Family, Friends, Classic Cars, Motorcycles, Fishing, Guns, Redneckery, and Life at the Beach
See, now look what you have gone and done. Split a perfectly good family right in half! 🙂
These boys are family of ours, and it saddens me to see them split like this. Can’t we all just get along? I wonder if they sneak out at night to steal the other one’s sign?
Stand strong Will in the face of adversity, I am with you brother. Rock On Obama!!! 🙂
So I can officially scratch this one off the Bucket List. I did it, I actually jumped out of a perfectly good airplane! Actually, that was the airplane’s name, painted right on the side, “Perfectly Good Airplane”.
What a rush! An insane rush, but a rush like I have never had before. I had an absolutely great time this morning at Sky Knights in East Troy, Wisconsin. Everyone there is super nice and very fun people. I was assigned to “Hooche” as my tandem instructor. He is the best!
In addition to just wanting to experience skydiving for the first time, I also wanted to learn how to steer, stall, and generally control the parachute in case I ever needed to bail out of a not-so Perfectly Good Airplane. Hooche said that would not be a problem and he would teach me whatever I wanted to know.
I did not get nervous at all, except right before we jumped. I was on my knees leaning out of the plane, looking down 13,500 feet at Milwaukee below. Only then did something in my brain say “Umm, hello… what the hell are we doing?” That thought only lasted for a second, because I heard Hooche say “1, 2, 3 GO!” Then you are not nervous, no reason to be, you are either going to die in 2 minutes or not 🙂
I had a smile on my face within 10 feet of leaving the plane, as evidenced by the pictures below. What a rush! You don’t actually get the feeling that you are falling, you just feel an incredible amount of wind. The scenery does not change all that fast, so you really don’t get the sensation that you are falling out of the sky like a brick.
The cameraman was only several feet away from us and managed to get some really great pictures. The video will be mailed to me in about 10 days or so, and I cannot wait to see it.
The freefall lasted about a minute, though it did not seem that long. At 5,500 feet Hooche showed me the altimeter on his wrist, which was my queue to pull the ripcord. I waved “bye bye” to the cameraman and pulled the chord, thinking I would soon get a severe jolt.
To my surprise, there was only a slight feeling of slowing down, then slowing down more and more. Finally slowing down rapidly followed by a light jolt as the chute was fully deployed. Then total, I mean total, silence. It was beautiful.
Hooche let me enjoy the moment by not saying anything. Then I said “It’s Quiet” and then he spoke, saying “Now is when you look up to make sure you have a parachute up there”. I did, and we did have a chute, and everything was perfect.
Now is when the lesson began for me. He taught me how to turn left and right, and how to not do it like a girl! My first couple of turns were real shallow but he soon had me making steep turns as we aimed towards a house near the airport. He then let me stall the parachute, as if we were landing, so I feel a lot more comfortable now if I ever needed to use one for real. He then took the controls and landed us safely about 30 feet from where all this started.
I slid in on my butt, real gentle across the ground. Not only did I not get hurt at all on my first skydive, I didn’t even get a grass-stain! It was a beautiful day in Wisconsin, and I am pumped. This was my first skydive, but I can assure you it will not be my last! Sorry family 🙂
Today is a rare day. Not only because I am going skydiving for the first time, but because I am actually awake at 6AM on a Saturday and did not work all night first! I will be leaving here in about 10 minutes for my drive over to East Troy, WI.
I was checking out CNN.com as I do most days and was reading this page. It talks about the questions and comments John McCain was receiving yesterday in Minnesota and Wisconsin from people angry that Obama is leading in the polls, and that his lead is getting larger.
One person said “I don’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s an Arab.”. Anyone with half a brain knows this is not true, but it was nice to read McCain’s response to her “No ma’am, no ma’am. He’s a decent family man…[a] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That’s what this campaign is all about.” So even though I am not a big fan of McCain, I do appreciate his answer and not just laughing off this lie about Obama.
One man at the rally said he was “scared of an Obama presidency.” McCain later told the man he should not fear Obama. “I want to be president of the United States, and I don’t want Obama to be,” he said. “But I have to tell you, I have to tell you, he is a decent person, and a person that you do not have to be scared as President of the United States.” Thank you Senator McCain.
Ok, enough about politics, it’s time to go skydiving!
