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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • If I’m just casually thinking about something. In other words, it is a subject that does not require too much to come to a conclusion, then I actually think in words. That process can provide a solution almost immediately, to taking several minutes.

    If I’m thinking about something that requires a lot of cognitive function, then my mind essentially goes blank. Either I no longer think in words, or the memory of what I was thinking about is not laid down in long term memory until I come to a conclusion. Or if my “sub-consciousness” took over the heavy lifting and my cognitive functions were left out of the loop. I honestly have no idea, but if it is something I am truly concentrating on, I will have no actual memory of the thought process that brought me to a conclusion.

    Some of the most confounding things that I have had to think on, I literally slept on it and had a finished thought when I woke up. I have done that several times in my life. Again, not sure if it was just that I needed rest, or if my brain actually worked the problem while asleep and delivered it when I awoke.



  • I wanted to be a pilot.

    By age 16 I had several hours towards my private license.

    My junior year in High School I started looking universities with aviation degrees, or engineering. I had settled on Rose Hulman and one other (been 40 years so don’t remember the place, but it was one of the top aviation colleges in the US at the time.) I actually was accepted at “the other place”.

    It all came crashing down in the last conversation I had with my enrollment counselor and he asked a question that hadn’t been asked of me in the prior many conversations I had with him.

    “How is your eyesight?”

    You see, I’m legally blind in my right eye and in the US, pilots are required to have 20/20 corrected eyesight. In order for my right eye to be 20/20 I would basically have to have a telescope hanging off my face.

    I never did get my private pilots license, which I can get even with my eyesight, but I would never pass medical for a commercial ticket.

    Yes, I did look at training in other countries and yes there are a few that only require perfect color vision, which I do have. The problem was my parents absolutely forbade me to travel to another country.

    So that was that.





  • Canopyflyer@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world[Deleted]
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    23 days ago

    30 year IT Professional here, who has run laptop depots.

    Absolutely mandatory in an enterprise environment.

    The number of dead batteries I have seen throughout the years is too many to count. Having to dispatch a replacement laptop, instead of just a battery is really irritating. Sure the affected laptop comes back and my techs can take care of it and put it back into inventory. That comes with the cost of needing to keep extra full laptops in the rotation. Not to mention having to cross ship two laptops. Instead of just having much cheaper batteries that I can send off to the user, then they pop it in and drop off the old battery at a local store that accepts used batteries.



  • It’s “Revved up like a deuce.”

    Not “Wrapped like a dou…” well you know.

    First heard that song in 1981… Learned the correct lyrics in 2020. 39 years of being wrong, but I think I’m in good company.

    Also learned that the version that most people know is actually a cover done by Manfred Mann in 1976. The original artist is Bruce Springsteen and he recorded it in 1973.




  • Landscaping

    My very first job at the age of 15 was working at a Nursery/ Garden Center. I also would work on the landscaping crews and even did some design work.

    When my wife and I bought our house she said she always dreamed of having a big flower garden, but said she didn’t know how to do it properly.

    Well… I do. Even my Mother-In-Law, who is an experienced gardener, learned a few things from me. Although, I have to admit, she really does know a lot and I learned a lot from her as well.

    Our flower beds are beautiful throughout the growing season with a huge variety of plants.









  • Hobby: Skydiving

    1. Free fall is at most 65 seconds on a normal jump. My personal record is jumping from 28,000 feet and I was in free fall for around 85 seconds. That’s it, there is no such thing as a 5 minute free fall, unless you are looking to break an altitude record.

    2. If you run up to a skydiver and pull their Pilot Chute (PC) out and throw it into the wind, nothing will happen. The gear is designed to work at free fall speeds. A 10mph wind will not pull the main out. If you pull on the PC bridle hard enough to actually pull the main out of its compartment… You will just have a main parachute in its deployment bag closed by rubber bands, or other method and it will just be laying on the ground. You will also get a well deserved punch in the mouth by more than one jumper. If you pull the reserve handle you will probably get murdered and there will be no witnesses, especially if the hanger was full of jumpers. They will just hide your body and you will have deserved your fate.

    3. BASE jumping and Skydiving are as related as Hockey and Figure Skating. Sure there is some overlap, but one cannot do the other without training. Also BASE is an acronym. Building, Antenna, Span, Earth. Bridges fall under Span BTW. No, I am not a BASE jumper, although I have jumped the Bridge in WV. So yeah, I guess I have my S.

    4. Yes, wing suites are cool. Wish I had more jumps on them.

    5. You cannot talk in free fall. The old movie trope of talking back and forth is simply not possible. How difficult is it to talk in a car with the windows open going down the road at 70mph? Now, remove the windshield and drive the car 120mph…

    6. The “parachute not opening” is not even in the top 10 concerns when jumping. The gear works and we jump with two chutes. There is a whole lot of bullshit that can happen before we get to deployment altitude. Not the least of which is just getting to the DZ in the morning. I always considered my drive to the DZ my most dangerous part of the day. Second most dangerous is being in the airplane. I’m actually relieved to exit the aircraft as at that point I have a better chance of making it to the ground safely than the pilot.