Canopyflyer

Je ne parle pas Francais.

Not my video, but I did ride it that year at the World Freefall Convention.

Quincy Helicopter Ride 1998

One time, this was back in my skydiving days so a very long time ago, the drop zone’s CASA 212 was down due to a bad hydraulic pump. The pump finally arrived and the DZO asked me to help him install it. He was a certified A&P, I just had a lot of experience wrenching on cars but it allowed me to get a lot of free jumps due to helping him out on things like this.

He handed me the pump, which was a LOT lighter than I expected and told me with a smile: “Don’t drop it.”

In inquired as to how much it cost and he replied: “$10,000.”

I was holding a pump in my hands that weighed barely 10 pounds that cost more than my car (this was circa 1998 or so).

A couple years later the igniter box on the port engine died and I helped him replace it… That was a cool $15000. The engines were about $250,000 a piece back in those days.

I can smell them too.

It was fun to take a hammer and hit the entire roll at once. They actually made quite the noise.

For reference, I was born in 1970 so yeah I grew up with those things.

You are ready to own an airplane if you can wake up in the morning, burn a $100 bill and flush it down the toilet without feeling anything.

You are ready to own a helicopter when you can do the same thing, except with ten $100 bills.

Tush

With their albums:

Moving JPEGs with the #1 hit “Huckleberry Finn”

A Farewell to Wings with the top hit “Plane Crash”

Permanent Daves

Pesto

You’re probably correct… For most people’s mothers. No, I know mine and I’m positive it was a power play on her part. The reason why I say that is because when she died, my brothers, Dad and I went through her things and guess what we found?

If you guessed items that actually had value, either sentimentally or financially you’d get a prize.

So she purposely separated anything of value from the junk. Then gave the junk to me and my brothers. My brothers also went through their items and sure enough it was all junk. Of course the apples don’t fall too far from the tree. So when our Dad died two years ago my two brothers kept everything. We are all now permanently estranged as far as I’m concerned.

So yeah, I had a fun family growing up. My wife and kids are now fully protected and will never see those people again.

But just to be clear, my family is not rich. I’m not talking about enough money to make dealing with narcissistic power plays worth it.

Honestly, I just wanted that junk out of my house and my life. These were several very large and heavy boxes that I had been obliged to haul around for nearly 30 years, all because my mother was playing one of her power games over me. My mother was so far up Cluster B that they probably should add a letter.

I did not want to shackle anyone else with it, because who would have bought it? Other assholes to keep around till they foist it off on their kids or some other unsuspecting schmuck. It was all mass produced garbage. The “China” dishes that were supposed to be “fine” were listed on Ebay and a couple of other sites for $1 each. My mother insisted they were extremely expensive and sought after. I never used them because I was afraid of breaking them. The crash they made when I flung the box into the dumpster was cathartic and healing.

So while it might have been a bit of a waste, it wasn’t as much of a waste as you might think and nobody needs it.

LOL. That would be funny.

But no, my wife and I went through every piece, opened all the lids. No fortune.

Spite.

Honestly, it was all junk.

A few years ago my wife and I decided to finish the basement. The first step was to clean it out, which involved going through all the junk that I had inherited from various family members. My mom always asserted that all of it was very valuable and CONSTANTLY checked that I still had it all and was taking good care of it.

I went through each item one by one and looked them up. Dishes, nick knacks, all of it. It took me hours. The highest value item was maybe $10. Several large and heavy boxes that I had been obligated to haul around to all of the places I lived for the last 30 years, as my mother constantly asked me about them. It was all worth maybe $100, if I made the effort to attempt to sell it. Which would have taken a lot of time as we’re talking dozens of fragile things. It just was not worth it.

I shoved it all into the trunk of my car and took it to the dump. My Mom died in 2011, so she wasn’t around to check up on all that crap.

God damn I was so pissed. 30 fucking years of hauling that worthless junk around probably cost far more than it was worth. My mother was so insistent that I even had it sitting around taking up space in my basement 12 years after her death. Just another one of her little power plays.

Or bacon.

