I watched the extended version of Mr. Nobody the other night. I thought director Jaco Van Dormael did a fantastic job with the great attention to detail. Jared Leto was good too.
Mr. Nobody
imdb.com
I was going to copy and add my own, but the truth is you'd all be better served by going to the source of f-Laws and I don't have to plagiarize or quote.
f-Laws are a series of common management flaws that seems to permeate todays companies.
I encourage everyone who works with more than a couple of people to read the big book or even the FREE little book.
Example - Word for word copied from the Little book.
Russell & Herbert f-Law:
The more important the problem a manager
asks consultants for help on, the less
useful and more costly their solutions are
likely to be.
Consultants begin their engagements by gathering very
large amounts of data, much more than can be
transformed into useful information. No wonder! Their
fees are proportional to the amount of time they devote to
a problem, not to the amount of good that they do.
The most successful consultants are the ones who are
smart enough to see what managers want and give it to
them after an extended effort, and do so in long,
impressively formatted reports. They provide sanctions for
a fee.
The principal finding obtained by all studies conducted by
consultants, regardless of the issues involved, is the need
for more study. The success of a consultant’s effort is not
measured by the amount of good it does for the client, but
the amount of good it does for the consultant.
Sally - Response:
It’s astonishing that, in these days of obsession with return
on investment, consultants are not held to account more
than they are. There are three reasons for this:
- Executives are seduced by data – the more they have,
even if it’s useless, the more it makes them feel in
control.
- The CEO or someone else very senior usually hires the
expensive consultants. Who is going to challenge the
CEO’s decision?
- Consultants set themselves up as experts. This
provides the executive with another hiding place. “If
the expert says so who am I to disagree”?
Consultants - unlike the rest of us - do indeed manage to
escape being accountable. The higher their fee, the less
accountable they become. The more complex and costly
their solutions, the more unlikely it is that they’ll be
challenged.
Who’s going to want to point out that some senior
executive’s decision to hire consultants has been a huge
waste of money?
The best organizations, by the way, are more likely to use
internal consultants, form employee problem-solving teams
or hire customers and suppliers to solve problems for them.
Thank you for the tunes and the moves.
Today we live in a post "credit boom" era... we've spent the last 2 decades inebriated with cheap or even free credit. And like an "all you can eat" banquet, we've had little respect for the credit we used. Now change has been forced on us and we must adapt.
After a recent company memo about improving the business and compulsory annual reviews; I decided to do some research in to ways of improving my effectiveness as a manager and the best way is usually to look at what the best of the best have done in the past.
In my quest for the best of the best I came across William Edwards Deming (you can google his name for more info).
In one of his books Out of the Crisis he describes 14 points for management and transforming business effectiveness, none of them are catchy phrases, but any GM/COO interested in more than short term share holders could do worse...
- Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
- Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
- Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
- End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
- Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
- Institute training on the job.
- Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
- Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
- Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
- Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
- a. Eliminate work standards on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute workmanship.
- a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia," abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.
- Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
- Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.
Another set of management principals is The Deming System of Profound Knowledge which advocates:
- Appreciation of a system: understanding the overall processes involving suppliers, producers, and customers (or recipients) of goods and services (explained below);
- Knowledge of variation: the range and causes of variation in quality, and use of statistical sampling in measurements;
- Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge and the limits of what can be known (see also: epistemology);
- Knowledge of psychology: concepts of human nature.
I thought I would share this tid-bit.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about doctors. In one hand I know that they’re there to help me if I have a problem with my body. On the other hand I’ve had nothing but bad help from every doctor I’ve ever visited, and if it wasn’t bad, it definitively was a waste of money and time.
Unfortunately I’m not a qualified doctor and I live in a country that will not provide even the most basic of medicines without a “doctors” prescription. But I’m also a dreamer and here’s a brief redaction of one of my dreams.
Maybe dream isn’t a good word for it, because it’s more of a conscious wish.
My dislike for doctors started when I was 13, up until then I had a generally very healthy life, no broken limbs, serious infections or operations. The worse were Chickenpox and Mumpes which were handed down to me by my older brother.
