How has SCUBA spilled into other parts of your life?

[Fishstiq]

Bought a car that looks like an armadillo because it can haul lots of dive gear and I can sleep in it on overnight dive trips.
Bought a camera based on housing availability.
Going on a fishing trip with my dad soon, thinking about diving the lake we're going to.
Got one of those detachable shower thingies for gear rinsing.
I pay an extra $100 per month for a place to store dive gear.
Overtime at work is my dive gear fund.

Hi, I'm Joe and I'm addicted to diving in a way that makes Heroin addicts uncomfortable. :hello2:

[stillhope]

What a fun thread! I wish I had a more fun answer.

I used to dive a lot. So much, I quit my job and decided to show non-divers what it was like underwater. I thought I'd help make more people aware of the stewardship necessary to keep our waters healthy. Nice thought.

Maybe I'm doing that some, but instead of diving, I'm spending most of my time chained to a box of semi-conductors and tiny magnets, exercising not much more than my fingers as they peck at little plastic letters trying to find new material for my TV show, sponsors, contract jobs, lining up speaking engagements, or trying to teach this recluse how to schmooze and promote stuff to the public.

I think I've gone over the edge. But if I don't do it, who will?

H
e
l
p
!!!

Fortunately, every now and again someone like Valerie or Dan Hershman call me out of my cave to dive, and I get another great story on camera. Thanks all!

[nwscubamom]

When we were looking at purchasing a new Subaru awhile back (in addition to an older model we still have), we were measuring the width in the back to make sure it still fit our 4 tanks and weight buckets across. We had it exactly apportioned out for our gear. We were quite dismayed that it was a few inches less than the older model and the weight bins would no longer fit, but we made it work.

We were also concerned because first thing I do when shore diving is take the key that's on my BC and go unlock the back tailgate to set my dive gear down. Well, the new Soob had no lock on the back tailgate! You had to go in through the front door! Not only that, but it had a fancy schmancy key that you can't take underwater with you. So we had to have a dummy key made, that will go underwater and unlock the front door, so you can then unlock the tailgate. A real pain.

OK, also I now know how to equalize effectively on airplane flights!! Finally after years of torture, and all the swallowing and wiggling in the world wouldn't help me, the Valsalva manuever works for me on airplanes and I am finally comfortable with my poor ears.

When I'm motorcycling with other divers we use hand on the helmet to communicate. Or in cars, same thing. (sans helmet)

My grandchildren know most sealife names and all the parts of a fish. Our favorite stories we read to them revolve around "Scuba Drivers" as the 4 year old calls 'em. Shark books are a big hit.

My light-of-choice on night walks is the UK MiniQ40 LED.

After being a glasses wearer for 40 years, I got contacts, then laser surgery so I could dive without a prescription mask.

When I get in the car I remind myself to 'check my gauges' - and sometimes realize I'm getting near empty!

I'm going to hit the big 5-0 this year, and wonder how many good years of diving I have left in my life...

- Janna

[WylerBear]

I'm going to hit the big 5-0 this year, and wonder how many good years of diving I have left in my life...

- Janna

Many, many more years, J (I'm planning on diving well into my 70's and I'm sure you'll be right there with me.)

Anyway back to the subject, along with many of the things mentioned here, it is very unusual to find me not sporting some type of dive T-shirt. Jeans and T-shirts have been my apparel of choice since college and I acquire LOTS of crew T-shirts from all sorts of bands and other performers at my job. Those shirts get donated and dive shirts are what I wear almost exclusively. Good thing I literally have 3 drawers full of them now.

[dwashbur]

ONLY 50? I didn't start diving until I was 52, so you're just a kid! It's not how old you are, it's how old you act. If you don't believe me, ask Dusty2 about his favorite dive buddy.

[TCWestby]

Any future vehicle purchase I look at gearing up convenience. I embarras my kids at school when they are way off making give me the big OK sign, I get that you';re such a dork look.

[Zen Diver]

... Those shirts get donated and dive shirts are what I wear almost exclusively. Good thing I literally have 3 drawers full of them now.

I forgot about apparel! I did not have ONE ball cap in the Before Time; last week I had to make an over-the-door thing to store them (all 27) as I got tired of them continually falling and piling up. And t-shirts? When I travel I try to wear a less favorite non-diving shirt so I can leave it behind, thereby making room for a new Dive Shirt, and aleviating the guilt that I really didn't need "another" shirt.

[Sounder]

... Those shirts get donated and dive shirts are what I wear almost exclusively. Good thing I literally have 3 drawers full of them now.

