riggerrob

If you look at a map, you will see that Canada is larger and on top, so in prison, the USA would be our bitch! Hah! Hah!

In tried ChatGPT once! I asked it a question about acid mesh ... a problem that grumpy old grey-bearded Master Riggers learned about back during the 1980s. ChatGPT replied that acid mesh was good for parachute fabric. I will never trust ChatGPT again.

And for a more serious answer ..... I got un-current over COVID. Since I used to hold a long list of instructor ratings (S/L, IAD, PFF, tandem instructor examiner and rigger examiner) I did my own refresher training. That started with reviewing a bunch of malfunction videos posted by the Australian Parachute Federation. Then I did a bunch of mental simulations that concluded with pulling all my own handles in the correct order/sequence. After I quit teaching skydiving full-time, I did up-size from a Stiletto 136 to a Pilot 169. In retrospect I should have borrowed a student main, since at age 67 I do not run as fast as I used to. These days my preferred aerobic exercise is walking up and down steep hills. Fast forward to July 2024 and my Pilot 169 knotted up and started to spin. My first reaction was to look at my cutaway handle. My second reaction was to look at my reserve ripcord. My third reaction was peeling and pulling my cutaway handle and my fourth reaction was peeling and pulling my reserve ripcord. I was hanging under my open reserve above 2,000 feet. If you don't or didn't hold as many instructor ratings as I, may I suggest that you should pay an instructor for an hour or three or his/her/their time and a full review.

Hey! Be careful how you use that term "trailer trash." I was proud to become "trailer trash" when I moved out of my Volkswagen van and into a 30-year-old trailer in the Perris Valley "Ghetto" trailer park. A drug-dealer lived across the dirt street from me and another drug dealer lived behind me. It was the quietest and safest neighborhood I ever lived in. If you want to know more about how the USA oppresses poor white folks, read the book "White Trash, the 400 untold story about class in America" written by Nancy Isenberg. In short, the book tells us that American elite enjoy oppressing and exploiting the poorest and care little about the colour of their skin. The most perverse part of that is the thousands of poor whites who died defending the Confederacy only to find them competing economically with recently released black slaves after the American Civil War.

Engineers need to be able to write enough English to communicate with other engineers, upwards to executives and down to the mechanics who bend the wrenches. Just before Christmas I was joking with some of the engineers at work and one mentioned another engineer who is borderline autistic. He is very good at his software job, but prefers to work alone. They do not assign any apprentices/co-op students to work with him. He does have a sense of humour, but it is mostly in German. He jokes about the region where he grew up and where I served almost 40 years ago. The technical writers and maintenance instructors are far more cheerful and open to chat. Back when I wrote parachute packing manuals, I felt like I was translating from the designer (Manley Butler and Sandy Reid) down to simplified lingo that semi-literate riggers could understand. I tried to make my manuals a series of photographs illustrating the the key points in the packing process. Text was more to keep the lawyers at bay. Forget about writing instructions to riggers or technicians in legal "boilerplate" as none of them can read that obscure dialect. Hah! Hah! Thank you for reading my rant about the minimum level of communication skills required by engineers.

Was that Skydive Long Island at Spadero's air strip, Est Moriches, Long Island, New York? I spent the summer of 1990 teaching static-line and tandem there.

How did you celebrate Christmas 2024? I went over to my aunt's house and we celebrated with as a family. What with he three children, assorted spouses and seven grand-children we had a total of 14 relatives sitting around the dinner table. We shared a bit of teasing and plenty of laughter during gift-giving. The "stealing" of gifts was even more fun! Then we sat around a huge table to enjoy a turkey feast. I was great to catch up on all of the progress in my cousin's lives and even more interesting to hear about which universities the grandchildren were attending, their sports, etc.

Increased freedom - or profit - of one segment of the population often results in less freedom and greater cost for another segment of the population.

Paul Rafferty had recently retired from the Golden Knights. He led the team to great heights and many medals at World Meets. He visited us at Pitt Meadows a year or two before his death. A humble and generous leader. One rumor had it that after his retirement, he contracted with D.O.D. to deliver tandem bundles to SF guys laying high in the mountains of Afghanistan. Then he would run for two or three days back to base.

No. I draw the line at political violence. (See Alfred Pinisch 1928- 964). Alfred was a family friend who died in a botched robbery by the FLQ. The difference between Russians and North Americans is that Russians just toss unpopular oligarchs out a high window, whereas North American lawyers make them miserable in court for many years. IOW in North America, the punishment is a long-winded, expensive and exhausting civil lawsuit. By the end of the lawsuit, no one cares who won, but the defendant is exhausted and his/her/their reputation has been ruined by the mass media.

That sounds like the Green Belt surrounding Ottawa or the Agricultural Land Reserve surrounding Vancouver (Fraser River Delta). The Green Belt is a kilometer-wide strip of farmland separating the city core from mid-outer suburbs. Sure the carrots and bicycle paths are nice, but it adds a kilometer to everyone's commute. The city tries to encourage people to commute by bus. Sadly, some group of religious fanatics or a filthy rich guy always manages to get a building permit to erect a huge church or a McMansion on flood plain land that is better used to grow carrots. Twenty years down the road, those ^%$#@! are going to try and sue the municipality when their huge building floods in May. &^%$#@! I suspect that those people have not read "The Hundred Mile Diet."

6-grommet sliders were (2000?) also factory-standard on a few tandem canopies (PD?). They helped reduce the numbers of tension knots on the bulky Dacron suspension lines of first and second generation tandem canopies.

Back when I lived in Nova Scotia (early 1980s) one of our junior jumpers formed a garage band called "RISER." They played covers to top-40 rock songs. I heard them play a couple of times in Halifax bars.