Anyway back to 13... I contracted the flu and made the mistake of seeing a Dr. The Dr. prescribed 500mg a Amoxicillin (yes I can remember the type) a week later I developed really bad flu and my tonsils had swollen up so much I couldn’t eat, or drinking without pain. I managed to crawl to the “Dr.” again and the idiot prescribed me yet more antibiotics, this time Amoxicillin and another type. My symptoms didn’t get any worse but they sure didn’t get any better until I completely stopped taking the antibiotics.
In all I was out of action for 7 weeks of a great Mediterranean summer. My tonsils never really recovered, so another Dr. thought they should be removed. Luckily I didn’t attended the surgery because I was eventually able to cure myself with 30mg of Potassium Chloride for a week.
Over the years, I’ve had other issues with “Drs” from wrong prescriptions for Conjunctivitis, to charging me $100 for a 2 second diagnosis, to a Dr not willing to prescribe a medicine that would have resolved sever inflammation from a fall.
What have I learned from Drs?
I’ve learned that they can harm you just as well as they can help. And according to research by Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School Public Health (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10904513?dopt=Abstract and http://faculty.jhsph.edu/?faculty_id=667); doctors are the 3rd leading cause of death in the US.
I now research my symptoms and diagnose myself. If I can’t find a legally available treatment I will go to a Dr and ask him to prescribe what I need. Needless to say I have been healthy since; apart from some broken vertebrae.
Get to your dream already!
My dream is MedNet.
What is MedNet? MedNet is an international medical information network. All consultancies, practices, surgeries, homeopathies, holistic centres, hospitals, dentist, pharmacies, etc are connected. The network contains a knowledge base of every medical procedure, medicine, herb, compound, allergy, virus, bacteria ever discovered by man.
How does it work? Numerous geographically dispersed connected databases with mankind’s medical knowledge. Health providers use a national registry system that references the knowledge.
Example:
In the USofA poorer individuals have a Medicaid number, this is a record in a database. Now say I got the Flu and decided to play Russian roulette by going to a Dr., I could log on to my national MedNet by entering my Medicaid number; I could then press a “I’m not feeling well button”, it would then ask me a couple of questions to determine how bad I'm feeling. Because I’m lazy and I want to see a Dr. I just click on “I don’t know” the system then looks for the nearest practice with an available slot or my usual Dr. and an appointment with Dr. Suresh Chandra is made.
With my Medicaid card I crawl over to the Dr. who then with my approval looks up my medical records. He proceeds to diagnose me and enters my symptoms. MedNet knows that the latest N1H1 influenza is going around in my area and also knows what’s been reported as the best treatment. The Dr. doesn’t like MedNet so he wasn’t paying attention when MedNet recommended a allergy cross referenced treatment and figured he knew that all I need is some Amoxicillin.
The Dr. can only prescribe medicines on MedNet so he goes to the “Treatment” tab and selects Amoxicillin... MedNet tells him that antibiotics are ineffective against Viral infections and could cause death. MedNet then reminds the Dr. that patients have reported that the most effective treatment has been a combination of 100mg Calcium Sulphate, 1gr Vitamin C and warm UV light daily.
I go to the nearest Chemist with my Medicaid card, the Chemist looks up my treatment record and gives it to me.
I go home and do the treatment. 5 days later I feel much better but I notice a wart on my foot, so I log on to MedNet; I get prompted to confirm efficacy of my previous treatment, I then try and arrange an appointment for my wart... this time I feel better so I enter my symptoms. MedNet concurs with my diagnosis and also notes other patients having contracted Human Papilloma virus soon after visiting Dr. Suresh’s practice. MedNet recommends a treatment of applying a 3cmx3cm piece of duct tape over the Wart for 14days and alerts the Department of Public Health of an outbreak of Human Papilloma virus at Dr. Suresh’s practice deferring all future appointments to the practice.
We already have similar systems available to the Tax Office and Road Authorities, I believe it’s much more appropriate to apply this technology to the health industry.
The 1st step is getting the knowledge in to databases, then getting the practices to connect securely and then letting the system grow organically.
Microsoft is still trialing HealthVault (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_HealthVault) and there are numerous other systems out there like Google Health and Indivo... these are fairly useless without integration with health providers. I believe access to accurate health information really needs to be a basic Human Right and our archaic health management systems need to embrace the 21 century. Some hospitals have HIT systems that allow digital sharing of patients records, but again they lack the integration.
