JesusH

So you may have heard that pitchfork-wielding mobs are heading AIG’s way over “retention bonuses”. It’s gotten a little time on the news and in Congress lately.

Here’s the problem: when I (or most people) hear the word “bonus”, we think back to the definition of the term:

something in addition to what is expected or strictly due: as a: money or an equivalent given in addition to an employee’s usual compensation

Now I understand that people not in the credit-default-swap department of douchebaggery at AIG might have been doing amazing jobs. I know that some of them were working for a buck plus this “bonus” that’s about to be taxed by 90%. But really, if this had been called “salary” or “compensation”, this wouldn’t have resonated like it has.

The idea that a bonus can be contractually obligated to be paid is horseflop. If there’s a contractual obligation to pay it, it’s guaranteed compensation, and if it’s guaranteed compensation, don’t call it a bonus or people who understand the term as it’s actually defined might get pissed off.

Have you noticed an increase in police activity lately? I don’t mean serving and protecting… I mean the type of activity that doesn’t really accomplish anything to improve law and order. I’m getting the feeling that the tight local and state budgets are translating into the government asking the cops to shake-down their citizens. Pasadena’s finest have been staking out the Fish Taco District lately, pulling people over for rolling stops and jay-walking.

A few weeks ago I parked my car at the airport for a few days and came back to a $25 expired tags ticket. No biggie – I hadn’t got around to taking the plate frame off so I could get the tag on. I was surprised to get ticketed in a parking garage, but I guess the city owns those lots. I remember expired tags being a fix-it ticket, but there were no instructions on the ticket for how to get it corrected, so I figured I’d wait for the version that comes in the mail. I got that three weeks later as a “notice of delinquency” and a notice that if it wasn’t paid in another two weeks the fine would go up to $66 – that’s an increase of 164% if I don’t pay within two weeks of receiving the official notice in the mail! There are no instructions for getting it corrected, and a perusal of the Parking Violations Bureau website turns up nothing about fix-it tickets.

Seriously, what the heck? This kind of thing bugs me a lot more than a straight tax increase because it’s a) intellectually dishonest and b) it’s actually a form of regressive tax. People who can’t afford to pay immediately pay two-and-a-half times as much!

If there are any law enforcement types that frequent this blog, I’d be interested to hear whether the city pressures the police to increase their revenue-activities in times of economic stress.

Obama has signaled a willingness to speak directly with Iran about its nuclear program and hostility toward Israel, a key U.S. ally. At his inauguration last month, the president said his administration would reach out to rival states, declaring “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

“They say we have stretched a hand toward Iran. … If a hand is stretched covered with a velvet glove but it is cast iron inside, that makes no sense,” Khamenei said.

Obama responded “The cast iron inside our velvet gloved outstretched hand is necessary to reinforce our foundered flesh, which was singed by the fires of many past intolerances between our peoples. If the Iranian people would only unclench their fist and uncap the restorative balm of friendship, we’re sure that that would help rejuvenate our flesh to the extent that medical science (tempered always by the wise restraint of universally held religious principles) would allow us to remove the cast iron inside our velvet glove, leaving us with with only a velvet glove over mostly healed cyborg outstretched hand of reborn mutual understanding, albeit with a loose bandage of cautious prudence, to be changed daily through the liberal application of continued diplomacy. I ask the Iranian people: what about that does not make sense? What about that is unappealing to your people?”

(via The Huffpo, sort of)

I joined Facebook the other day and have been working on getting used to its eccentricities. I haven’t decided if the entire concept is genius or completely inane, and was struck this afternoon by how much this thread sums up this dichotomy perfectly.

Something about the entire continuity struck me as really funny when completely expanded.

I don’t want to dwell on this since the entire episode is catty and ridiculous, but I found myself thinking that it’s sort of weird that I had never heard of alleged conservative radio personality Laura Ingraham before she called Meghan McCain “the flavor of the month in left-wing media land because [she is] a Republican bashing the GOP”.

