ematteo

CREE makes good LED downlights (CR6). They are expensive (~$53) but last forever (50,000 hours) and use 10.5 Watts for an honest 65 Watt equivalent. At San Francisco energy rates, that is about a 1 year payback on lights that are on most of the day. Color temperature is nearly identical to incandescent at 2700, and they dim to 5%. Retrofit into a standard 6" can in about 2 mins. http://www.polar-ray.com/Cree-CR6-Series_c_118.html Lucky folks in Massachusetts had a utility rebate that brought them down to $19.99. Still being resold on ebay for about $40 (with Home Depot EcoSmart rebranding).

Check Hotwire. I just used them to stay at the Hotel Madera in DC. Was close to everything and a great experience. Hotwire has way better pricing than anybody else for medium to high end hotels. www.hotwire.com http://www.hotwirerevealed.com/ E

Sushi Sam's in San Mateo is great. 3rd and B, sit at the bar. http://www.sushisams.com/ Used to work in San Mateo and a group went out for sushi each week. We rotated restaurants for the first two months, then kept winding up back to Sam's. The best.

I don't understand. How could there be snow on the car when going to work? from San Francisco

Cool whitepaper: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html Definitely still a beta though. Crashes whenever I try to set "Options."

Pilots who don't need to build hours don't fly DZ jobs (at least not purely for the pay). Pilots who get benefit from the hours set the pay scale. That is the way a market economy works, dude. What is the hourly wet rental cost of a turbine airplane, for purposes of building hours? E

Done.

My brother got $1000 from this program. The idea is to take massively polluting cars off the road. If it doesn't move, the car is prob. not polluting.

You can probably pop the glass piece out, then back into your mirror housing. I hit an in credibly unlucky seagull with my mirror a year ago, while driving Highway 1. It made a mess on the front of my mirror, and the glass popped out. I couldn't do much about the bird, but went back on the road, found the (undamaged) glass and popped it back in. Still works.

Good seeing you out there. Come back healed and let's go for a skydive. Evan

Thanks. The LEDtronics look closest to a replacement for my 65W R30 floodlights. Price notwithstanding ($118 each), I am surprised that they claim equivalence to a 65W bulb. Only 192 lumens v. 755 for GE incandescent. But cool that folks are going in that direction. My dad can't put down his LED flashlights. Those suckers sure are bright.

Thanks, Bill. Got a vendor for LED arrays I can screw into a standard light socket? Or are they not there yet?

Are there dimmable LED light bulbs that are commercially practical? I have several circuits of 65W recessed lights in my home. When we went to dimmers a couple years ago (Lutron), the bulbs pretty much stopped burning out, due to the "soft" on-off, and energy consumption went way down. I would consider LEDs as an improvement but most CFLs are non-dimmable and would be a step backwards IMO. Anyone got info on LED bulbs? Thanks, Evan

How about SF on the 19th and NYC on the 21st?

For folks diving through the hoop: Scrape your belly on the bottom of the hoop. Most shoot for the middle of the hoop, forgetting that they are wearing a rig. THUNK!

Leah! Bummer you got broken - heal fast. E

$1300 gets you a studio here (SF). Credit crunch has really increased rental demand. Given the really tiny rental supply here in SF (exacerbated by rent control), asking rents have been shooting skyward. Don't have to rent an apartment... can rent a nice house too! In our recent rental search we passed up a 2500sqft house in a gated community asking $1300/month rental (or $370k sale). Kinda funny how out of whack those two numbers are. We didn't want to rent that place because it's just way too much for 2 people. $1300 might get you a 3 bedroom apt here.

H3 is a drinking club. What is this "running team" reference?

Once you get more comfortable, try dipping a leg to slow way down. Bend at the knee, ~90 degrees.

Sounds a bit sinister to me. That's so gauche.

I purchased life insurance two years ago and found the USPA-referred company's rates non-competitive. Using a broker, I found a carrier that charged $2.50 per thousand additional for skydiving. I disclosed that I do tandems. There was no apparent ceiling on the amount of coverage available. YMMV

Find Perry and Zinda at the DZ and ask them!

Rules (local or BSRs) work for the majority that follow the rules, not the corner cases. Banning / grounding works for the corner cases. If the guys you want to "fix" are renegades, no BSR will fix that. Only someone with direct power over a person ("you can't get on my plane" or "you can't get on my skydive") will make a difference. For the majority of jumpers, education and well-thought-out local rules tend to work. And yes, there is a lag while the education standards and local rules catch up to advances in the sport. Then we catch up and mostly solve a problem and wait for the next one to emerge...

Bill, Can you post your current definition of "High Performance Landing" ("HPL")? Thanks, Evan

The line dividing the dedicated swoop zone from the (much large) main landing area at Davis is officially called the "line of death." The implication is, if you cross that line below 1000 ft and you are not swooping, you might die. It actually works pretty well at preventing conflict. BTW, I don't consider myself to be any kind of god, swoop or other. I just want swoopers to have a safe place to do their thing. I have no problem flying a box pattern on a big way, or when showing a CATB tandem how to land. Why do non swoopers have a problem staying completely out of a swoop lane? Wow. Man, this is exactly the swoop-god attitude and lack of education that is getting people hurt. Hopefully that is not the prevalent attitude at Davis. Think students and youngsters and plain old shit happens people!