I guess at the end of the day I would like to breath in to a device connected to MedNet and for the device to tell me every treatable problem I have. Like when your car goes for a service they plug the ECU (Electronic Control Unit) in and print out the fault codes.
I would also like my DNA sequence and possible hacks so I can make my beard grow to a defined length :).
Did you know the Government is proposing an internet censorship scheme that goes further than any other democracy in the world?
I've just signed a petition to prevent the scheme that will make the internet up to 87% slower, more expensive, accidentally block up to one in 12 legitimate sites, will miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and is very easily sidestepped. The government of the day may add any 'unwanted' site to a secret blacklist under the scheme.
Our Government should be doing all in its power to take Australia into the 21st century economy, and to protect our children. This proposed internet censorship does neither. Can you join me and take action on the net today to save the net?
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442
Thanks!
I watched the extended version of Mr. Nobody the other night. I thought director Jaco Van Dormael did a fantastic job with the great attention to detail. Jared Leto was good too.
Mr. Nobody
imdb.com
I watched an entertaining movie with Christian Slater the other day I feel is worth a mention...
He Was a Quiet Man
imdb.com
THE MIRACLE OF TOILET PAPER Fresh from my shower, I stood in front of the mirror complaining to my husband that my breasts are too small. Instead of romantically telling me this is not true, he uncharacteristically comes up with a suggestion: 'If you want your breasts to grow, then take a piece of toilet paper and rub it between them for a few seconds every day' Willing to try anything, I got a piece of toilet paper and stood in front of the mirror, rubbing it between my breasts. How long will this take?' I asked. They will grow larger over a period of years,' my husband replies. I stopped. 'Do you really think rubbing a piece of toilet paper between my breasts every day will make my breasts larger over the years?' Without missing a beat he said 'Worked for your bum, didn't it?' He's still alive, and with a great deal of therapy, he may even walk again although he will probably continue to take his meals through a straw.
We are
living in a period of rampant global inflation. Some may argue it’s been the
past 8 years of cheap money. I’m going to look at two crisis and give my brief
opinion on the cause… The credit crisis and agrarian commodity speculation or
as the media terms it “The Food Crisis”.
This all
started with the dotcom bust of April 2000, I was in the Dominican Republic watching it unfold on HBO; upon my return my portfolio had lost
85% of its value. I thought it best to just leave the money put and hope for an
up turn, but two weeks later my broker Suretrade.com sent me an email saying
they were closing international accounts and they would be sending me a check
for the balance… there’s a long story in that bubble and con game that was the
dotcom, but I’m here to rant about the fore mentioned ones.
Fast forward
to 2003 after Enron and WorldCom; there were more accounting cons behind the
scenes which lead to quick regulations. Greenspan's fed policies to stimulate the economy had made contract mortgage rates in the US hit an all time low of just
above 5%, which hadn’t been seen
since 1965.
What you
gona do if you want to make money the easy way?
Sell cheap money or asset backed loans (mortgages)! Because with almost free money you’d have to be plain stupid
no to want it. Take note "they" think the average person is only 1/2 stupid.
Now the people selling the mortgages had an incentive to sell; a commission for each
mortgage sold, and when your objective is to turn over as many contracts as possible you aren't going to perform a detailed check of who is borrowing
the money as this costs.
The pieces
of the puzzle so far:
- cheap
money
- incentive
to sell cheap money
Who’s
lending the money? Mostly banks, but the banks are doing some proper checks
before they lend, so how are all these mortgages being sold?
Here comes
the key stone… mortgage brokers not affiliated with banks are selling them and then
sending the mortgage contract to a “clearing” house where the mortgage amount
is evaluated at the prevailing increase rate for the area and cut up and mixed
with other cash assets and called a cash CDO (collaterised debt obligation).
Yup I know
you’ve heard of CDO’s, and yes the above is an over simplified view, but I’m
not going to go in to detail about CDO’s.
CDO’s are
now investment products I mean SIV's (Structured Investment Vehicles). But before you, I, your pension fund can invest in
these products (become note holders) they have to be risk rated (AAA, AA, A, BB, ...) by a rating agency. The problem is that CDO’s are complicated if not
close to impossible to model, so rating agencies basically went by what they
were told.
