To update the previous post, here’s the whole skydiving story:

Six of us were going skydiving yesterday, including myself, my wife, Rez. O. Lution, and 3 others who probably don’t want to let it be known publicly that they associate with me. Since this was the first time jumping for all of us, we jumped tandem. An experienced skydiver is attached to each of our backs, and he controls the entire fall. The plane is an extremely small cessna, so there’s only room for 4 people and the pilot (and that’s with all of us sitting on top of each other), so we jumped in 3 groups of two.

The scariest part of the whole experience was when they first opened the door to the plane. I was sitting by the door because I was the first jumper. The guy in charge was attached to my back, and he leaned out the door to see where we were relative to the ground, I could feel myself begin to topple out of the plane (and if I weren’t attached to him, I certainly would have). I know the point of the excersie was to jump out of a plane, but there’s a specific way to jump out that involved avoiding hitting your head on the way down. Tumbling out accidentally would have been a bad thing ^TM.

Once we did jump out, we did a flip which was awesome – seeing the entire world flip over around you in incredible. When in freefall, you also don’t feel the effects of gravity on you, and there is no real “up” or “down” (although had I had time to stop and think about it, I know perfectly well that the ground was down). The free fall was incredible. Imagine being completely out in the open, about 2 miles above the earth, and feeling like you’re just floating while being whipped around by 120 MpH winds. That’s the best way I can describe it.

When falling there’s a particular position you’re supposed to be in, which includes bending the knees. I apparently forgot to do this part because my instructor kept yelling at me to bend my knees. Unfortunately, with the disorientation and not knowing which way was up, I somehow forgot which muscle did that. Luckily he managed to kick my legs up before he deployed the chute.

I didn’t scream “Geronimo” on the way out. I was feeling kinda nervous, and was trying to concentrate on getting my feet placed properly (which is tricky with the wind). Also when you’re falling, the wind will suck the air out of your lungs if your mouth is open (as I was warned and then relearned the hard way….. twice).

Overall, it was an awesome awesome experience that I want to do again. It was unfortunately a 2.5 hour drive each way to the place, and nearly $200 for about 4 minutes of excitement. Maybe next time I’ll try hang gliding – I probably get more fun for my dollar that way.

To answer William’s question from below, we had to tell my in-laws where we had been and what we were doing before meeting them in person, so there are no visual recordings of their reaction. They took it (according to my wife), surprisingly well.

I’ve got some other deeper thoughts on the whole experience, but they’ll have to wait for tomorrow.

For some reason which I cannot entirely put my finger on, I’ve always thought it would be really cool to try skydiving or bungee jumping. Something about being in complete free-fall out in the open (meaning not inside an airplane or something), has always been tremendously appealing to me. Unfortunately, I never gave the idea a lot of thought or planning. Luckily for me, one of my friends found a skydiving place nearby and organized a little trip out there. In about 12 hours I will be jumping out of a plane at 11,000 feet. And for the record, yes, I do plan on shouting “Geronimo!” on the way down. I’ll post a followup if when I return.

In 1940, the night before their first mass jump, U.S. paratroopers at Fort Benning saw a film about Geronimo, and began shouting his name during jumps, a trend which has caught on elsewhere.

update: the wife and I have landed.

Nicole Kidman is coming to our neighborhood, to film a movie and councilmember Jack Evans was ncie enough to publish her schedule on his webpage for us. I’m sure that’ll keep the crowds away. Now, if only i gave a damn about Nicole Kidman. Was she the one in “There’s something about Mary” or the one whose claim to fame is having sex with Tom Cruise?

I have a new goal* in life:

click

*All goals void where prohibited by wife.

A brief intro to this story:
My father has one sibling, a sister. She is married and has 3 children from her first marriage, two of which are married themselves, and one of which has kids. She also has more step children (and step grandchildren) than I can count from her second marriage. This morning I got an email from her with the subject line “Newest [lastname witheld] child”. I called my dad and the following conversation ensued:

Me: Hey Dad – I got a question for you. DId you get that email from your sister this morning?
Dad: yeah
Me: Who was pregnant?
Dad: I have no idea.
Me: Strangely enough I think that makes me feel better.
Dad: Always glad to help.

The mystery continues….

I’ve got a new supervisor starting on Monday, and since the old supervisor’s desk has been empty for the past few months we’ve been using the desk as a storage area. Needless to say I spent some time this week cleaning it up so that my new supervisor will at least have a desk when he starts. After spending a few hours moving boxes, getting rid of trash, and finding new homes for lots of stuff (including 8 terrabytes worth of HDs), I found a little yellow paper with the following warning printed on it:

Warning Handling the cord on this product will expose you to lead, a chemical known to the state of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. Wash hands after handling

Now here’s the problem: I have no idea what “product” this warning label was on. Crud.

I, like much of my peer group, have memories of the work invovled in applying to college. I had to write personal essays, get letters of recommendation written, think through my time in high school and try to remember all my extracurriculars, list my travels, life experiences, parent’s education level, jobs, and countless other things. It was, as the colleges claimed, an attempt to “get to know me”. As it turns out, the process that we all went through was originally implemented by the ivy league schools (and eventually trickled down), was actually an attempt to keep out the Jews in the early parts of the 20th century. It was later used to discrimnate against non-atheletes, gays, and people who weren’t “manly” enough.

The difficult part, however, was coming up with a way of keeping Jews out, because as a group they were academically superior to everyone else. Lowell