I mean, I’m just saying…

(via The HuffPo)

I have been following the blog gCaptain.com for a few months now. The site’s main contributer is a USCG licensed Master Mariner of Unlimited Tonnage (sort of like the ship captain version of a License to Kill), and he writes exhaustively about the current state of all things nautical. I don’t understand most of the junk that he talks about, but every once in a while he covers something that’s really interesting. For instance, today he has considerable coverage of the following oddball story that I guess happened yesterday:

Yesterday, five Chinese vessels “shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity” to the U.S. Navy ocean surveillance ship, USNS Impeccable, as it conducted routine operations in international waters in the South China Sea. According to reports, two of the Chinese vessels closed to within 50 feet (15 meters) of the USNS Impeccable, waving Chinese flags and telling the U.S. ship to leave the area. The Impeccable sprayed its fire hoses at one of the boats in order to protect itself. It is also being reported that one of the crew of one of the Chinese vessels stripped to their underwear and continued closing within 25 feet.

(via gCaptain)

So obviously this appears to be among the most mundane international incidents ever (if you change the players from Navy warships to teenagers in canoes, you basically get a lost Gidget episode), but the site follows up that post with a helpful video explaining what the hell everybody is actually up to.

(via gCaptain)

The short version? The U.S. Navy has gotten a teensy bit antsy about the increased numbers of Chinese nuclear submarine patrols, especially since the November 2007 episode where a Chinese submarine surfaced within torpedo range of a US aircraft carrier (in the middle of a carrier battle group) apparently without having been detected by anybody, so they are aggressively using these surveillance ships to keep tabs on Chinese submarines. And I guess the Chinese don’t necessarily like the increased scrutiny.

Full disclosure: they never really explain the part about the Chinese Navy stripping to their underwear.

This particular water balloon fight probably isn’t all that significant in the grand scheme of things, but it’s cool to see that there are people out there who are actively tracking this sort of thing when it happens.

I was thinking about posting something about how the Chargers would beat the Steelers like I did about the Colts, but I really wasn’t feeling it. Turns out they got thrashed by the Steelers, and the dream of an 8-8 team winning the Super Bowl is over.

I didn’t see the first third of the game, which was from all reports very competitive. I tuned in just in time to see the Chargers take their last lead of the game on the Kaeding field goal, and watch the Steelers march down the field for a touchdown in response. Then there was that horrible, terrible, very bad third quarter that doomed this effort. I have never seen a quarter of football like it–*one* offensive play for the Chargers in the entire 15 minutes, which was a tipped ball for an INT. Phillip Rivers was quoted as saying

“There was a little bit of disbelief. … You can’t call it a fluke, those guys made plays, but that was crazy.”

which is exactly what I was thinking.

* The Chargers defense missed a lot of tackles at the initial point of contact in this game, apparently starting from when I started watching. The defense was very successful at getting the Steelers into third-and-long situations throughout the second half, but they kept blowing it.

* Let’s not get our knickers in a bunch about Darren Sproles if he leaves San Diego. He’s a very good kick returner and a pretty good change of pace back, not a dominant player. I hope the Chargers keep him, but I hope they don’t break the bank to do so. Remember, he was a fourth-round pick. AJ Smith can find difference-makers on special teams in the lower rounds.

* Shawne Merriman, on the other hand… they need him, or someone like him, badly. A top-flight pass-rusher crashing the pocket does a few things. He turns second banana Shaun Phillips from an overmatched primary threat to a dangerous bookend. He keeps the secondary from having to cover all day. I’m looking forward to seeing what a reloaded defense does with a defensive coordinator who isn’t afraid to bring the heat next year.

* I think LaDainian Tomlinson will be back, and I think he’ll have a better year in 2009.

* I was very encouraged with what I saw from Jacob Hester late in the season. This guy is a fullback who can run and catch, and he seems to be learning to block. Mike Tolbert had some nifty moves but wasn’t much for blocking, and former Charger Lorenzo Neal couldn’t run for shit. Having a guy who can do all three things is going to be helpful.

I saw the end of the Florida’s college football win over Oklahoma last night. I hadn’t seen a minute of college football since Woody and I watched the end of a very entertaining USC-Oregon State game a couple of years back at Vivandres’ place, and I was amazed at how dinky and slow these teams–surely, other than USC, the best in the country–were.

I seriously don’t understand how anyone watches college football. The whole time I found myself thinking “the Detroit Lions would murder these guys.” If it wants me as a regular viewer of its football product, the NCAA needs to put its student athletes on a rigorous steroid regimen.

