flatlander - Spy Training

Anniversary and Such

Your DisplayName here! — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 06:01:49 GMT

Sometimes, having a great idea for a blog entry can really kill your blog. See, several weeks ago, Jamie and I went with her folks to a shooting range named Iron Sights to try our hand shooting handguns. We shot Beretta and Sig Sauer 9MM pistols. We each kept a shell casing as a souvenir, and I thought that a picture of the casing would really make an entry about the experience really hit the spot. So, I kept putting it off until I took the picture. Notice something missing? I decided not to wait until I wasn't too lazy to take that picture.

So, what's new around here? I finally completed my major involvement of these sites: http://redlion.wchc.com/ and http://ticketswest.wchc.com/ for what's now known as MRM Partners. I'm still helping them troubleshoot and tweak, but I can actually focus on some other things now, including some more work with MRM Partners.

Mark and I have begun to pursue a project together, which promises to be both fun and educational. Hopefully, it will also prove to be profitable as well. We've managed to complete our first milestone on time!

Jamie and I celebrated our 4th anniversary this past week. We celebrated by spending a night at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Rey, which is about a mile and a half from our place. We could actually see our condo from our hotel room balcony. Here's the flickr photo set. We also celebrated our anniversary with dinner at The Prado restaurant, where we were married, with Jamie's parents. Here's yet another flickr photo set for that.

In Segues-related news, Jason was here for almost a week two weeks ago and I'm sure is now convinced that California is the place for him upon his December graduation from Duke seminary. While Jason was here, we all went down to Street Scene in San Diego to hang with Jeff and Lindsay, where we witnessed Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas unknowingly wet her pants on stage. Cooper and Tawny will be out here for a couple of days later on in August. Clinton will be hosting After Dark at Baylor next month, and I will be hosting Pigskin during Baylor Homecoming at the end of October. So, Jamie and I will be in Texas for a week in October! For anyone who didn't hear, Craig got married on June 18th, and you can check out their website here.

There's probably some stuff I left out, but I'm kind of caught up now, which should free me to post some other stuff as it happens, instead of waiting on that dang picture!

Pete In The Sky Without Diamonds

Your DisplayName here! — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 01:05:09 GMT

Hey everybody! I'm alive! Here's a couple of pics from my jump. The first one is my favorite. I also got a DVD of the jump, and I might try ripping it and putting that up here as well, but we'll see.

Don and I arrived at noon for the jump. We spent the first hour signing a bunch of documents saying that skydiving is dangerous, and it's not their fault that we are stupid enough to try it. There was also a video explaining the dangers to us, hosted by a guy who looked like ZZ Top but in a suit. We were then videotaped signing the last line of a document. My favorite clause in the document was the one that said that we realize that skydiving is of no value to the public. After all the initialing and signing, we headed out to an area with a bunch of picnic tables and awaited our instructions. We waited for quite a while. In the meantime, we watched jumpers coming in for landings every few minutes. We also watched as some people practiced doing formations on wheeled boards.

We finally met up with our tandem jumpers and videographers. My jumper was Lou and my videographer were Doug, both were excellent. We went to a room to get suited up. We had the option of wearing a jumpsuit over our clothes, but as it was wicked hot, we declined. We strapped on a harness, a padded helmet, and some goggles. Then, as we waited for the plane to come get us, we went through the jump procedure with our jumper. It couldn't have been more simple, and yet, because of the nervousness accompanying this adventure, it was difficult to follow simple instructions. The plane arrived, and after gassing up, we boarded. The plane fit maybe around 16 people, and it was a tight fit. The seating was two bench seats along each side of the plane. We tandem jumpers were towards the front of the plane and would go after all of the single jumpers. The roughest part of the whole experience for me was between about 5,000 and 7,000 feet, I started to get a little queasy, because the small plane was experiencing a little turbulence. After that, everything happened pretty fast. We got strapped up to our jumpers and headed towards the door at about 12,500 feet, sliding down the bench seat. We got in position to jump, and I really didn't even have to jump. I just kind of rolled out with Lou's momentum. Thus began the freefall.

It was pretty amazing being out there in the open air with that view. It's hard to be scared at this point, because there's so much to take in and you've got a cameraman in your face. While you know that you are falling rather quickly if you think about, you don't really notice it, because the ground isn't getting bigger in any kind of rapid way at this point. I suppose it would be between 1,000 ft and 0 ft, but not up higher. Plus, you aren't falling next to something stationary that shows you your relative speed. One tense moment in the process is pulling the rip cord and waiting for the parachute to unfold and catch you. Now, I was supposed to be the one pulling the rip cord at 6,000 feet, but before I knew it had been pulled, the parachute jerked us to a much slower pace. Apparently, we were pretty far away from our drop zone, so Lou pulled a little early to give us plenty of time to make it back. I was surprised at how uncomfortable the rest of the ride down was. The harness goes around your legs, and the loops seemed to be cutting off the circulation. We spun around and such in the air a few times, checking out the awesome view, and then we came in for a landing that was very smooth.

While it was fun, I probably won't be doing much skydiving any time in the near future. There are other hobbies that I'd rather devote my time and money to, like getting my pilot's license. But I'm happy to say that I've finally crossed something off of my spy training list.

Skydive Scheduled

Your DisplayName here! — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:05:04 GMT

My skydive is scheduled. I'm jumping on Saturday, Sept. 4th with Jamie's dad. I'm looking forward to it. I've got to pick a song to put on the video of my jump. Any suggestions? I wonder if/when I'll get nervous or scared. It's bound to come, but I can't really imagine feeling it until I'm at the door of the plane.