2005
everybody is happy; CDO’s have good return rates people who borrowed money have
seen their home values soar, people who want to borrow are being tempted by $0
down payments/deposits, stock markets are booming because the CDO yields are
good, money flowing… but as with EVERY pyramid schema the first ones in do
well, but it progressively gets worse, and towards the end of 2005 the pool of
people who could afford to borrow and hadn’t was dwindling.
House
prices had been over inflated in Europe, America and Australia by cheap money
and the incentive to sell mortgages. People stop being able to pay the
repayments after the bonus/intro rate changed and it all starts to crumble.
March 2007
banks started to realize that they were holding notes for CDO’s with ratings of
AA and even AAA comprised of sub prime mortgages on over inflated properties.
They
realized that they could lose big, and if they could lose, so could any other
institution who had bought the bad “eggs”. So the first thing they did was stop
buying from the hedge funds causing a couple of them to collapse under their
own crap, and second stop exchanging money with anyone who
may be holding bad eggs.
Who have
been the winners?
The people who bought a home in 2003 and sold in 2006.
The mortgage brokers.
But the real winners have been the hedge fund managers who put together the CDO’s and
sold them to your bank and pension fund, other funds, and then go out. And they
can’t be prosecuted for no following lending guidelines.
Who are
these hedge fund/asset managers?
If you’re a Christian you may think of them as the “Money Changers” or their
agents, if your Muslim “Sheitan” is probably an apt word, if you’re an
investment banker you know them as the “Super Elite”.
Basically they’re people who ask for your money so that they can make
you rich, and they take a cut of what they make. Yup, that’s it they gamble
with other peoples money. But the big ones won't bother with you for less than a couple million invested.
With
that in mind, what are they to do when their latest scam or bubble pops? Find
another. Since we live in a capitalist system which demands perpetual profits
and higher yields… they saw an opportunity with commodities while they wait for carbon trading.
Did you
really buy that bullshit story about oil demand pushing prices up? Yeah me to…
but then I realized hey oil demand couldn’t have increased 110% in 4 years, and
oh look it really started taking off in 2006, and so did other commodities. I
know China is making more trinkets than ever and the dollar sank but the correlation
is there, it was the “investors”/"speculators"/"gamblers".
Now I hear
on CNN, CNBC, BBC, etc about the food crisis… global warming, China wants meat,
Indian’s getting fatter, Bio fuels, Australia’s drought… but not a single
mention of the primary cause, yes it’s the “speculators" again. Investors demand healthy
yields and hedge fund managers go looking for ways to get those yields.
If I have US$1,000,0000,000
and I can triple it in two weeks by buying rice futures… what should I do? Think
about the poor people, or think about that 2nd yacht to take my helicopter
and McLaren F1 to Cannes next spring?
If you
thought the WTO was for the good of man you went so far down the rabbit hole you
missed the exit. Its to give the “money changers” more control and force countries to import stuff they don't want (Korea, US hormone beef any one?).
Now with
the help of Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/15/paulson-falcone-earners-biz-wall-cz_js_0416wallstreet_slide_2.html?thisSpeed=15000
) let’s see who the “Super Elite” are… yeah I know Bill Gates makes billions,
but that’s OK'ish cos you buy a product and he gives a lot of it away. I want to
look at the hedge fund managers that are causing rampant inflation and hunger
in poor countries.
- John Paulson
made US$3,300,000,000 last year shorting on the sub prime crisis he probably
helped cause. And look he's acquired Greenspan John Paulson Acquires an Alan Greenspan
- George Soros
made US$2, 400,000,000 I have mixed feelings about him.
- Philip Falcone
US$1,700,000,000 again betting people couldn’t pay back money they borrowed.
- Kenneth Griffin
US$1,500,000,000, 39 years old.
And the list goes on and on.
What
should society do?
The really sad truth is that we have made such a mess, any change is going to
be painful. If the banks and investors don’t get they’re returns the system is
going to start collapsing and that’s going to cause wide spread misery. I think
the governments need to reappropriate some funds or force internal investment, they could use the moral dynamic of "with power comes responsibilities"
- Regulate
investment options (what can and can't be gambled).
- Tax all
financial transactions, 1% internal and 3% external.
- Limit the size of institutions... it isn't a level playing field when you're competing with somebody 10000 times bigger than you!
The bankers
and super elite are going to squeal like pigs in a barn on fire, banks will
pass on any tax, and the investors won’t get such good returns but the rest will
benefit from a more stable financial system.