I forgot about apparel! I did not have ONE ball cap in the Before Time; last week I had to make an over-the-door thing to store them (all 27) as I got tired of them continually falling and piling up. And t-shirts? When I travel I try to wear a less favorite non-diving shirt so I can leave it behind, thereby making room for a new Dive Shirt, and aleviating the guilt that I really didn't need "another" shirt.

Mrs. Sounder tells me I need to get rid of one old shirt when I get a new shirt so that my drawers don't get to where all my shirts won't fit. She's losing this battle, and virtually all of my t-shirts have something to do with diving.

[Grateful Diver]

And t-shirts? When I travel I try to wear a less favorite non-diving shirt so I can leave it behind, thereby making room for a new Dive Shirt, and aleviating the guilt that I really didn't need "another" shirt.

LOL - that's EXACTLY what I did on my Indonesian trip ... I've got two drawers full of diving t-shirts, and can't buy a new one without making space for it.

I also "donated" one of my diving "ball" caps when I purchased a new one in Tulamben ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

[dwashbur]

I made several of my own shirts. My favorite one has a picture of me in my wetsuit, standing next to my gear, except I have a cartoon head that's looking rather embarrassed. It says "Don't stand too close: I'm OFFGASSING!"

[lamont]

I'm turning into George Irvine III at work...

The worst problem that we have at work are people trying to be way too damn clever for their own good. They come up with architectures that have everything and the kitchen sink thrown into them in order to work around perceived rather than actual problems. They don't consider the law of unintended consequences. Sure you might lose an access switch and lose a pile of machines, but typically you're redundant across switches due to horizontal scaling of your severs. So trying to introduce bonding to multiple switches increases your port count and you switch cost, while introducing the use of the kernel bonding driver, generally with no thought given to the much higher risk of failure of the bonding driver itself, without doing testing to determine what are stable versions of the bonding driver, without assigning any ownership of someone with the actual spare time available to maintain and bugfix that driver. Clever junk which screws you over in the end. Most of these problems can be solved by very old school well-known methodologies which don't introduce new problems associated with the new, sometimes largely untested technology.

Similarly, doing clever engineering on the latest newest deployment while not bringing older environments along and upgrading them in the process leads to complete lack of operational standardization. When incidents happen the "latest and greatest" becomes a liability to MTTR because the operational people don't have the reflexes to know where to go to fix the problem. They're not familiar with the bonding, or the vlanning, or the virtual firewalls, or whatever clever stuff is in the "latest and greatest" design of the week. The really hard problem that needs to be solved by actual Architects that are trying to get a job done (or "go downtown") is to bring the entire archictecture, including most of the legacy systems along to the new architecture while also bringing the whole organization and the operational groups in particular along. Being on the same page is absolutely vital.

[Joshua Smith]

I'm turning into George Irvine III at work...

The worst problem that we have at work are people trying to be way too damn clever for their own good. They come up with architectures that have everything and the kitchen sink thrown into them in order to work around perceived rather than actual problems. They don't consider the law of unintended consequences. Sure you might lose an access switch and lose a pile of machines, but typically you're redundant across switches due to horizontal scaling of your severs. So trying to introduce bonding to multiple switches increases your port count and you switch cost, while introducing the use of the kernel bonding driver, generally with no thought given to the much higher risk of failure of the bonding driver itself, without doing testing to determine what are stable versions of the bonding driver, without assigning any ownership of someone with the actual spare time available to maintain and bugfix that driver. Clever junk which screws you over in the end. Most of these problems can be solved by very old school well-known methodologies which don't introduce new problems associated with the new, sometimes largely untested technology.

Similarly, doing clever engineering on the latest newest deployment while not bringing older environments along and upgrading them in the process leads to complete lack of operational standardization. When incidents happen the "latest and greatest" becomes a liability to MTTR because the operational people don't have the reflexes to know where to go to fix the problem. They're not familiar with the bonding, or the vlanning, or the virtual firewalls, or whatever clever stuff is in the "latest and greatest" design of the week. The really hard problem that needs to be solved by actual Architects that are trying to get a job done (or "go downtown") is to bring the entire archictecture, including most of the legacy systems along to the new architecture while also bringing the whole organization and the operational groups in particular along. Being on the same page is absolutely vital.

I didn't understand much of that. But I have a feeling it's kind of like the time a PITA architect wanted to "increase the vocabulary of the fenestrations" on a house I was remodeling by having me add a French door into a room......when I told him that the door he specified was 82 inches tall, and that the room was 78 inches tall, he looked at me like I was an idiot and told me to cut it down to fit. I countered by explaining that this was an Aluminum-clad door, and that, yeah, sure, I could cut it to fit, but nobody would be particularly pleased with the end product...he got mad and said something about how nobody understood his "vision"........

