Being 20 I attest to that. What I do know though, is that I won't be getting married for some very fundamental reasons. At 20, I am not settled into the kind of person I'm going to be. I'm still growing as a person and there's quite a bit of growing left. I am not able to take care of myself 100% as what I *think* is going to be my career is just starting out. I don't have the money or the time to devote to taking care of another person/relationship. My focus is to be responsible for myself before I take on any more responsibility for things outside of myself. Those are the things I think of pertaining to myself about why I won't be getting married or involved in any serious relationship for the next few years. As far as other people are concerned, specifically women, at 20, most girls haven't quite shed their high school instability. If I'm going to get emotionally/mentally/physically involved with someone, I'm not gonna be wasting my time on someone who doesn't reciprocate my level of commitment. While women complain that men have commitment issues, I find women right up through their 20's seem to have just as many issues with commitment. Honestly, I don't see any logic in two people making a lifetime commitment when they don't even know where they are going in their individual lives. And it seems most people don't figure out where they are going until their late twenties and early thirties. But I imagine it can work both ways. You can wait until your done settling, or settle together. But to settle together requires two people with lives that are going the same direction anyway. This is rare. Either way, I'm not getting married any time soon, and the more I think about it, the more I don't want to. I think everything will work out accordingly. I'm too responsible heh.

I like the schedule (7:30a - 4:30p) but I hate having a late night (7:30a - 7:00p). Specifically when I work two because my boss wants me to work his and I have no justification to say no, plus I don't want to say no as it makes me look like I'm trying to shed responsibility. I also hate late nights since I have to do a job that I'm not comfortable with doing (writing up customer vehicles for service). I hate late nights. Period. I hate filing and the fact that I have to do it 2-3 hours a day to stay caught up since no one else will do it. I want to spend more time advancing my knowledge/skills in warranty administration. I like the 1 hour lunches. I like my boss being flexible about my time (I think all the overtime compensates for coming in 10 minutes late every day.) I like the people, except for a few of the salesmen. I hate the fact that my boss seems to have a knack for hiring people who are little more than short-term liability. I hate that my boss raised the price of oil changes by 9 cents. It was 28.05 which made the combination of oil change and any other pure labor operation (tire rotations, alignments, balancing, etc) come out to an even dollar amount. So now instead of a oil change and rotate costing $44.00, they cost $44.09. His logic in doing it? "I wanted to help us get a little more fromt he oil changes." The result -- more hassle in making change for cash customers, I'm almost sure that there are some people that view that extra 9 cents as a little prick in the side, oh, and we increased our sales by $27 for all the trouble. $27 out of an average $120,000 monthly gross profit. I hate Thursdays. No reason other than I find it more difficult to get out of bed on thursday than any other day of the week. I like the idea of doing what I was hired to do, but I do not like doing the work that other people should have no trouble doing. Unfortunately, I end up feeling like mortar in the cracks.

While I don't consider myself to be a christian nor do I consider myself a patron of any theistic religion, I do attend church as required by my mom since it is a condition of my living at home. (Building a financial foundation to move out). And one of the coolest things I ever saw was a guy named "Dr. Sharp" come to the church with his dinosaur display to talk about creationism. Amongst the display there were some fossils one of which appeared to be an archaeopterix. You could see the feather imprints at least and it definitely had the reptile head. So these two kids, no more than 5 years old, are looking at the display after the service and they have a little argument. Girl #1 - "Look it's a bird." Girl #2 - "No it's not it's a dinosaur." 1 - "No it's a bird look at the feather marks." 2 - "No it's a dinosaur, it doesn't have a bird head." As they were reasoning it out I came up behind them and told them quietly that it was one of the dinosaurs that evolved into birds over a really long time. They of course just kinda gave me a curious look but whatever. I thought it was pretty racy for a creationist to bring a transitional fossil in for display.

Broken forearm, both bones. 4 years old, jumping off a chair repeatedly to entertain myself while my parent's were arguing, they stopped arguing heh. I still remember how it looked. 45 degree bend in the middle of my forearm. Stitches in my upper lip, 5 years old, turned bike to sharp. Stitches on the front of my chin, 8 years old, slipped on our pool deck. Stitches on the bottom of my chin, 10 years old, riding a friends bike, chain comes off during hard pedaling, lost my balance.