How about them Chargers? OK, OK, so it wasn’t two touchdowns…

I have a technical question for the JesusH community.

We’ve got two TVs on the ground floor of the house, and connected to each TV I’ve got a stereo system, complete with amplifiers and speakers and whatnot. What I want to do is give them the ability to use each other as an audio source, and play the same thing simultaneously. In other words, when I play a CD in the DVD player connected to Stereo A, I’d like to be able to get that line output sent to Stereo B so I can hear the music in the other room from the other set of speakers (and vice versa).

It’d be simple to connect some RCA cables from each stereo’s line out jack to an input on the other stereo; I’d then just have to set input on Stereo B appropriately to hear whatever Stereo A is playing. But unlike my old house, I don’t have a crawlspace or an attic to run wires, and I don’t have a carpet to stick speaker wire under either. Running a pair of stereo audio wire between the stereos is certainly possible, but it’s going to be a pain in the ass.

So I need to either use the existing house wiring or go wireless. I see there’s an outfit called Devolo that has a product that appears to send an audio signal through powerline. That’s a clever solution that would meet my needs, as I obviously have power near both stereos. But the product line isn’t exactly established, and they’re 220V in any case, so they’re not going to work in the good old USA.

Wireless is the only other idea I have. I know some wireless house audio systems like Sonos have been getting written up in major newspapers and periodicals, and I could probably get them to do what I want and then some, but that’d be like swatting a fly with an axe–and considering these jagoffs are charging four figures just to get into the game, it’d have to be a totally blinged-out axe at that. I don’t want a wireless controller for my music. I don’t want to control my music at all.

There’s a lot of consternation about wireless rear speakers in home theatre setups, which seems kind of like the problem I want to solve. Here’s a recent blog post from the always-interesting Bob Cringely about the absence of wireless audo in today’s whiz-bang HDTVs, for example. But I think most of the problem there is that you’ve still got to get power to the rear speakers to get any output, and until someone solves that problem you’ll still have a power wire going to those speakers even if you have them get their audio signal wirelessly, so it’s generally kind of dumb to not just wire audio as well. The true solution for wireless satellite speakers probably involves some nifty engineering on the part of the radiant power geeks, but I don’t need to wait on that. I’ve got power at both locations, and don’t need it from whatever the solution to my problem is.

I guess I could use something like the idiotically-branded RocketFish™ rear speaker wireless kit, but that’s over $100, it’s unidirectional, and it looks like I’d have to do some goofy bare-wire-to-RCA hacking on both ends to get it sorted.

All I want is to take a stereo signal at Stereo A and transmit it to Stereo B, across about twenty feet and through one wall. It seems like in 2009, when I can see about a dozen access points from my computer’s wireless network dialog box and buy a wireless router for twenty bucks, this should be dirt-cheap and easy, but I’ve been looking around and so far I’m not seeing much. Any ideas?

The regular season is over for the San Diego Chargers. In last night’s contest, they pancaked the Denver Broncos 52-21 to claim the AFC West crown and move on to the playoffs. What an interesting season it was!

* the better team surely won last night. The Broncos are pathetic. They should have lost the first time around, and they’re just a much worse team than the Chargers. That’s not to say the better teams always make the playoffs, but even worse, the Broncos’ magic number was one with three games left, and they lost all three while the Chargers won all three of theirs. Really, this was an absurdly large choke job–maybe not on the level of last year’s Patriots, but close.

* I more-or-less ignored the Chargers through the ugly middle of the season, but the defense sure looks better under Ron Rivera than it did under Ted Cottrell. I’ve really enjoyed watching cornerback Quentin Jammer, in particular. The guy used to be a walking, talking pass interference call and busted high draft pick. He still doesn’t have good hands, but his coverage has gotten a lot better and he might be the best run support cornerback I’ve ever seen in a Chargers uniform. He knows how to wrap up and isn’t afraid to hit a ball carrier. I’ve met him a couple of times and he seems like a nice guy, too, so good for him.

* The offense, of course… well, it’s totally ridiculous that professional pain-in-the-ass and interception thrower Brett Favre was voted Pro Bowl starter, and it’s fitting that both he and Jay Cutler are going to be watching the playoffs at home. Phil Rivers has played really well, and hasn’t even said anything dumb lately as far as I know.