[Pez7378]

I don't know what either of you just said. Hang on, I'll drink another beer and try again..........................

[WylerBear]

I'm turning into George Irvine III at work...

The worst problem that we have at work are people trying to be way too damn clever for their own good. They come up with architectures that have everything and the kitchen sink thrown into them in order to work around perceived rather than actual problems. They don't consider the law of unintended consequences. Sure you might lose an access switch and lose a pile of machines, but typically you're redundant across switches due to horizontal scaling of your severs. So trying to introduce bonding to multiple switches increases your port count and you switch cost, while introducing the use of the kernel bonding driver, generally with no thought given to the much higher risk of failure of the bonding driver itself, without doing testing to determine what are stable versions of the bonding driver, without assigning any ownership of someone with the actual spare time available to maintain and bugfix that driver. Clever junk which screws you over in the end. Most of these problems can be solved by very old school well-known methodologies which don't introduce new problems associated with the new, sometimes largely untested technology.

Similarly, doing clever engineering on the latest newest deployment while not bringing older environments along and upgrading them in the process leads to complete lack of operational standardization. When incidents happen the "latest and greatest" becomes a liability to MTTR because the operational people don't have the reflexes to know where to go to fix the problem. They're not familiar with the bonding, or the vlanning, or the virtual firewalls, or whatever clever stuff is in the "latest and greatest" design of the week. The really hard problem that needs to be solved by actual Architects that are trying to get a job done (or "go downtown") is to bring the entire archictecture, including most of the legacy systems along to the new architecture while also bringing the whole organization and the operational groups in particular along. Being on the same page is absolutely vital.

Does any of this relate to diving? I'm kind of lost.

[Pez7378]

I'm turning into George Irvine III at work...

The worst problem that we have at work are people trying to be way too damn clever for their own good. They come up with architectures that have everything and the kitchen sink thrown into them in order to work around perceived rather than actual problems. They don't consider the law of unintended consequences. Sure you might lose an access switch and lose a pile of machines, but typically you're redundant across switches due to horizontal scaling of your severs. So trying to introduce bonding to multiple switches increases your port count and you switch cost, while introducing the use of the kernel bonding driver, generally with no thought given to the much higher risk of failure of the bonding driver itself, without doing testing to determine what are stable versions of the bonding driver, without assigning any ownership of someone with the actual spare time available to maintain and bugfix that driver. Clever junk which screws you over in the end. Most of these problems can be solved by very old school well-known methodologies which don't introduce new problems associated with the new, sometimes largely untested technology.

Similarly, doing clever engineering on the latest newest deployment while not bringing older environments along and upgrading them in the process leads to complete lack of operational standardization. When incidents happen the "latest and greatest" becomes a liability to MTTR because the operational people don't have the reflexes to know where to go to fix the problem. They're not familiar with the bonding, or the vlanning, or the virtual firewalls, or whatever clever stuff is in the "latest and greatest" design of the week. The really hard problem that needs to be solved by actual Architects that are trying to get a job done (or "go downtown") is to bring the entire archictecture, including most of the legacy systems along to the new architecture while also bringing the whole organization and the operational groups in particular along. Being on the same page is absolutely vital.

Does any of this relate to diving? I'm kind of lost.

okay weird, I just finished another beer and I think I get it, Lamont was referencing the fact that GI III, however complicated a man he may be, simply believes that "EVERYONE MUST BE ON THE SAME PAGE".

Lamont thinks he is behaving more and more like GI III because he wants the architects and whoever to get their act together and come up with a standard way of doing what they do. Read the first sentance, and the last.

[WylerBear]

Thanks, Pez, that sort of clears things up a bit.

[lamont]

Does any of this relate to diving? I'm kind of lost.

okay weird, I just finished another beer and I think I get it, Lamont was referencing the fact that GI III, however complicated a man he may be, simply believes that "EVERYONE MUST BE ON THE SAME PAGE".

Lamont thinks he is behaving more and more like GI III because he wants the architects and whoever to get their act together and come up with a standard way of doing what they do. Read the first sentance, and the last.

I'm starting to see more and more parallels between the attitudes you need to not die 20,000 feet back in a cave and to keep 20,000 servers running. I'm also seeing parallel mistakes in attitude, like being overly clever, which backfire in both situations. I'm also, on occasion, gradually understanding where GI3 gets his pissy attitude from...

[airsix]

I think what Lamont meant is that like GI3, he believes in only solving REAL problems (with straight-forward simple solutions) rather than introducing complicated failure-prone systems meant to solve made-up problems.