DB Cooper has been the topic of Drop Zone conversations for years. The jump he made is perfectly doable by anyone trained in the practical application of aerodynamic decelerators. Albeit it was an extremely risky jump as I’ll detail below.

As a matter of fact I’ve gone out the air stairs of a 727. It was at the 1999 at the World Freefall Convention in Quincy, IL. It was fun, but a 727 on jump run is doing about 180kias when normal skydiving operations are around 90kias. It won’t injure you, but it feels like you’re getting hit by a ton of bricks. So not the funnest jump and I only did one, to say I did it. Going out the bomb bay of a B-17 (Nine-O-Nines RIP) was a lot more fun.

The general consensus in the skydiving community is that Cooper lived, but was probably injured. He jumped a round parachute, at night, in poor weather conditions. Even with modern gear that kind jump is extremely risky. Round parachutes go down where the wind blows them after exit. There is a little bit of control with a round, but nothing like a ram air chute.

He probably had a vehicle stashed close to the drop zone and was able to get to it with most of the money. If I recall correctly some of the money was discovered on a creek or riverbank some time later. He probably lived the rest of his life in secure obscurity… Or he might even still be alive.

Only he knows for sure.

1984

The Sci Fi channel produced a Dune mini series in 2000. It’s actually not bad. Not great, but not bad.

Reminds me of a major incident I got involved in. I was the Problem Manager and not MIM (Major Incident Management), but I’ve had years of MIM experience so was asked to help out on this one. The customer manufactured blood plasma and each of the lots on the production floor was worth a cool $1 million. The application that was down and had brought production down was not the app that actually handled production, but an application (service) that supplied data to it.

Of course the customer thought that app was not Mission Critical so it didn’t have redundancy. I joined the call and first thing I asked was when did the last change go through on this app… Spoiler: I had the change in front of me and it went in the previous night. The admin of the app speaks up that he did a change the previous night… And NO the MIM team had NOT looked at that change yet… Did I mention this was FOUR FUCKING HOURS into the outage? That is MIM 101. Something goes down, look to see who last fucked with it.

This is why you need experienced MIM people in enterprise environments.

So I took control of the MIM, instructed the App Admin to share his screen and walk us through the change he did the previous night… Two screens in and OH… Look at that… There’s a check box that put the app into read only (or something like that, this happened back in 2009 and I don’t remember all the details). I’d never seen the application before in my life, but knew that check box being checked, just based on the verbiage, could not be right… So I asked… The Admin, sounding embarrassed, said yeah he forgot to uncheck that box last night…

Fuck me.

He unchecked the box, bounced the app and what do you know… It started to work.

A single damn check box brought down the production line of a multi-billion dollar company.

My investigation for that Problem was a bit scathing to multiple levels of the customer. If a service supports a Tier 1 production app and that Tier 1 app would stop working if that service goes down… GUESS WHAT! That service is MISSION FUCKING CRITICAL and it should be supported as such. My employer was not on the hook for this one, as both applications involved were customer supported.

I would love to say that the above is an uncommon occurrence, but honestly it is the main reason for outages in my experience. Something small and stupid that is easily missed.

Can confirm.

Am old.

Scored a zero.

Older Gen X’er here.

This list was basically a Tuesday for me back in the day.

As someone that literally spent 25 years driving a manual, including various stints in racing. Manuals have seen their day.

It used to be if you wanted better mileage, you drove a manual. If you wanted to be faster on the track, drive a manual (caveat there is drag racing.)

Today? The computer is just better at controlling a transmission. I drive a Camry Hybrid now and not having shifts is REALLY weird and the drone getting up to highway speeds is annoying, but I do like the 45mpg. Not to mention, when I sat down to learn how the Toyota Hybrid Drive works… It’s a pretty clever system.

There are a lot of times that nostalgia gets the better of me and I wish I had a car with a manual. My oldest is possibly joining a skating team that is a 2 hour drive away. It’s tempting to let him use my car and then buy an older manual for myself as a toy. I’d love to get a hold of another mid-80’s Corolla GT-S. I autocrossed one back in the late 80’s early 90’s. It still remains my favorite car I’ve ever owned.