The latest moves in Syria reveal how fragile Russia is. Russia/Wagner Group have been backing the Asad regime for the last decade or so in return for leasing warm-water naval bases in the Med'. Now that the Asad regime has collapsed, it has left a huge power vacuum in Syria. Any strong neighbor could seize a chunk of Syrian territory. A strong Russian Army could seize the Med' coast of Syria. Now they are so weak that they can only evacuate.

If Trump forces a cease-fire in 2025, Ukraine will probably have to concede two or three or its eastern oblasts/provinces. Crimea was lost more than a century ago.

Bathing beach? Too rocky for my delicate toes. If that is the best vacation resort the Russians can come up with .....

Also consider how car gasoline has a shelf life of only a few months. You need to top off the gas tank if only to flush out the stale gasoline.

I disagree with Levin's rhetoric. American police will arrest anyone committing any crime on American soil. Most of the time an American judge will convict the guilty bastard and he will have to serve most of his sentence in an American prison. For example, a few years back some Canadian criminals were digging a tunnel under Zero Avenue (Washington/British Columbia border). RCMP alerted US Customs and Immigration. US Border Patrol arrested them when they emerged from the south end of the tunnel. RCMP knew that an American judge would assign a harsher sentence (drug smuggling) and RCMP preferred that American tax-payers pay for their years languishing in an American a prison.

Extra-territoriality mainly applied to wealthy, white British men temporarily living in the British colonies. It meant that a British gentleman could not be tried by an Indian court. More likely he would be put on the next ship back to England to avoid being lynched by an Indian mob. Similar standards apply to diplomats. Diplomats are such a tiny percentage of the population that I wonder why we are wasting time arguing about them. If I may para-phrase the Canadian Air Regulations .... a Canadian-licensed pilot flying a Canadian-registered aircraft - in foreign airspace - should abide by all of the Canadian Air Regulations except where they are repugnant to local law. In that case, he should follow local laws (e.g. landing traffic patterns). Please keep in mind that CARs only differ from American Federal Air Regulations by something like 2 percent and most other nations' federal air regulations are based on American FARS. ICAO also tries hard to standardize air regs world-wide. Finally, if a Canadian does something stupid enough to kill and American citizen - in American airspace - he can expect to the be tried in an American court and serve most of his sentence in an American prison.

Why does this remind me of when Barak Obama got elected? My response was: "Good man but the conservatives left him a huge mess to clean up .... 2008 real estate collapse, etc. I doubt if he can solve all those problems within the next 4 years." This is a recurring cycle of conservatives making messes and liberals trying to clean them up. ... and both parties try to blame today's problems on "messes left by the last administration." Ho hum, rinse and repeat.

Dear Joe, It sounds like your doctor was too busy doing "medical stuff" to worry about billing. Smart doctors in Canada focus on "medical stuff" and avoid the administrative side because the highest and best use of their time is "medical stuff." I can give you 2 examples. First, faceless bureaucrats at Workmens' Compensation Borad of B.C. tried to ignore long-term problems with my knee. After WCB's lawyers "stirred the pot" WCB imposed a 2 year delay on knee surgery. It was only due to the stubborn efforts of my Boer family doctor that I finally got surgery by one of the best knee surgeons in B.C. (professor at the University of B.C. Hospital and False Creek Medical Clinic). When I later asked the surgeon to write a note to lawyers, he side-stepped because he did not want to waste his time on legal matters. Second example: my cousin is married to one of the busiest OBGYNs in Abbotsford. She works long hours doing "medical stuff" while my cousin keeps the books (accounting) for her 4-doctor clinic.

I gain peace from the notion that God has the ultimate decision to punish evil-doers. When that HMO CEO arrives at the pearly gates, Saint Peter will review his "naughty or nice" list and ask the CEO to "stand over there." "Over there" being the trap door to hell. Then the CEO will roast for eternity in hell ..... minus the pain-killing drugs that he refused to his poorest subscriber. If God has the ultimate judgement, then I can quit worrying my pretty little mortal head about some CEO's sins.

"Cough! Cough!" I might know more than most about what it feels like to be an un-documented alien working in the USA. "Cough!" "Cough!" Since the stature of limitations has long run out ... My first week in the USA I started reading newspaper stories about undocumented immigrants from Central America being deported after they were arrested (American municipal police) for drinking and driving, robbery, buggery, thuggery, etc. Since I had never been in the habit of selling drugs or beating my wife, I continued to refrain from those evil activities. After I quit drinking, police pulled me over for a burnt out tail-light. Since I had a spare light bulb on board, I even offered to replace it on the side of the road. As soon as they realized that I had not been drinking, police quickly lost interest. "Cough!" "Cough!" Bottom line, most undocumented immigrants are smart enough to avoid petty crime and leave the police bored. Bored police do not arrest or deport people.

Were you joking? I hope that you realize the hypocracy of your statement. Jesus was born into a Jewish family, attended synagog and called himself a Jew. Most of what Jesus taught was just variations on the Jewish Old Testament. Most of Jesus first round of converts were not so much converts as they were merely born Jewish and were listening to Jesus repeat lessons from the Jewish holy books. There is a scientific reason why Jews have a prohibition against eating pig flesh. Jews and Muslims do not ear pork/ham because the Middle East is too hot for pigs to grow up healthy. Plenty of diseases that afflict pigs are too easy to transfer to humans. Diseases like trichina worms can be easily absorbed when you eat tainted pig flesh.

I already know - from first hand experience - how large health management organizations starve the wounded. I have also read of hundreds of similar tales of woe. Whether the decision to starve the wounded was made by a CEO or a faceless, nameless minion does not matter because the organization as a whole is guilty of starving the wounded. But I suppose that enough faceless, nameless minions are involved in a decision, then no single minion is guilty.