* the Chargers have won four straight–though one was a squeaker against a lousy team–and they’re looking dangerous. Their first playoff game is at home on Saturday against the Colts, who have won nine straight (including one against the Chargers), but they’ll have the business given to them this weekend. The early betting line says this is a close game, but I don’t think so.

Chargers win by at least two touchdowns… you heard it here first.

For this election’s voting guide we’re going to skip past the presidential election: not only is the outcome a foregone conclusion, but not enough of you listened to us last time we tried that. So let’s hit the proposition circuit.

If you are in California, please vote against Proposition 8 on Tuesday.

Like all good things, the 2008 JesusH Voting Guide fits on the face of a pumpkin.

The asinine “protect marriage” crowd is busy telling you all sorts of horrible things about gay marriage’s legality in California, but here’s the straight scoop: homosexuals ought to have exactly the same rights as heterosexuals, no more and no less, and their ability to enter into a life partnership that exactly matches the one that man and woman can enter into should not be subject to the whims of people who shake their head and say “no, I’m just not comfortable with that.”

Until 1943, Chinese immigrants did not have the right to become US citizens and vote. My wife could never have acquired the same rights and responsibilities of United States citizenship that Paris Hilton has, no matter how hard she worked or how much better she made America, because she was born in China and Hilton was born here. That is Extremely Fucking Nuts, and we know it now, but I’m sure back then there was a bunch of people shaking their heads and saying “no, I’m just not comfortable with Chinese having a path to citizenship and enfranchisement.”

Read the rest of the Voting Rights Timeline if you have time. It’s an eye-opener.

That’s a jarringly recent example of constipation of justice in the United States, but this country has a long history of that kind of nonsense. If someone *doesn’t* have the same rights as you, they ought to have done something felonious to get themselves in that position. Being born homosexual shouldn’t count. In fifty years, this will look as silly to everyone as barring Chinese people from access to citizenship looks to us now. This isn’t the first time we’ve covered the gay marriage issue around here, and we haven’t changed our tune one note.

Let’s all do our part to ensure equal treatment for Californians regardless of sexual orientation on Tuesday.

Non-Soapbox-y postscript: I left my jack o’ lantern in front of the house Halloween night and the next morning the “Yes on 8″ organization had kindly left me a voting reminder right in front of it.

Really stupid, really funny, or both: you be the judge.

Thanks, Yes on 8 team! I’m still ashamed of you, but I got a chuckle out of it.

I’d like to break the JesusH posting hiatus just long enough to say that I, for one, do not give a shit what Joe the Plumber thinks.

Also, congrats to Brent, Official Cop of JesusH, on his graduation from the academy, and Jeff has some nifty video of Matt, Other Official Cop of JesusH, distributing justice in the mean streets of Oxnard which he’d surely share with you if he wasn’t such a dog in the manger about posting.

Thank you.

The first bailout has epic failed in the House. From the article:

The overriding question for congressional leaders was what to do next. Congress has been trying to adjourn so that its members can go out and campaign. And with only five weeks left until Election Day, there was no clear indication of whether the leadership would keep them in Washington. Leaders were huddling after the vote to figure out their next steps.

You already have the advantage of incumbency. How about you stop looking ahead of the current crisis and stay in session until you get this thing worked out, Congresspeople?

Some initial thoughts on the first presidential debate:

- Jim Lehrer’s “say it to him” shtick at the beginning made him sound awkwardly like a marriage counselor.

- I’m surprised the post-debate polls seem to have scored it so clearly for Obama.  I didn’t think there was a clear winner, though I do think a tie on the foreign policy debate is a great outcome for Obama.

- I was disappointed with both candidates’ answers on the bailout issue.  Clearly it would have been foolish to say “I do” or “I don’t” support the plan, but it was a missed opportunity to demonstrate leadership by laying out a clear framework for what a successful plan ought to look like.

- McCain advocates a federal government “spending freeze” on everything except defense, Veterans’ Affairs, and entitlement programs?  This is a huge policy proposal.  Why isn’t everyone talking about this today? 

- “You’ve sung songs about bombing Iran.” – it’s nice to finally see the Democratic candidate hitting back hard instead of going on defense.  There’s something to be said for Chicago politicians.

