PhreeZone's home on the web

I’ve got a collection of old photos that I need to add to the site to share out. I’ll start with a few here and then put the rest in the photo gallery.

Its summer time so that means I’ve got a few dozen projects running at the same time again. This is a typical thing with me and I tend to get about 75% of them complete before winter every year. We have finished up the landscaping around the house a few weeks back so thats one more that can be checked off. In addition to the projects and skydiving I’ve been playing a lot of Age of Empires 3 again. I got Ryan into the game a bit ago and now we’ve been playing a lot online against each other too. If anyone else plays or wants to let me know.

The current list looks like this:

A completely seperate project for me has been the garden this year. The strawberries were great, we got a handful of peas from it too. The Romaine was great but it was way too much and most of it grew too fast and flowered so its junk. The Iceburg is looking good still. I got a bucket full of green beans yesterday for Kristi. The lone tomato plant has started to have some turn red. The Squash has been a bit out of control. I counted no less then about 12 yellow, 5 green and 2 acorns we’ve picked so far and a few more are still growing. I’m down to 2 watermelons still growing, the third rotted on the vine. I’ve picked one catalope so far and have another growing still. The Corn has a few ears but looks like its a late crop so I hope its good.

I posted Jerrod Pingles 2006 year end videos on my website finally.

[WINDOWSMEDIA http://www.phreezone.com/videos/2006YearEnd-Shortversion.wmv 320 257]

Its DVD time again. This year I wanted to take a more active role in producing the dropzones year end video. Last year I did video editing and recieved medicore responce from my vision of what I thought the video should look like. This year I steped out of the editing role and into more of an executive producer and DVD author. I really think that the end result this year is going to shine in comparison to years past. I learned more about Photoshop then I previously knew to pull off some of the effects on the DVD case cover. I learned Encore from the ground up to create the DVD itself and the menus.

All told the DVD is about an hour with 6 motion menues and lots of other stuff. Render time accourding to Encore is only a brief 35 minutes.

6.5 minutes per slide show *2
1 minute to transcode the music
10 minutes for Ted’s menu
5 minutes per other menu with thumbnails (*3)
2:45 for the main menu

I decided to first build it as an ISO so if I need to duplicate it in the future its really easy to.

Its odd to think back on the last few years and wonder where my life would be if I had made different decisions. One of the decsions that I am so glad I made was the decision to go make a skydive. I originally did it since this girl I was hanging out with a lot had talked about how cool it would be to do it and I decided I needed to try it. That was August 28, 1999. That date is burned into my memory more so then any other date could be. You can ask me birthdates, anniverseries or anything else and odds are I will not be able to tell you it right away. Ask me the day I first jumped from an airplane and I can nail it every time. From that day on I was set loose on a different path then I could have ever imagined I would go down.

There is an unique beauty when you are sitting in the door of a plane with nothing between you and the raw elements outside. The sunsets seem more intense, the coulds seem to be puffier and the air seems so much crisper. I’ve thought about just how lucky I am some times I am on the climb to altitude when I am looking out over the earth and realizing that not everyone experiences the world like this everyday. I will some times just sit in the door with the sliding door rolled up staring out looking at everything even though it gets cold. Even just sliding the plexiglass door closed changes the scene for me so I perfer to keep it open as long as possible.

Before I took up jumping I had camped on 11000 foot mountians in New Mexico, I had whitewater rafted the Arkansas river in Colorado. I had traved by bus, train and plane over the US. I thought I had my life all planned out and then boom… out of left field I saw the raw beauty in the sky via my first jump. There are still times that I day dream about what its like to be sitting on top of a mountian just enjoying the view, but more often I am day dreaming of the view out the door of an Otter at 13000 ft, or picturing myself flying my body in the air with nothing around me.

I’ve seen the sun set while on the ground then see it rising again as we climb for a night jump only to watch it set again in freefall.
I’ve seen someone dip just a toe in a cloud as they flew past it under parachute.
I’ve seen clouds that are 20000 feet tall at a distance of only a few feet away.
I’ve seen a hot air ballon turn into a speck as I fell away from it on my back.
I’ve seen a look of terror turn into joy in a fraction of a second on so many first timers faces.
I’ve seen the look of wonder on someones face as they suddenly get why we skydive.
I’ve seen storms rolling in while in freefall.
I’ve seen an airplane engine blow apart.
I’ve seen an airplane crash right in front of my eyes.
I’ve seen a friend seriously hurt themself.
I’ve seen another friend die from his injuries from landing.

All told I’ve seen some increadible things and I would never trade this life for what ever my old life might have been!

Sorry for the lack of updates. I spent Tuesday in Indiana and all of yesterday I spent with my boss who was in town for a visit. I became a Moderator on the largest skydiving website in the world. Its a lot more work then I gave it credit for. I also created a new website for the Skydiving rigging manuals but it still has a little work to go before I make its URL public.

I’ve decided to upload a large collection of rigging manuals to my website so that others can use them but I’m not going to publish the link right away. For now the link is REMOVED I’ll add a button to the top in a while and then sort them better and just clean up the collection. For now if anyone wants them feel free to get them all.

Why is is that when ever Hollywood or even computer game makers have an idea that makes any money at all they are instantly planning a sequel? The latest examples of this in Hollywood are proving just how poor of productions they are making because they are not even able to release them to the theater, they are instead releasing them straight to DVD. A few perfect examples of this is The Butterfly Effect 2 and Behind Enemy Lines 2. The first Butterfly effect had a little effort put into it but only would have recieved 2 stars from me. Only reason it did half way decent in the box office is that it had the right actors in it. I’ll bet not even 99% of the audience could even name where the title came from. The directors of Butterfly Effect 2 are just using ideas that had to have hit the writing room floor in the first movie. Looking through the entire plot summery it even looks like they include a loop hole to create a third movie. Great.. just what the world needs…

Needless to say I won’t be watching any of these direct to DVD sequel movies.

Quite possibly one of the funniest and yet strangely appealing direct DVD movies I’ve ever seen is Cutaway. All the jumpers reading this will be groaning and mocking me but I honestly think that the movie most accurately reflects life at a dropzone more then anyone wants to admit.

1) New guy shows up and is instantly absorbed in the sport and its all they can think about
2) There are more nerds running around then you can count
3) The DZO is the boss and knows everyones job, usually better then they care for him to know them
4) There is usually always some fringe charactors that are then when you start but they quickly are gone
5) You feel privilaged when an experienced jumper walks up and tells you that you did something good
6) Instructors hook up with their students all the time
7) Cutting away the rest of your life to become engulfed in skydiving

Some of the funniest things in skydiving are also reflected in that movie.
1) Pieings
2) The naked chick in the tent with a video camera
3) Flailing as a student
4) Sucking up to Skygods
5) The need to be on a team (Note there is never another fun jumper on the load, its only a team)

And finally one of the classic skydiving lines in a movie…

Turbo was too slow… so we had to kill him.

If anyjumpers wnt to ever get together and have some drinks watching Cutaway, Kristi has it on DVD here at the house, come on over!