Like most people, I have a Bucket List of “10 Things to do Before I Die”. Or in my case, because of most of the things on the list, the bucket list might be called “10 Things Most Likely to Kill Me”. I have already scratched off several of these items:
1) Go Skydiving
2) Learn to SCUBA Dive (Did that in 2004)
3) Learn to Fly Aerobatics (Started that this year)
4) Get my Instrument Pilot Rating (Did that in 2006)
5) Spend Time in the Rocky Mountains
6) Meet a Great Girl and Raise a Wonderful Family (Did/Doing that, twice)
7) Own a Crotch Rocket (Did that, several times)
8) Buy a Boat (Had a couple, they don’t count)
9) Finish Building an Airplane (Started many, never finished)
10) Become Rich Enough to Retire Young
Well it’s finally official. Tomorrow morning at 9AM at Sky Knights in East Troy, WI I will go skydiving for the first time. This is a slightly early 40th birthday present to me. The weather tomorrow is supposed to be near 80 and probably the last time for a long time it will be that warm. Since my birthday is in January, that is FAR from an ideal time to go skydiving in Wisconsin!
Like a lot of first time jumpers, I will be doing a tandem jump. That is where I am hooked up, very securely I presume, to a very experienced jump master. We will climb to 13,500 feet above Milwaukee and jump out of a perfectly good airplane. We will free-fall for about 1 minute to a few thousand feet above the ground, and be under the chute for about 5 more minutes. The entire jump will be videotaped and photographed, and you can bet I will post that online!
I am nervous just writing this blog entry, but excited too. This is something that I have wanted to do for a VERY long time and it will finally happen tomorrow! This has been a “hell week” at work, actually a “hell 3 weeks”, so I really am looking forward to relaxing tonight and getting a good nights sleep before #1 comes off the list!
PS: If you are family (especially Dad), pretend you did not read this until tomorrow when I post the pictures!
Yes, I did watch most of the Vice-Presidential debate. Like a lot of people I tuned into to view the train wreck that Sarah Palin was likely to create while bringing down John McCain. I was surprised, and occasionally impressed by her. I find it very difficult to agree with her politics, and some of things she has done truly disgust me. But she held her own against Joe Biden, and that is saying something.
I do think Biden won the debate and appears much more intelligent and experienced that Palin. But she did a good job. I was really hoping for a modern day version of the Dan Quayle debate, but it was not to be.
Today has been a long day, and a tough one. It seems that every computer I own, and some I don’t, were out to get me today. They must have been talking to each other, because they really ganged up on me. In the end I win, of course, but I have been sitting at this computer for over 16 hours and should be on my way to bed.
But I failed to mention that I am also sitting in my new office! There are still a few things to do before I post pictures, touch up some paint here and there, move more furniture and stuff in, but I am working in my brand new space. It is clean, roomy, and has no cat or dog hair. They are not allowed in here. I am still debating whether or not kids are allowed, I think not.
I moved the computer and desk in late last night, after spending 2-3 hours cleaning everything. Since the computer was in the workshop side of the basement for the last 2 months, everything had collected quite a bit of dust and construction debris. It was actually pretty hard to get it all clean, but I managed.
Since I have not written in my blog for a week, I guess I should catch up a little. I worked a lot last week which you can always tell because I neglect the blog.
I did take time out to watch the Presidential Debate last Thursday and the Packers 2nd loss in a row on Sunday. At least the Bears (who I hate) beat the Eagles (who I hate more). I think I shocked my sister when I told her I was actually rooting for the Bears.
I thought McCain did pretty well in the first debate, and I am hoping Barack shows some teeth in the next one. Either way I think we will be just fine, unless we all go broke because congress wants to hand out $700 billion dollars to banks and financial institutions that apparently don’t know how to handle money. I think the better plan would be to force the oil companies to pay it out of their profits. I cannot even imagine what $700 billion dollars looks like, or could buy. I am sure several countries and a tank full of gas.
I have also been really sick for 10 days, but am feeling better the last 2. It really sucks when you have to work 12-14 hour days when you are coughing up a lung and running a fever constantly. I only really crashed one day, a week ago Sunday, never left the couch. That was a good day 🙂
Maybe I am just too old, or maybe nobody makes a decent laptop computer anymore. I have an Apple MacBook Pro, arguably the finest notebook computer ever made. It runs Windows Vista and Mac OS X, has 4GB of RAM, and rips through most tasks very quickly.
It will also burn the shit out of you. You cannot use it on your lap, your legs will get too hot. Sometimes it is so hot it actually hurts to touch the bottom. You cannot put a pillow or anything between it and your legs or the computer will overheat. I just had the logic board (as Apple calls it, the rest of the world calls it a motherboard) replaced, probably due to heat. Had my company not purchased AppleCare, this would have cost me over $1300! A $3,500 1-year old notebook dead from heat exhaustion.