At least that's how I interpreted GI3's philosophy as I listened to him on my iPod today. Is George Irvine on my iPod a sign that scuba has spilled into other part of my life? he he he

-Ben

[camerone]

At least that's how I interpreted GI3's philosophy as I listened to him on my iPod today. Is George Irvine on my iPod a sign that scuba has spilled into other part of my life? he he he

Depends. Only if you've deliberately got an all-black iPod, I think

Lesse... In my case - I've managed to turn a house with a 3 car garage into a "two car" garage, just to have room for dive gear and a couple of workbenches...and I'm wondering how to get a concrete "pan" poured for a shower in the garage to make gear rinsing easier. Criteria for my next house is warm water and good drain available, in the garage, without having to tap the water heater drain, just so that I don't have to drag out a garden hose when I'm done.

When I had the kitchen remodelled, and the electrician was out, we talked about putting a 220V outlet in the garage, just for a compressor... nothing about the new pendants, how I wanted the breakers set up for the new circuits, etc...just "do I have space in the box to run a new 220 line for a compressor?"

I now get my hair cut shorter than I used to so it doesn't look so funny coming out of a wet hood after diving. Seriously...

...and my next car has to be able to fit a T-bottle neatly strapped down for those extended trips out to the coast or along the strait where gas fills become a problem.

[dwashbur]

I wore a mustache for 30 years. When I decided to get into diving, I got rid of it because I knew it would make my mask leak.

[Cera]

I love this thread!!

Ok.. here goes..
Not only did I meet my husband in dive class, I met 3 of my best friends there too.. I have met all of you people (and for some reason occasionally 'hang-out' with you too!)

Our last car we bought had to fit scuba gear and dive buddies, and the first purchase we made for it was a waterproof lining so our wet gear won't ruin the carpet (its a four-runner).

I have had at least 3 haircuts due to scuba related hair issues..

Our honeymoon and all subsequent trips have been planned based on divablility of the location.

My husband and I planned our pregnancy around our dive vacations.

While re--plumbing our house we installed a warm water faucet outside to rinse gear..

We have a scuba section of our garage (much bigger than the remaining non-scuba sections)

Our 'lottery winnings dreams' always revolve around compressors, boats, gear and diving vacations..

I got eye-surgery so that I wouldn't have to deal with prescription masks or contacts.

Everytime I see water my first thought is I wonder how the visibility is and what is down there?

Our dog's name is Salty...

I could go on forever...

[Dusty2]

My light-of-choice on night walks is the UK MiniQ40 LED.

I'm going to hit the big 5-0 this year, and wonder how many good years of diving I have left in my life...

- Janna

Isn't it cool you always have a flashlight that actually works! Non divers can't say that

Fear not Jana, Your still a youngun, I'll be 65 in another couple of months and dad will be eightyone. I did 156 dives last year and dad just hit 200. There is hope if ya get past thinkin yor too old. As the wise man said your only to old if you think you are!

As for the question--- What life outside of scuba????? More than a few days without diving and I start going thru withdrawl. The only thing I can think of is if I'm thinkin about a new camera it has to have an U/W housing available.

[Tom Nic]

I'm going to hit the big 5-0 this year, and wonder how many good years of diving I have left in my life...

- Janna

Fear not Jana, Your still a youngun, I'll be 65 in another couple of months and dad will be eightyone. I did 156 dives last year and dad just hit 200. There is hope if ya get past thinkin yor too old. As the wise man said your only to old if you think you are!

Thanks for the story, Dusty. 81 and diving! Wow! That is awesome! ...and encouraging for those of us who came to scuba late in our lives and hope to continue for many years. Hey, that nitrox has to be good for something, eh? :rr: (BTW, is that 200 total dives for dad or 200 this year?!)

[gcbryan]

Scuba diving has made me much more aware of marine life and marine eco problems. It has given me reasons to travel to areas of the PNW that while scenic wouldn't necessarily justify a trip were scuba not involved. It has created a desire to learn more about oceanography. It has made me appreciate rock climbing since by comparison there is much less gear involved! It's caused me to make friends that I wouldn't have otherwise.

[dwashbur]

I'm going to hit the big 5-0 this year, and wonder how many good years of diving I have left in my life...

- Janna

Fear not Jana, Your still a youngun, I'll be 65 in another couple of months and dad will be eightyone. I did 156 dives last year and dad just hit 200. There is hope if ya get past thinkin yor too old. As the wise man said your only to old if you think you are!

Thanks for the story, Dusty. 81 and diving! Wow! That is awesome! ...and encouraging for those of us who came to scuba late in our lives and hope to continue for many years. Hey, that nitrox has to be good for something, eh? :rr: (BTW, is that 200 total dives for dad or 200 this year?!)

And if you get the chance to dive with him, take it. He's a blast! (So is Dusty, for that matter, but we're talking about his dad.)