JayB

I don't have time to address everything in one shot, but when the ECB and BOJ raise rates that, in conjunction with the FED actions, should tighten lending standards on the front side, and dry up some of the oceans of liquidity that the disparity between ECB and BOJ rates have brought into the MBS market by means of the carry trade, which should help to contain one of the primary symptoms of the asset/credit bubble that you were talking about. Ending tarriffs and subsidies alone wouldn't erase the deficit, but over the long term it'd have a significant impact on economic growth, as every billion that gets wasted growing surplus crops that can be produced more cheaply elsewhere - sugar and cotton are great examples - could be either diverted to more productive uses like infrastructure spending or kept out of the government's hands all together. On the whole I'm less concerned about spending for this program or that program than I am about the percent of GDP that's extracted to fund the government. Somewhere there's a level that optimizes both economic growth and government revenue, and that seems like a reasonable goal to shoot for, but if I had to err on one side I'd definitely favor erring on the side of economic growth. As far as the pampering goes - we should compare work histories. When I was 16 years old I was spending 40-50 hours a week working swing/graveyard shifts as dishwasher, and got to do things like clean-up oceans of puke off of toilet fixtures at 3:00AM, then trying to talk the depressed, 35-year old alcoholic coworker that lived with his Mom out of committing suicide that night. Fun stuff.

Fuck that. I'd hang with any of those croissant-munchers over that wanker any day. Work is a necessary evil, and the less work is necessary, the better. JayB, you go back to dutifully fellating your employer as a gesture of your thanks for the high privilege of occupying one of said person's fine cubicles. [i'm significantly more important than you because I work in a laboratory, and I am afraid there is a communist or group of communists hiding under my bed waiting to share something of mine while I sleep.] But, so, like, you're not denying the employer-fellating, then. Smashing. So, do you occaisionally steal pens and logo items and stationary from the office to convince yourself that you aren't "one of them," and that despite appearances, you are monkeywrenching this whole capitalism thing.....one stapler at a time?

Higher interest rates should take care of 2/3 of those problems. Other than that, I'd eliminate all subsidies and tarriffs, scrap the minimum wage, eliminate the tax deduction for employer sponsored health care and transfer the deduction to individuals for HSA contributions, reduce the capital gains tax to zero, phase out the mortgage interest deduction, raise the maxiumum contributions for Roths and 401(K)'s, eliminate all legislation that forces governments to pay inflated union rates for work that the taxpayers foot the bill for, make every state a right-to-work state, outlaw unions for public employees, and get the line-item veto going for appropriations bills.

To be fair, that picture better sums up JayB Way better muscle tone, less hair, and I hold out for Tacoma's with 33's, airlockers, and a couple of inches of body lift.

Fuck that. I'd hang with any of those croissant-munchers over that wanker any day. Work is a necessary evil, and the less work is necessary, the better. JayB, you go back to dutifully fellating your employer as a gesture of your thanks for the high privilege of occupying one of said person's fine cubicles. I actually work in basic research, and I've been spending the past few months developing a fast, cheap way to identify compounds that disrupt a hitherto unexploited weakness in the HIV lifecycle. I suspect that you've logged a hell of a lot more time inside the cube than I have. Hopefully listening to punk music and sipping organic, fair-trade coffee from the Che' mug soothes the pain somewhat. "Fight the power!!!!!" Less work is better if you can afford it, but the end result of the policies the folks are marching on behalf of is no work. Give that one a try and see how it goes. You might have to downgrade to Folgers crystals after a couple of months!!

I built one of these Equalette anchors using the rail on my mantle. Let's call the anchor points arrayed horizontally from left to right, A, B, C and D. What I found is that once the anchor is equalized by adjustment of the clove hitches, any movement to the left will begin to put all the load on B and D. Movement to the right will begin to load up A and C. If A and B are vertical and C and D are also vertical in a square configuration, the anchor is now perfectly equalizing in the horizontal plane, but now it no longer equalizes in the vertical plane. If A, B, C and D are linear in a vertical array then you have the opposite of the first case. That is perfect equalization in the horizontal plane by virtue of "pivot", but imperfect equalization in the vertical plane. The last case is A and B horizontal with C and D also horizontal below A and B, again in a square configuration. This would be the best of all because self-equalization is more important in the vertical plane. Horizontal equalization can be built into the system statically because it is easier to anticipate direction in that plane. Oh, crap, now I've done it. That was way too technical. What is the take home message for the Equalette? That if you build it in a single linear crack, put the pieces that "share a knot" relatively close to one another. So are you saying that when the pieces are in a horizontal crack you can move up and down and not mess-up the equalization, and when they are in a vertical crack you can move from side to side and not mess up the equalization? The main take-away that I've got from the rc.com thread is that cordalettes actually don't equalize worth shit, and no one noticed until now because no one bothered to do any testing, and most people can climb for a lifetime and not have one of their anchors tested by a factor 2 fall. That, and the equalette thingy isn't perfect, but it tests way better than the cordalette nd doesn't take any more time to rig. I also rigged up the gordolette thingy from the rc.com thread, and that also seems to do a good job of equalizing loads and keeping shock-loading to a minimum of one of the pieces blows. FWIW I climb on doubles most of the time now, unless there's some reason to do otherwise I just clove hitch one rope to the most bomber piece, connect the other two with a tied-off sliding-X, and clove hitch the other rope to those two and I'm done. If I'm climbing with someone who will have a hard time following the pitch, or the next pitch looks burly, sketchy, or whatever then I'll rig up something and belay from the anchor.