So my question is this. If you cannot use a laptop on your lap, should they have ever made it in the first place? The old laptops didn’t run that hot. They didn’t run that fast either, but they were LAPTOPS!
Sometimes high technology is just plain stupid.
“Bush lands in Texas; Residents urged to leave” – Can we all go? Why just Texans? 🙂
Even though I am a big fan of Barack Obama, I have also always liked John McCain. He seems like a good and decent man, is not afraid to go against his party on major issues, is a true war hero in every sense of the word, and an all around good American. I was never planning to vote for him, but have always felt that no matter the outcome of this election, our country will be in good and capable hands.
Then McCain did something I cannot explain, he picked Sarah Palin for Vice-President? What? Who? She is a hard-core, extreme right-wing, bible thumping Jesus freak with about as much experience in politics as me. She’s an extreme conservative, you know the moral majority (which is neither by the way) family values type woman, that just happens to have a pregnant 17 year old daughter. Her total experience in politics has been as mayor of a small town in Alaska, and now as the governor of Alaska. That’s it, nothing else.
She is Pro-Life to the point that the only time she feels abortion should be legal is when the mother WILL die giving birth, not in cases of incest or rape, or apparently when the hockey stars condom breaks while banging your 17 year old daughter.
She even voted to make women who are raped in her town pay for their own rape kits so that police can investigate the crime. Those are between $300-$1200 each, and even if they were $.50, seriously, charging a rape victim for the kit so police can investigate a felony? WTF. No, I’m not even going to abbreviate that. WHAT THE FUCK!
Women across this country should be appalled at her, and at John McCain for picking her. Men too. I am looking forward to the Vice-Presidential debate when Joe Biden (who I also don’t like much) will pick her apart. Maybe by then she will actually know what the Bush Doctrine is? Seriously, she did not know.
Now, she does have some good points in my book. Being a hunter and lifelong member of the NRA is a good thing, as is being from a small, almost insignificant little town and not having spent a lifetime in DC. She’s kind of pretty, in a Tina Fey sort of way. Not like Cindy McCain (who’s freakin’ hot), but she is easy on the eyes. Yep, I think that sums up her good points. Anyone else think her husband looks like Tim McGraw?
I am a good American, and totally support her rights to have her views, as whacked and crazy as I think they are. But she is NOT the type of person that should be leading this country. John McCain would do just fine, but he is an old man. Is Sarah Palin really ready for that job? HELL NO!
I usually support John McCain’s decisions, but the choice to pick Palin as his running mate was one of the dumbest things I have ever seen in politics. McCain is a middle-of-the-road republican, not an extreme conservative. So why did he pick her? To appease the far right? As if they were going to vote for Obama? Give me a break. That showed that maybe McCain is not capable of making good decisions, and is a major blow to his campaign in my mind.
Out of all the perfectly good VP candidates to choose from: Rudy Guiliani, Mit Romney, Charlie Crist, he chose Palin? John, John, John… You almost had me rethinking my Obama vote, instead you just sealed it.
I am starting to get lousy at updating this blog, I must improve. This last week has been insane. There was a block of over 80 hours that I slept less than 20 minutes, working constantly in the middle. A short break, and then another 20+ hours in a row. Then came a blessing in disguise. Seems construction crews in Cleveland cut my company’s fiber optic lines, giving us developers a much needed afternoon off yesterday.
Even though I was tired, I decided to install the laminate floor in the cat room and hall. Most of it is quite easy, though tight spaces are very hard. You do have to get creative sometimes, and I have a couple of small repairs to make, but I like the look of it very much. Our custom built hall was square within 1/8″, which was sort of surprising to me 🙂
I almost finished the hall last night before bed, leaving just a couple more boards to install. The office will be next. Missy and I did manage to get everything painted in between, so just the floor and trim remains. One more solid day, looks like Saturday might work.
So anyway… Green Bay won their first real game of the season, beating the Vikings. I must admit, Aaron Rodgers looked pretty good. Brett Favre and the Jets (aka Bretts) also won their first game and Favre looked good.
The last time we went to Menards they were closing out their patio furniture, so we bought a nice two seat slider chair with a small table in the middle and a matching glider bench seat. Hard to believe but those actually took about 6 hours to assemble, but they look nice. Much better than having a bar stool and office chair on the back porch. That was so ghetto.
So that’s about it for the last week, I’ll try to post here more often.