The other option
There is one other option which I can’t claim credit for, and that is the shock treatment of a “Fight Club” scenario… you know where they blow up all the financial buildings in one go… this would have to be effected by the military as there are numerous data centres in well fortified places; they could call it "Operation Financial Freedom" on second thought from experience I'm not sure I agree with military use of the word freedom. We could let the “bankers” rebuild their financial assets from their tax records…that would be soooo funny.
Any good?
There is
one good thing about such massive amounts of personal wealth some people have
amassed, and that is technology and luxury goods. Space tourism is soon going
to take off in a big way… no not for you or me but for them, but eventually it
will trickle down. What about those massive yacht's used to transport other yacht's... yes they exist google it! Personal aviation, etc... there are some way cool toys out there that would have never been invented were in not for such wealthy people.
I’ve given
a very brief overview, obviously generalizing and over simplifying…
If you want
to find out more, research, don’t believe a word from CNBC/Sky Business they’re behind the
curb and not where you want to ever be.
I can
recommend these books to see how the elite enjoy the billions they make:
- Richistan:
http://www.amazon.com/Richistan-Journey-Through-American-Wealth/dp/0307339262
- All the
Money in the World: http://www.amazon.com/All-Money-World-Make-Spend-Their/dp/0307266125/
Of course I
could just be talking rubbish as I have no money and all I am is programmer
recovering from a broken back. But I’ve been too scared to invest after being
burnt once by the dotcom con, and another time by a mining company collapse…
and I know that atop the pyramid exists the architect/s and if he/they
decide it’s time for a new pyramid it’s time and all I’ll be able to do is sit
back, hope for the best and marvel in the brilliance of the design… I can
almost imagine how the Egyptians felt 5,500 years ago. Godspeed fellow traveler.
Irish Maths Test
An Irishman wants a job, but the foreman won't hire him until he passes a little math test.
Here is your first question, the foreman said. "Without using numbers, represent the number 9."
"Without numbers?" The Irishman says, "Dat is easy." And proceeds to draw three trees.
"What's this?" the boss asks?
"Ave you got no brain? Tree and tree and tree make nine," says the Irishman.
"Fair enough," says the boss. "Here's your second question. Use the same rules, but this time the number is 99."
The Irishman stares into space for a while, then picks up the picture that he has just drawn and makes a smudge on each tree. "Ere you go."
The boss scratches his head and says, "How on earth do you get that to represent 99?"
"Each of da trees is dirty now. So, it's dirty tree, and dirty tree, and dirty tree. Dat is 99."
The boss is getting worried that he's going to actually have to hire this Irishman, so he says, "All right, last question. Same rules again, but represent the number 100."
The Irishman stares into space some more, then he picks up the picture again and makes a little mark at the base of each tree and says, "Ere you go. One hundred."
The boss looks at the attempt. "You must be nuts if you think that represents a hundred!"
The Irishman leans forward and points to the marks at the base of each tree and says, "A little dog come along and crap by each tree. So now you got dirty tree and a turd, dirty tree and a turd, and dirty tree and a turd, which makes one hundred."
"So, when I start?"
PEBKAC is an acronym which stands for "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair".[1] The phrase is used by computer experts as a semi-humorous[2] way to describe user errors.
Other variations are POBCAC ("Problem Occurs Between Computer and Chair"), PIBKAC ("Problem Is Between Keyboard And Chair"), PEBCAC ("Problem Exists Between Chair and Computer"), PEBMAC ("Problem Exists Between Monitor And Chair"), PEBCAK ("Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard"), or EBKAC ("Error Between Keyboard And Chair") and also PICNIC ("Problem In Chair Not In Computer"). The occasionally seen variant PEBKAM ("Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Monitor") would appear to be based on a misunderstanding or misremembrance of the phrase.
In 2006, Intel began running a number of PEBKAC web-based advertisements to promote their vPro platform. Source: Wikipedia
I am boycotting any company offering me a BS carbon offset (CO) product. This CO stuff has gone beyond stupid; the other day I saw a rather lengthy commercial for CO car insurance, WTF!
Give me a break... I'm not going to go in to detail on this public medium as I may want to enter an "environmentally conscious" country one day, but there is a concerted effort to push an agenda that is not entirely what it portrays to be.