For reference, it wasn't exactly unprovoked. When you help the opposing force (supplying weapons/resources), you become a target. A bit of a sweeping generalization (stereotyping aside heh) there. Military men are trained to die for their country, civilians are not. Besides, the only thing more dangerous than a person who kills, is a person who kills and is willing to die for their beliefs while doing so. A formidable enemy indeed. Either way, I don't disagree as to the effectiveness and necessity of doing what we did... but today's world will no longer allow us to "solve problems" by making glass factories out of the countries we dont like. In WW2, we had the only gun on the plane... today everyone that's important has a gun too, and not everyone has the same friends.

It makes sense for some to have a "negative effect". When it comes to overcoming sickness or injury, you can either fight or give up. If people are christian folk, they may "give up" or relinquish control of their situation to god, and they may stop fighting. I think it makes sense at least.

The whole point of nearly every religion has been unification with their perceived god. Even the occultist whackjob religions. Salvation as it pertains to christianity is no different. "Believe Jesus died to forgive your sins and you get to go to Heaven." That's fine but I always have had trouble seeing it as any different from the other methodologies. But here's my system of belief as it pertains to god and salvation. Existence is everything that exists. Existence is infinite. Since existence is infinite, there is nothing that is outside of existence. Not even a void. As such, existence can never cease. If were to collapse or explode, it would take an infinite amount of time, and would only relatively change the structure of existence (which is nothing special as it happens every moment) Everything in existence is of the same energy. Energy and force (or will if you want to call it that) make up everything. There is nothing inherently different about the energy that makes up two "seperate" objects other than that they are merely organized in a different part of space and time. So you are by this existential structure, not actually seperate from anything else. Everything that exists is part of the same existence and is thus the same entity. Again, there is no actual seperation, only structural organization and relative position in space. Ok that's the horse pill. Here's the supplement. If (BIG if) one views existence as "god", then one can logically see that you are not seperated from "god". It seems logical to me for what many people have looked to as god, is actually the identity of existence. Since existence is infinite, and it is made up of energy and force (will), there is nothing that can be outside of existence. As such there is nothing that can exist outside of "god's" "will" or "existence's" "force". As a christian I was raised with the notion that everything works according to "god's will" and that that will was all-powerful. So it's a small slide in vocabulary to refer to god as existence, but it's a huge slide in context. However, there is a common denominator and that is the perceived seperation from god. The way we see our world and ourselves, there appears to be a defined line of seperation between ourselves and other objects. I am me, you are you, this desk is a desk, there's a computer over here, walls over there... and we see these things as not being the same because they are arranged in a way and relative position that would indicate that these things are outside of ourselves. It's important that they are seen this way because that is how we have our sense of self-identity. Our brains require that sort of perception. The world as we know it requires that. But the perception is rarely the actuality. The truth (note jesus said the truth will set you free) is that there is no seperation. You are part of existence/god and you cannot physically seperate your body and soul (mind/emotions/will) from it. You can perceive yourself as seperate and most people do and are raised to believe that (this is the gateway to forced salvation and obligation to religious institutions which serve themselves before others) and by all accounts, it would appear that you are. If you and the desk were the same thing, would that not mean you could just fuse your hand with the desk? Well you could, if you didnt exist in a dimension where the rules said you can't. If there is energy and force, to make any sense of it, there must be order. Otherwise you just have a bunch of unstructured chaos which while infinite, could never really accomplish much of anything. Thus you have dimensions of existence. In the dimension where our universe resides, there are physical rules. Physics if you will. These rules bring order to all the energy contained within the universe and help it operate in a meaningful way. Gravity, heat, sound, light, time, magnetism, etc., are all things that structuralize the energy which we exist in. They help make sense of the energy. These rules/physics, are for the most part, unchangeable while in their context. You can observe/create variations in their performance, but you cannot destroy them truly. You are under the rules, thus you can only bend, not break them. You can shove your fist through some glass, and some glass can be embedded in your fist, but there won't be any true fusion of the energy that makes up your fist or the glass. But even then, you aren't seperate from the glass in the context of existence. You aren't made up of the same portions of energy necessarily, but you are the same energy. There is only one energy. Variation in that energy comes from force or will. Force organizes the energy and manipulates it, but it cannot destroy or create energy. Well that's fine and dandy, but wtf am I really saying? What I'm saying is that the belief systems that exist, all exist together and often share common goals. Christianity's goal is to allow you a way to be with god in heaven. It puts this huge responsibility on yourself to "have faith" that what you are being told in the bible is the undeniable truth about how things are. And faith (taking something for truth even though you have no undeniable [emphasis on the undeniable] proof for it's validity) does not really work very well with our brains. You can be a christian and have faith in god, but I know for a fact that there are times past and coming, where as a christian, one will struggle with their faith. Their mind will be reminding them that it's missing the parity bit. It's missing the one thing which it needs to give the "undeniable" part to the "truth". And that little bit, is experience. To date, I do not believe anyone has physically experienced god as the christians believe in. This would involve either seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling, or hearing god. And it would have to occur in such a way that no man could argue that it was not god. When the argument is negated by undeniable proof (which there has been none as there are still people who do not believe), then god has been experienced. And let me hush any counter arguments that any christians reading this have experienced god. If you had proof, you wouldn't have faith. You would have absolute knowledge. And I was raised with the firm belief that one must have faith in god to go to heaven. That is the single reason god doesn't "prove" himself to people. God as you believe in him wants you to have faith. Faith is the sign of love. If you knew with 100% certainty, you wouldn't have to love because you would just know. You could still love, but you wouldn't have to. You would believe as a matter of undeniable fact, not faith. And any experience you've had that you credit to god, sure it may be god's doing, but it didn't prove god. You can say it proved god for you, but that's not totally true because you didn't see, smell, taste, feel, hear him. Don't let me upset you with that though. It's just how things are. It upset be when I started believing it, but now it makes sense and it's a source of stability. In short (haha) religions help you find unification with god or whatever you believe you are striving towards. They aren't inherently harmful, they just spawn confrontation between people that believe that they are right and no one else is. Believe what you will, but don't expect anyone else to buy into it. Your life and your experiences have forged your beliefs, and everyone is unique. But personally, I think most people are endless earching for something that's already there. Of course, they search because the journey is what matters, not the destination. Skydiving. You don't jump out of a plane to get to the ground, you jump for the experience of space in between. You'll make it to the ground regardless. So don't stop searching for your unification, or salvation, or whatever, just make sure you don't forget the trip. Whew.

