Sunday, 6 July 2008

Jump Level 7: New Twists

On Level 7 one will exit the door facing backwards looking a tail of the airplane. Through stretching the legs one makes a back flip. So the exit was not problem and I could recover into a stable position much quicker than yesterday. Then I had to do a barrel which is a turn around one's axis by pulling in an arm. Finally I has to perform what is called a track meaning I stretch my legs, pull my arms back until I look like an arrow. My jump master told me that I was too fast for him to follow. Looking at the altimeter right afterwards I already passed 6,000 feet and was on   keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 10:30 AM in Adventures in Skydiving

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Saturday, 5 July 2008

Jump Level 6: Off the "Training Wheels" Went

Jump Level 6 was the same jump as Level 5 except that I exited the plane without the jump master holding onto my gear. This meant that I had to stabilize myself after the exit which took some efforts to keep relaxed. Afterwards I took some left and right 360 degrees turns which were quite simple and did not pose any challenge. The rest of the jump including the landing were simple and I had no problems whatsoever.

Next Jump will be a challenge because there I am deliberately made unstable and I have to recover from it. This starts with a "scuba diver" style exit, followed by a keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 3:44 PM in Adventures in Skydiving

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Thursday, 3 July 2008

Another Mouth to Feed: Marcus Schaefer

After a sleepless night Marcus was born this morning 7/3/08 at 7:51. He weighted 8lb and was 21'' tall. He and his mother are feeling great and recover from the stress. I am sleeping a few minutes here and a few minutes there which does not really help to recover but that will take some time anyhow. Maybe the 4th of July will give a chance to sleep a few hours during the day even though I don't like to do that at all.

Beside a relative simple delivery we had the fortunate that Marcus was born in his amniotic sac which is rare and many see that as a sign of luck.

Next Stop: Joy  keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 4:47 PM in Open-Source

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Monday, 30 June 2008

Jump Level 4 and 5

Slowly but surely I am becoming an independent skydiver progressing in the first part of the certification. Up to Jump 8 (or AFF Level 8) I jump with two or one jump master. After that I am able to jump solo only guided by a coach. Still every higher level is giving me a little bit more freedom and more tasks to perform like checking the gear, do more advanced programs during free fall and even during the landing.

So level 4 programs (dive flow) was less than level 3 but I was let go earlier. Unfortunately I somehow got the idea that I need to turn which caught my jump master off gua  keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 8:12 PM in Adventures in Skydiving

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Friday, 27 June 2008

Third Jump this Morning

Another day another jump. This morning I had my level 3 jump which means that I did not have to do much but the jump masters would let go of me after I was stable and did the initial checks and the practice touch (touching the puller that will pull the chute open went pulled out). My master jump master was confident enough to move in front of me leaving my side meaning I did good. So next jump will be the same but with only one jump master and we will jump out backwards and not side ways as we did up to know.

Have fun - Andy

Posted by schaefera at 10:40 AM in Personal

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Thursday, 26 June 2008

A License, Second Jump and Thoughts about Risks

Yesterday I decided after all the adrenalin cleared my body that I love Skydiving and that I want to make the A license to become a certified skydiver. So today I was back at the Drop Zone for my second jump which was more or less the same drill just with turns rather than forward movement which is more exiting because going forward is hard to judge on 8,000 feet and 120 miles free fall but a turn is quick and noticeable. The jump went through quite well even though I have to make sure that reading the altimeter is not glancing at it but really understand what it means and to read it right. Around 6,000 feet I oversaw the altitude and later on 5,500 I though we are still at 6,500 because the altimeter runs counter-clockwise. After I saw the needle move I realized the mistake and pulled the chute.

  keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 3:58 PM in Personal

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Rip a DVD to post on Dot Mac

For my folks back home I wanted to put the video from my first jump on Dot Mac so that they can watch it over the Internet. Unfortunately this was a longer undertaking that expected. Anyhow I finally succeeded with some help from the folks at the sky diving school. ATTENTION: this is not an invitation to publish copyrighted material / DVDs but rather to convert material legally even though the entertainment industry has a quite corrupted view of that but that is another story, isn't it.

First, I downloaded keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 12:28 PM in Mac

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Wednesday, 25 June 2008

Jumping out of a Perfectly Good Airplane

Today I got an early Birthday present in form of a jump out of a perfectly good airplane at around 12,500 feet above ground. Living in Lake Elsinore, California, has the advantage that there is a Skydiving facility just around the corner.