Don't get me wrong I love the planet more than most and I do everything I can to conserve fuel, electricity, I recycle and I'm against carbon fuels (oil maybe abiotic) for transportation.
CO products have no positive impact on society except to make the consumer feel expunged from polluting. In a world where I have no option but to buy a combustion engine cars, trying to sell me CO car insurance is an insult to my intelligence.
So I'm boycotting CO products BUT I will personally go out of my way to support/endorse products which in some way aid scientific research in to alternative energy sources. If I ruled I would: - Encourage electric car production using Fuel Cell and current battery tech.
- Develop geothermal energy... drill a hole far enough into the ground and it gets hot; hot = energy; ground = everywhere... why is this so hard for people to understand?
- 1/2 military expenditure, and spend the surplus on alternative engery research. International treaty to 1/2 military expenditure would be preferable.
- 1% tax on all domestic, 2%foreign financial transactions.
There the above will give any government more than enough money to plant enough trees to make all car insurance carbon nuetral.
Sunday 23rd of September.
Beautiful sunny day.
Get a call from a friend telling me “It’s on”, it’s on means it’s a good day to fly @ Stanwell Park (NSW, Australia). Get in the car drive the 60kms, unpack my glider take to the air.
Life is good... had a couple of flights, then the wind starts going north. Can’t fly Stanwell in Northerlies.
Wind picks up and a bunch of us decide to go to “The World’s Greatest/Hill 60”... cool I’ve never flown there sounded OK. Drive down to Port Kembla.
Hill 60 looked a little dangerous. Wind had now picked up quite a bit. Saw a guy being dragged, so I decided to give it a mis.
Couple of them started going to "The World’s Greatest". The World’s Greatest is a flat beach soaring site. There's a rock shelf, some sand and shrubbs.
People in the air seemed to be having fun. It was pretty windy now. The people I drove down wind wanted to do some ground handling in a park behind, so I could either watch or fly... I decided to fly.
It was windy 17-19kt, so I had to be careful launching. It needed to be windy to fly this site as there is very little elevation (2m). My main concern was launching safely, and this is where I made the first mistake that eventually lead to the disaster I'm going to describe shortly.
The very first thing I should have done was examin the terrain and look at my options if conditions changed, and mapped out my flight plan in my head. All I did was decide to go right after launching.
Above you have the site. The red line represents my flight path, the blue lines represent areas of lift and the big arrow represents the wind direction. As you can see from the above image I didn't really get in to lift. What you can't see is there's cliff wall (3m high) towards the end where I turn around. I turned around (mistake) because I didn't know what was around the corner, and I thought it best to try and get back to lift and sand.
My options for landing were very limited, turn in to wind and risk going in the water. When I turned around I had the wind to my back, so my ground speed was +/- glider speed (38kmh) + wind speed (33kmh). On the beach there are large bolders 10-70 litres in volume. My harness/bum engaged one of those bolders, and the resulting impact fractured my back in 3 places; L2 severely fractured on all 3 columns, T4 and T5 fractured anterially, ribs 7 fractured on both sides.
Here's some CT scans.
Pre Op Left to Right CT Scan
Pre Op Front to Back CT Scan
Pre Op Top to Bottom CT Scan
Post Op Front to Back CT Scan TPS (I'm not sure if I'll beep at the airport!)
Post Op Top to Down CT Scan TPS
FAQ
1.- How do I feel now?
A: Bad; but hey shit happens and life goes on.
Update 2010-10-10: Yup it still hurts. I get cramps. I can't feel my right foot properly.
2.- Do I beep when I go through metal detectors?
A: Haven't gone through any yet.
Update 2008-5-6: I don't beep.
Update 2010-10-10: Sometimes I beep sometimes I don't, depends on the detector.
3.- You going to fly again?
A: Yes, shit doesn't always happen.
Update 2010-10-10: Haven't flown much (just 2 times)... I get scared.
4.- Don't you think paragliding is dangerous?
A: Yes, but not as dangerous as drinking Tequila.
OK... my last blog (http://ray.soho.on.net/sites/blog/default.aspx) didn't fare too well, as I was hosting it myself and inadvertently deleted the backup of the VM Ware machine that was running SharePoint and then I proceeded to trash the SharePoint site it was hosted on.
So I am now going back to my blogger blog, at least I won't have to keep my server running :).
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