- When McCain forces a smile even though he’s kind of annoyed, he looks like Skeletor having dinner with the in-laws.

- Don’t the VP candidates normally appear on all the networks for post-debate commentary?  Interesting that one campaign decided to take a different tack.  That’s so maverick!

Discuss.

It was a close-run thing, but John McCain and Barack Obama will debate tonight, just a few scant days after McCain “suspended his campaign” to go fix all the high finance crap going down in the nation’s capital.

I’m sure this is because McCain cat-herded the bailout meetings to a successful conclusion after heading back to DC in such an all-fired hurry, and not because the average voter’s response to McCain’s campaign suspension seems to have been “the fuck’s he going on about? does he want to be President or not?”

Google Chrome, which I’ve been testing out for a couple of weeks as my primary browser, does something very strange when it crashes:

Sad Tab: the Sad Mac of the Internet Generation

“Aw, Snap!”? I thought it was “Oh Snap!” Hell, let’s check Google’s own search engine: nearly two million results for “oh snap” versus about 25,000 results for “aw snap”.

A usage model for the term “Oh Snap!”. “Aw Snap!” is conspicuously absent.

Last time JesusH covered a corporation dicking up a pop culture reference, they started taking it in the shorts just scant months later. Watch yourselves, Google.

Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan has already been widely praised in the postgame writeups for his “gutsy decision” to go for the two-point conversion after the Broncos scored a touchdown to pull to 37-38 with only 24 seconds left in Sunday’s game against the Chargers.

This was not a gutsy decision. This was an obvious decision, especially for a coach of Shanahan’s tenure who has plenty of job security and doesn’t need to worry about everyone in the world second-guessing him to the team’s owner the Monday after the move doesn’t work.

You might argue that, especially on their home turf, the Broncos ought to play for overtime, but that argument falls flat when looking at the current state of the game. Just like last week, the Chargers started off with a very limp effort, but this time they turned it on at halftime instead of waiting until midway through the second half–they had scored 21 straight points, capped with a nifty two-point conversion of their own, and the defense had pitched a shutout until the Denver TD. If this game had gone to OT, it wouldn’t have been the 50-50 or close to it affair that most overtime action tends to be.

Sure, you lose the game if you miss the conversion, but according to the stats I can find on the subject with a couple minutes of googling, the two-point try is trending towards a 50% success rate in the NFL. I’ll totally take that over playing for a tie and having to run my team out against a superior team in overtime, and Shanahan made the right call.

Not that it should have gotten to this point… I’ll also take awful work from the broadcast booth over awful work from the referees anyday. Denver was gifted a turnover when an “equipment failure” kept NFL Ref Strongest Man Ed Hochuli from seeing that Chris Chambers was down before being stripped, which everyone with a TV tuned to CBS saw multiple times while he was trying to work that out. In the fourth quarter, the Broncos got another present when Jay Cutler’s fumble was improperly whistled dead by Hochuli before the Chargers recovered. Not a good day at the office for the zebras, unless you’re a Bronco fan.

I generally don’t care about accuracy in football play-by-play, but it was really weird how many people couldn’t keep Panthers tight end Dante Rosario and actress Rosario Dawson straight during the Chargers loss yesterday.

Often mistaken for one another on Sunday.

* broadcast team Dick Stockton and Brian Baldinger, who did horrible jobs in general, made the mistake more than once.
* the postgame UPS Leaderboard graphic gave props to Rosario Dawson’s 7 catches for 96 yards and a touchdown.
* hours later, after the Sunday night game, NBC’s local “Football Night in San Diego” commentator Akbar Gbaja-Biamila referred to Rosario as Dawson at least once on camera.

I know Dante Rosario’s not a big name football-wise, but who knew Rosario Dawson had such a high Q score in NFL circles?

There are a lot of amusing angles to discuss about John McCain’s recent choice of Gov. Sarah Palin as his ticket mate, but here’s the one that just kills me: she’s apparently a good choice for McCain to appease social conservatives due to her stances on, among other things, sex education. Palin supports ‘abstinence-based sex ed’ in schools, which as near as I can tell is someone getting up in front of a classroom and saying “premarital sex is wrong, you might get pregnant, no birth control is 100% effective, sexually-transmitted diseases can be bad news, any questions?”