Interesting. Thanks for posting that, and I appreciate you wading through the spray to provide your input. Couple of questions: - What's the downside of just putting a twist in one of the loops that forms the powerpoint and clipping into that, a la the normal sliding X? -Are those figure eights or overhand knots that the biners are clipped to?

Wow. Great story and killer pictures. Thanks for sharing. What month is prime time for Valdez ice? Seems like March might be a pretty good compromise between cold temps and adequate daylight.

Just rigged up the equalette at home - pretty impressive. Stayed just about perfectly equalized through at least 180 degrees of rotation, and set up just about as quickly as a cordalette. Maybe there is something new under the sun.

I thought that JosephH's last post was pretty damned funny, myself. I think that the likes of Pope and Dwayner or their equivalents rolling up to the average bouldering hotspot and hanging out would send most of the pad-people fleeing into the mountains for some peace and solitude.

It's pretty clear that what's ailing the French economy is the dearth of regulations that employers have to abide by. They've been pretty consistent in saying that if you increase the cost, regulatory burden, and risk associated with bringing on more employees by making it tougher for us to get rid of non-performers - we'll go on a huge-ass hiring binge, especially young people who have no experience. Couple that with laws that raise the price of unskilled labor above the amount of revenue that employers can generate with the said labor so they loose money every minute the folks in that skill bracket are working for them and you've got a surefire way to tackle the massive unemployment problem facing French youth - currently 20% across the board and way higher amongst the types responsible for last years giant Car-B-Que. Smart.

"It means that when I do get a job I will basically have to work as hard as I can to keep it. If I make any mistakes I could be fired immediately. This will affect me severely, so I have taken to the streets. " To the Barricades, mes amis!!!! BBC News I suppose this shouldn't come as much of a surprise when coming from a country where people believe that mandating a 35 hour workweek will actually reduce unemployment.

I just wanted to point out something, in case it isn't obvious to everyone. This method of using a cordellette has the advantage that since the legs are single, rather than double, you have more cord available to incorporate more than the usual three pieces into the anchor. Brian, Brian, Brian - let's keep the on-topic out of this thread, lest it discourage others from contributing any more of the hillarious and useful one-liners.

Not bad. Thanks.

How far south of Seattle is the office? Is it more important to have a short commute to the office or an easy trip to the airport? I think you'll definitely get more house for your money as you go further south, but the flipside is that your commute to work will suck more and more if your office is anywhere close to downtown Seattle.

Excellent. Thanks for that contribution. What I actually wanted was a forum for people to recycle weak-ass one-liners, and it's clear that the best way to do that is to at least appear to ask a real question. The "Should I retire this cam?"------> "Yes send all of your cams to me for immediate demolition, har, har" dynamic, while classic, was clearly showing its age. Sadly, this attempt at weak-ass one liner solicitation hasn't yielded much in the way of new material yet, but I have high hopes.

I'm looking forward to the day when cc.com includes scripts that chime in with worthless shit so you never even have to touch your keyboard.

So Joseph - is this more or less the final configuration of the "equalette" that JL was talking about? To rig this thing you'd basically start with a standard cordalette, tie a couple of overhand knots near the middlen with a 1-3 foot gap between them for the sliding portion of the anchor, then take the remaining loop on each side of the knot and clove hitch the loop to one or two pieces? If I'm reading this right it doesn't seem like this would take any longer to rig up than a standard cordalette, and would have some significant advantages. I especially like the clove attachments to the anchor points as it seems like the slippage in the cloves could really help dissipate max loads.