UPDATE: There was a time when I could add align=left to my img tags and wrap my text around my pictures a little bit. Now, for some reason, whenever I do that, the image doesn't show up.

UPDATE on the first UPDATE: Mark showed me the extra CSS tag to add to my base.css, and now, as you can see, it works.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here's the list of songs that they have available. I can also bring in my own music. http://www.skydiveelsinore.com/students/tandemmusic.html

My First Lock Picking Failure

Sat, 01 May 2004 17:00:38 GMT

To support my spy training inclinations, Jamie got me several spy-type things for my birthday. Among them is a lock-picking tool set and a book that is supposed to teach me how to pick locks. An immediate use for them became available when Clinton locked the screen door at Tony's place, for which he did not have the key. Unfortunately, he did this the day they left for NY for a month and a half. Fortunately, they don't have any pets that he needed to take care of. Unfortunately, our friend Susan was needing to stay at their place. So, you see why the lock-picking was necessary. Earlier this week, Clinton came over, and I was going to learn how to pick a lock real quick, then we were going to head out to Santa Monica to take care of the situation. So, I tried to learn by picking the lock on our front door. Unfortunately, it requires your sense of touch to be “honed” to the sensation of the pins' motion inside the lock. I quickly realized that I was not going to be able to hone my sense of touch in the next 30 minutes.

We decided to go out there anyway, and see if we could figure something else out. There had been two windows left open, one on the staircase up to their second floor apartment and one above the garage. The windows are the kind that have a crank inside to open them, and they open on a vertical axis. We went to work first on the window on the stairs. Almost immediately, an elderly woman popped out of nowhere and asked if we lived there. We, of course, told her that we were breaking in and that she better scram! Wait, no, we were nice. She tried to help us come up with a way to get in and mentioned a ladder for the window above the garage. Then, we noticed a dish network truck parked a block away with a ladder on top of it. We went over there to see if we could borrow it. The guy wouldn't lend it to us without coming along with it, so he said he'd come down when he was done installing the dish he was working on. So, we walked back down to the apartment and hung in the shade (it was well over 90 degrees). I was getting pretty impatient, partially because the dish guy was taking so long, but also because I hate problems, and I want to find solutions asap. So, I went back to examine the door. The hinges were on the outside, so we even tried to take them off. No luck. So, I started fiddling with the window above the staircase again. The window would open about halfway, but there was a screen blocking the crank for us to open it all the way. After some finagling, I got the screen pushed aside, and we got the window open all the way. Now we just had to get through the window somehow. Clinton climbed up and braced himself on the wall and the stair case railing on the other side of the staircase, but it wasn't high enough, so I got below him to offer a foot hold higher up and closer to the wall. I held my hands out in front of me in the form of a foot hold and braced for his weight. What I wasn't expecting was for him to step on my shoulder instead. I was not braced for the weight at that particular juncture. I started to fall back, and images of us both crashing down the stairs flashed through my head. Then, he put his other foot on my other shoulder, and I thought we were goners for sure. As I was falling back, I was able to grab on to the stair case railing and regain my balance. I pushed up, and he was halfway through the window. But then he seemed to be stuck, his legs writhing on the outside as I imagined his torso doing on the inside. Eventually, he wormed his way through and managed to get inside without breaking anything. Victory at last!

The next day, we found out that Susan had a key to the screen door.

H.E.T.

Thu, 18 Dec 2003 02:43:26 GMT

The other day, I heard an interview with Ewan McGregor, whose latest film project is Big Fish, to which I'm really looking forward. Ewan was talking about the fact that he and a buddy are going to ride motorcycles around the world, basically from London to New York the long way round. They will be going through Siberia, China, and Malaysia, and to prepare, they are going through Hostile Environment Training. Apparently, this is training that journalists and others who are preparing to work in hostile territories endure. Sounds to me like a perfect addition to my spy training wishlist!

Skydive Question

Thu, 27 Nov 2003 00:16:43 GMT

OK, so I'm gearing up for a skydive some time soon. I have a question for those that have done it before. Is temperature a factor? I mean, should I do it now, or should I wait until the spring and warmer weather?

Spy Update

Sat, 25 Oct 2003 07:38:50 GMT

I really like the idea of learning to read lips. For the spy factor, but also for the hard-of-hearing factor from spending so much time in Mark and Brandon's cars in high school. Also, I'm not sure why rappelling would be better than skydiving, but I believe it would just be as useful. So, that will make the list. As for driving at high speeds, I like to think I'm learning that with all of the Gran Turismo 3 that I've been playing. See, the thing is I want to learn the stuff legally, so some of your suggestions are right out. Like making Jason's blog pretty.

Ordinary Spy

Your DisplayName here! — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 05:11:44 GMT

For those of you that I haven't already mentioned this to, I realized something a couple months ago that I think I need to document. I'll preface this by saying that I do not want to be a spy. However, I do want to have a spy's training. Maybe it's my desire to learn new things. Or maybe, when put in an extraordinary situation, I want to know how to handle myself. So, I've started to create a list of things that I should learn. Here it is so far:

~~Skydive~~ (UPDATE: Jumped Sept. 4th, 2004)
~~Fire a gun~~ (UPDATE: Went to shooting range July 9th, 2005)
Scuba dive
Learn foreign languages
Some kind of martial art. I understand Brazilian Jujitsu is good for that sort of thing.
Picking locks
Hotwire a car
Hostile Environment Training

I'm planning on going skydiving with Jeff in December, if he can get up the nerve, and I'll keep you posted on my progress. Any ideas of other things to add to the list?