Here’s the problem: not only is there no evidence that this actually accomplishes anything as far as keeping teens from having sex, it didn’t even work in Palin’s own family, as her oldest daughter, Bristol Palin, is pregnant at 17. If you can’t keep your own nuclear family in line with the unmarried-young-sex-is-bad party line, how is this message possibly going to resonate anywhere else?

And if you acknowledge that people generally like to have sex and won’t all listen when you wag your finger (or other appendage) at them and tell them not to, wouldn’t you want them to be educated about how to protect themselves and their partners from STDs and unintended pregnancy? No, I guess you’d want them to get married young and that makes everything all right.

I tell you what, some people are so stupid it’s lucky for them breathing is an unconscious reflex.

Q: When is it proper for me to veto a trade in my fantasy league?

A: I’m glad you asked! There are two circumstances in which it is proper to vote to veto a trade.

1. collusion. Let’s say Owner A and Owner B get together for lunch one day, and Owner A says to Owner B “how about I trade you two of my best players for two of your worst players if you pick up the check?” That sucks for everyone when that happens and it is totally reasonable to veto a trade that is made under these parameters.

   In this case, your veto is also a vote of no-confidence on the personal integrity of both owners.

2. imbalance. Really, the only difference between this and collusion is intent. Maybe Owner A is much smarter or paying more attention than Owner B and browbeats or cajoles Owner B into trading some talented under-the-radar players for formerly productive big names. That might well damage the rationality of the league’s talent distribution, and as a fellow owner you have the right to vote against this if it’s going to impact your enjoyment of the game.

   Be sure Owner B doesn’t have an angle before you do this, though! It’s possible to trade from strength to address weakness and come out ahead even if you give up more talent in the abstract. If you can come up with a reason for Owner B to be doing what they’re doing in the trade as it is reported to the league, even if you don’t agree with the reasoning, you shouldn’t veto.

   In this case, your veto is also a declaration that Owner B is being a moron. If someone cites an imbalanced trade in your trading partner’s favour as a reason to veto a trade you are involved in, they are insulting your judgment.

There is a lot of confusion about this in the fantasy gaming world because people like to make things more complicated than they need to be, but there are no other circumstances in which it is proper to veto a trade in your league. In addition to this being the only policy that makes any sense, it’s also very easy to apply.

Q: what if, after the trade was agreed to but during the period of league review of the trade, something causes value on either side of the trade to change? For example, the best player in a trade is discovered to have a sports hernia after terms are agreed to.

A: you should consider all players to have changed hands as soon as the terms were agreed to. The only reason Owner A’s players are still on Owner A’s roster is because there’s a league review period to evaluate the trade for unfairness–otherwise, they’d be transferred immediately. Owner A’s players should be considered Owner B’s property the instant the trade is reported to the league and vice versa. Nothing that happens after the terms of the deal are agreed to has anything to do with the fairness of the trade as it was conceived, hence you have no cause to veto.

Q: but why is there an open period of n days when other owners can veto?

A: because not all owners log on every day. That’s a simple, reasonable answer. Here’s a more complicated answer: other veto-enabled owners are supposed to be shields of justice and lemon law administrators, watching for changes of status in the players that are slated to change hands and acting accordingly if the value proposition of the trade is skewed by an injury, trade, or demotion.

Do you really believe that?

In fantasy leagues, trading is creating. It is engaging. It is proper to encourage this behavior, and improper to believe you know better than the people actively managing their own individual teams without extraordinary evidence to the contrary. When you veto outside of this ruleset you are meddling. This is the same kind of behavior that made the founding fathers distrustful of strong centralized government. This is the same thing the feds are doing with the mortgage bailouts. This is really bad policy.

If you disagree I’m going to do my best to never play fantasy baseball with you.

Want to get your Halloween candy shopping done early? Need some cheap long-lasting candy for the office? Or maybe you just like Dum Dums pops like I do…

The Vons across the street from my house is selling a 2-lb bag of Dum Dums for $1.14 after Vonsclub and the coupon on the bag. I’ve already bought two bags and I’m going to keep getting at least one a day until they run out.