Pretty interesting. Looks like I'll probably end up wading through the thread after all.... "Funny this should come along just now. I'm just finishing redoing the anchor books into one big anchor building omnibus. We're basically done --all that's left is a bit of editing, and incorporating a slew of drop tests we did with Sterling Ropes (conducted by America's leading drop/test dude, Jim Ewing, with statistical analysis by trad master Dr. Larry Hamilton and climber/fitness model/criminology professor, the esteemd "Crimpgirl," Dr. Callie Rennisson). The tests were to determine, once and for all, which system was better at load sharing when sustaining a dynamic fall (Factor 1 for our testing)--the Cordelette, or the Sliding X. Both rigging systems were tested when rigged to vertical and horizontally oriented anchor points. In the vertical configuration--as you find in a crack--the rigging systems have unequal sized legs; in the horizontal configured anchor (as found, for instance, with bolts placed side to side on top of a sport climb), the legs are as close to equal as they could be tied. Moreover, each set up was tested with several diameters of high tensile strength cord and webbing (Dyneema, Technora, Spectra, et al), as well as with old style nylon cord and webbing. It is still too early to release the results, but I can say right now that there is a significant difference in load sharing performance between the two systems, and much that has been written about the cordelette's equalizing capacities is strictly untrue. More later. I'm just eyeballing the graphs I got from Jim, Larry and Crimpy. At least now we finally know what's up with these systems, and that's a real good thing. JL "

Sounds to me like you might want to consider West Seattle, like toast said. Super-easy commute Seatac that'll enable you to avoid the traffic on I-5, and a reasonable commute to Kent on the days when I-5 is unavoidable, plus slightly cheaper housing and all of the amenities that you specified.

Yeah Matt- pretty much never a problem on routes that get any kind of traffic, but that's not what I had in mind. More like the early/late season alpine routes where everything is iced up or covered in snow, or you are just way the hell off route in crappy rock and you want to get a trustworthy anchor in the minimum amount of time because it's getting dark, stormy, or whatever. Most of the time you can get away with a less than sound anchor because the odds of someone uncorking a factor-2 fall on your shit anchor are pretty low, but all things being equal, I'd rather not roll the dice or spend any more time than I have to get a good anchor in. Not stuff you need to use very often, but nice to have in your toolkit when you do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah - people love to do the technowank things, and most of the time you hardly have to worry about any of this shit - but every once in a while something new pops up that seems like a genuine improvement - and I'm sure people talked endless amounts of shit about the cordalette when someone first proposed it. A while ago Mitch Merriman posted an anchor setup that seemed like a better solution than the Atomic Clip for the lead-swapping bolt anchor scenario that I've used since then. Figure-eight on a bight with a long loop clipped to one biner, with one of the strands of rope that emerges from the bottom of the knot (the "rope" side that leads to your partner) clove hitched to the other biner. The other strand leads to the knot on your harness. Fast, easy, effective. Some of the shit posted on that thread looked like an overengineered cluster-fuck, but there are times when it's worth it to me to invest some extra time in equalizing an anchor, and if there's a better way to do that - e.g. simpler and more effective - then it's worth asking the question. Just out of curiosity Will - what's your strategy when you've got so set an anchor and all you've got is several shitty placements. I usually end up with some kind of a hybrid deal where I equallize a couple of shitty pieces on a tied off sliding-X and clip one "leg" of the cordalette to the power point between the shitty pieces, then do what I need to do to feel good about the other "leg," etc - until I feel confident that I can trust my life and my partner's life to the anchor. Seems to work, but if there's a better system out there, I'll use it.

So there's been this huge discussion of how to improve on how to combine the advantages of the cordalette and the sliding-X into a single anchor going on at RC.com. There's some interesting ideas going on over there - but I just don't think I'll be able to plow through all 50-odd pages of it anytime soon. 50 Odd Pages Here: Link Somewhere in the conversation someone mentioned something about an "equalette" that supposedly did a way better job of equalizing the forces on anchor pieces than either the sliding-X or the cordalette - anyone got a diagram of this thing? On the routes I climb it's pretty easy to get solid anchors in, but there's a better, more efficient set-up for equalizing several pieces of marginal mank that someone knows about, I'd be interested in taking a look. Looks like there's a couple of candidates in JosephH's gallery:

I have a '94 Toyota Pickup with a canopy that I leave parked except for my weekly exodus out of Boston on the weekends. Great for carrying skis, boards, kayaks, etc - and/or crashing at trailheads. And " changing the climate!!!

High oil prices will do more to encourage fuel efficiency than anything else - much more effective than sneering from behind the wheel of the volvo. Related Note - this years MPG info: Subaru Outback: 21/26 Volvo V70R AWD: 18/24 Jeep Commander 4WD: 16/19 Lexus LS 470: 18/25 Audi TT Roadster: 20/28 Honda Insight: 60/66. Dodge Caravan 18/25. Hummer H3: 16/19. Chevy Tahoe 15/19. Toyota 4-Runner 17/21. Chevy Impala 18/28. Toyota Camry 24/34. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/FEG2006.pdf