Yesterday I took the First Jump Course lessons which ends with a jump but because of strong winds that was not possible. Therefore this morning I was at the facility bright and early to take the first plane. There I met my jump master which went through the procedures of the first jump several times. Eventually it was time to gear up and to rehears the jump again:

  keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 12:42 PM in Personal

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Sunday, 22 June 2008

The Clock is Ticking

Sorry for not blogging quite some time. First I was busy with the j-community.org site and then my wife started to building a nest for our forth son which is due by the end of the month. I, due to some experience, am still relaxed because the baby will be two weeks late like all the others. But one never knows and so I let my wife do what she has to do. So far everything goes nearly as smooth as glass and we are looking forward to our first, and hopefully last, home birth. My wife's sister is here helping us with the kids and to make sur  keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 9:02 PM in Personal

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Sunday, 15 June 2008

Announcement: j-community.org launched

After a long time thinking on how to build a stronger Java Community in Los Angeles I started the new LA Java Community website. It is a social networking site for Java (and all Java related technologies) developers in Los Angeles (but , of course, also from outsiders are welcomed). It should bridge the gap between the JUGs in LA and the broad and widely scattered Java developers community. All of the JUGs in LA, as far as I know, have less than 100 attendees per meeting which is only a little slice with respect to the thousands and thousands of Java developers. With the high gas prices this will not change in the near future.

Every Java developer registering at:

http://j-community.org

can have their own public and community private web site, own blog, add or change content on the community websites. The only rules are to show basic etiquette and no commercial exploitation. Other than that the sky is the limit, well, as much as my server can take for now.

Consider this an invitation to join and to become a member which is free with no strings attached.

Have fun and see you there soon - Andy

  keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 9:22 PM in Community

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Wednesday, 4 June 2008

Evaluation of Liferay

Since quite some time I am thinking about changing our Content Management System (CMS) which is currently Magnolia. I still like it but I would love to have all the communication channels I currently use or indent to use in the future into one single CMS. Magnolia does not support Blogs and Wikis and I desperately need to look for a new blogging software because Blojsom seems to be dead. After looking into Drupal, Joomla and TikiWiki I finally stumbled over Liferay which looked promising. Drupal was too blog centric, Joomla was to commercial (at least getting templates) and TikiWiki was too, well, wiki centric.

  keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 11:34 PM in Madplanet.com Inc.

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Friday, 30 May 2008

Welcome Sid as Our Newest Blogger

Siddharth Chhabra is our newest blogger and you can visit his blog here. He started with an introduction into the Log4J SMTPAppender which lets you send logging statements in an email. I hope you like it as much as I do and I am looking forward to read more from him.

Over the last few years I discovered that writing a technical blog is a good way to show one's knowledge as well as communication skills. At the beginning I blogged regularly at Java.net but then started to focus more on my own blog because it is time consuming to w  keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 11:11 PM in Personal

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Wednesday, 21 May 2008

Another WTF Moment brought to you this time from Spring Framework

I had to configure some spring configuration files and one request was that the properties should be extracted into a separate properties file so that a user can change them without messing around with XML. Looking into Spring that seemed to be quite easily to achieve and so I started adjusting the configuration file which contained this snippet:


    <bean id="propertyPlaceholder"
        class="org.springframework.beans.\
            factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
       <property name="location"
            value="classpath:ldap/authenticationConfiguration.properties"/>
    </bean>
  keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 8:04 PM in Java

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Saturday, 17 May 2008

I joined Twitter

As you may noticed on the right hand side I joined Twitter and you can find me under Bad_Andy or Andy Schaefer if you join twitter and then search for me. You might even use the link at the bottom on the little Flash Widget on the right hand side which will post to you my latest update.

I hope to hear from you guys even more often - Andy

Posted by schaefera at 2:47 PM in Personal

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Friday, 16 May 2008

Continuing NetBeans Problems

First and foremost I have to admit this is the first time I do a Swing Application with an IDE and therefore I could well be that the other IDEs like IntelliJ and Eclipse have their own share of problems. That said I find some of the nasty features of NetBeans quite appalling and they let me waste quite some time. Slowly I start to understand how it should be done and therefore can avoid some of the problems but most of these problems should not arise in the first place because it makes the developer's job more difficult than easier.

  keep on reading here

Posted by schaefera at 7:11 PM in Java

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