While doing exhaustive research for this post, I found this ode to Dum Dums, which contains both the term “Dum-Dums. Are. Completely. Totally. Rad.” and the origin story of the Dum Dums “Mystery Flavour” pop. This story is 100x more awesome than I was expecting, and I was expecting greatness.

After a great first experience, I decided to skydive again today. Jeff and I arrived about 4 PM and I informed the lady that I wanted to do the AFF level 2 jump. During this jump, I am again jumping with two instructors. This time, I would be focusing on turns and forward movement. After a brief review with my instructor, I boarded the plane, excited and eager to execute a perfect landing this time.

The plane ride went off without a hitch, I performed my exit perfectly, did my circle of awareness, my practice handle touches, 90 degree turns both left and right, and moved forwards, before waving off and deploying my parachute. I arched, counted to five, and performed my canopy control checks. I was feeling pretty good about the skydive, how I was more confident and had successfully fulfilled my mental checklist. However, this time the winds were very strong and it was harder for me to maneuver my parachute. I also noticed that I was descending at a faster rate than last time, and that I was way off course from where I was supposed to be. And despite my reminder to my instructor about how my radio was out of batteries last time, I had problems with my radio again. Sometimes I could hear little static noises, but no actual audio came through it. I was on my own yet again.

Because I was so off course, I was really worried about the landing. How was I going to manage to get myself to the landing field when I was descending so quickly? I tried my best to make it to the landing area and was trying to find a clear spot to land. The winds were not being particularly friendly towards me today though, as I thought I was about to land on dirt, but at the last minute, a gust of wind steered me towards the right, and I ran into the parked plane. Yep, you read that right. I. HIT. THE. PLANE. My feet hit it first, then my body ricocheted off of it, forcing my face to hit the plane as well, before falling and landing on my back. I started to get up right away, and saw people running towards me. A couple people yelled at me to lay back down and not to move. I saw Jeff’s worried countenance and was trying to reassure him I was all right.

They unhooked my gear, and the medical staff came to look at me. They asked me all these questions, what did I hit, how do I feel, can I see, hear, etc. I told them I was feeling fine, albeit a little banged up. They helped me up, and escorted me to a bench where they performed more checks on me, in which I passed. My faculties seemed to all be there, but they warned me to stay cognizant if anything changes and go see a doctor.

I had a semi-busted lip from when my face hit the plane, and some blood in my nose (it’s a good thing that I have a flat asian nose because it would’ve been broken for sure), but otherwise was fine. As I was walking back to the parachute packing area so that I could get my jump evaluated by the instructor, some concerned people asked me if I was okay. I smiled at them, “I’m all right.” My pride was hurt more than my physical body. The one thing I had wanted to work on was my landing, and it was the one thing I had totally screwed up. Royally. In front of scores of people, I had rammed into a plane. How embarrassing is that?

As I was waiting to hear what my instructor had to say and write in my logbook, I was contemplating just leaving. Do I really want to hear that I had failed my second jump? Obviously running into a plane means I suck at skydiving. To my astonishment, he cleared me for level 3! His written comment for next time is “Hit plane! Needs extensive canopy control brief before next jump.” Ha ha, I don’t think there will be a next time. I do not want to ever put Jeff in that position again. As much as I have enjoyed it and as exhilarating as it’s been, my brief foray into a skydiving career has officially ended today.

Oh, and unfortunately I didn’t get a video this time so you’re not going to be able to view my craptulacular landing. And I’m doing fine now, but I have a feeling I’m going to be super sore come tomorrow morning…

Everyone knows Social Security is busted. Heck, we said it years ago, and nobody accuses us of being deep thinkers. Someday in the not-so-distant future the entire system will collapse on itself and run out of money. Presidential hopeful John McCain does a nice job testifying to the problem.

Last week, McCain told observers at a town-hall meeting in Portsmouth, Ohio, “Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers … and that’s a disgrace.”

You know what might help? If people of age who reported $$millions of income last year voluntarily eschewed Social Security benefits. I mean, even for a politician, that’s amazing to me–that this guy can’t do without the 0.3% of his marriage’s reported income that Social Security issues him, while he talks out the other side of his mouth about how disgraceful the system is.

You’re not helping by cashing those checks, Senator, and if you tell me you need the money I’m going to laugh at you. What a dick move.