"How many jumps have you made?" "Countless" "Log book?" "It's intangible." "Go right ahead!"

Those prices were for the one in Chickasha, OK. The S/L course at Cushing, OK (which seems to be my preferred facililty) prices are negligibly higher ($150 for course, $50 per jump) and they also have AFF. Monetarily, the AFF and S/L work out to close to the same amount, but I would have to sacrifice more consistent jumping given my current budget. Oh and you gotta know, most everything is cheaper in Oklahoma Or at least the things that matter. Like housing heh. LOW cost of living. EDIT: The DZ at Cushing does IAD instead of S/L. So... I don't think that changes much. Does it?

In time my friends, in time

Yeah that's what I wanted to hear lol. It was my first inclination, but I'm definitely putting more analysis into it, just needed some input.

Im going tandem for the first so I can get some good free fall for a better price than AFF, just so I can see if I'm going to like it as much as I think I will. I'm ready to go right now! Heh.

Hey everyone. My name is Matt and I live in Oklahoma. I've been lurking the forums here for about a week and I plan on making my first of what I anticipate to be many jumps this year. Just wanted to make my presence known. Looks like a swell place with some swell people.

So last week I had a dream that I made 4 jumps total complete with canopy ride. While they were abbreviated into a few seconds of freefall and a few more seconds of canopy to the ground, this served as the first dream I ever had of falling where I didn't wake up. When I finally did wake up I was like "I'm am GOING!" So the past several days I've been reading up, lurking these forums and watching videos... and I'm already addicted to the idea. While I imagine many people can be totally enthused on the ground, I'm sure statistically, a lot of people start feeling a little less certain on the ride up. But I do know that I am way too pumped about going Anyway... I figure that I definitely want some freefall time on my first jump so I'm planning on going tandem. (Going the week I turn 21 {06/06/06}, to make an occasion {sp} out of it) Here's my point of "dilemma". After the tandem, I am almost certain a friend and I will be going apeshit over the whole thing. And I'm already contemplating the idea of what method of training would be the best for getting licensed for me personally. A local DZ offers static line for $120 on the first jump, and jumps # 2 through A license for $45 each. Now I know money-wise, it works out relatively close to the AFF course total costs at another local DZ, but only if one exceptionally passes all 7 levels first time. So I'm speculating that the static-line course may actually work out better. So should I pony up the money and go AFF with the risk of paying more depending on performance, or take the path which leads to a pretty consistent median price wise? I should also note that the DZ that offers the AFF course appears to be a little more advanced facility. Thanks in advance. God I'm totally stoked about it.