Our thoughts go out to all of those on the East Coast affected by Hurricane Sandy. If you have a kit ready to help others in this time of need, keep an eye out for your neighbors and lend aid when possible. Hang in there, stay safe and be sure to let us know how things are going.
One thing we have always found solace in knowing, is the fact that the Sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknowns have stood constant guard every second of every day since 1937.
No weather has deterred them from completing their silent patrol.
In just a few short hours, the inaugural Muster will be in full swing. Months of planning put to the test. The entire Crew is together at camp to make sure everything goes smoothly. Members from all over the country are converging at this one point to meet up with like minded individuals and practice the skill-sets we advocate on ITS Tactical.
While our attention is going to be focused on providing the best possible experience for those attending this skill building excursion, we aren’t going to leave you in the dark.
Stay tuned to Twitter and Facebook as we’ll be posting various updates throughout the Muster. We’re bummed that not everyone could make it but hopefully you’ll follow the adventure online and join in the awesomeness next year.
Editor-in-Chief’s note: This post was written by security expert U. Fridman and originally ran on his company blog, Red Teams.
A few years back, a customer asked us to test their newly installed (and very expensive) surveillance and security system. The product promised them an automated system that was so secure they wouldn’t have to place a security guard there.
After some recon we discovered that while the entrance was guarded by a very secure keypad + access card combination lock, the inside had an automated “unlock” sensor so if anyone wanted to come out, the door would unlock from the inside.
Using a high resolution night capable camera, we took photos of the door and lock. After careful review of the pictures we found out that the top and bottom of the doors were not sealed tight against the floor as we could see a tiny bit of light from there. A plan was set in motion.
Later when we arrived, we approached the door carefully and removed a piece of gear from our kit that would, hopefully, allow us to bypass the “very secure” lock: an old credit card.
We slid the old credit card under the door and… nothing.
After a few seconds we agreed that the sensor wasn’t picking the movement, maybe because we were too close to the door and sensors usually “look” a bit farther out.
We retrieved another credit card and we tied it up to a piece of metal string (essentially several springs from a pens click mechanism tied together). We pushed the card under the door again, then carefully we pushed it farther with the metal string. And farther, and farther and… voila! The motion sensor detected movement “from the inside” and unlocked the door.
We were in.
Big, expensive, digital lock defeated by an old credit card and a spring.
Editor-in-Chief’s note: This post was written by former Air Force Pararescue Jumper Nathanael Morrison of Morrison Industries.
14 October 2012 will be a day that lives inside me for the rest of my life. I have been a skydiver for 18 years. I have been a military parachutist for the same 18 years. I am a military freefall instructor and I have taught nearly every type of jumping the military does. I stopped counting my jumps at 5,000 and that was 6 years ago. I worked in the research, design, test and evaluation field off and on for many years and today I am an RDT&E consultant. I have also been an enlisted aircrew member for my entire military career. It has been my job to know human flight, high altitude parachuting, aerospace rescue and anything connected to it. On 14 Oct 2012 my world was blown sky high!
In 2005 Felix Baumgartner and Red Bull began to lay the groundwork for the project. They wanted the mission to “expand the boundaries of human flight.”
In 2007 they began recruiting the team that would execute the Stratos mission. The primary planning phase began and the capsule construction began in Lancaster, CA.
2008 saw Col. Joseph Kittinger join the Stratos team. Col. Kittinger, until a few days ago held the record for the highest freefall jump in history. He jumped from 102,800ft in 1960 wearing protective gear that was so primitive it is hard to understand how he lived through the jump. And in fact he nearly died on that and several other jumps leading up to it due to equipment choices and malfunctions. Perhaps one of the more hard core aspects (as if that’s not hard core enough!) was that his parachute was an old S-18 aircrew egress parachute and not the custom ram air canopy used these days. That means every opening and every landing sucked in a huge way!
It is important to depart hard left for a moment to explain that the reason the USAF was conducting these jumps was to conduct research and development for the USAF and NASA manned space programs. The knowledge gained led to the development of every pressure suit and space suit made between 1961 to present day. In addition, much of the technology we now take for granted was also part of this and similar programs. In those brave days you identified a need, you built something and then you tested it in real life! It was extremely dangerous work.
And speaking of that R&D effort, for the first time in history, in 2008, the David Clark Company signed on and agreed for the first time to make a space suit for a non-government entity: Felix Baumgartner.
2009 saw Felix test jumping the new suit. He had to figure out how to fly in it and how to conduct emergency procedures in it. All of this had to be re-written and practiced. His practice jumps went as high as 27,000ft. At the same time, six time Space Shuttle Crewmember and surgeon John Clark signed on as the medical director and set about refining the safety protocols. This was also when the specific design of the parachute and harness began. It had to survive the environment and the fall.
Now that sounds simplistic but it is very dangerous. All containers are not created equally. They are very specific! For example, a Vector harness is terrible for flying in a heads down attitude while the Javelin is excellent. The harness has to maintain integrity in the high-speed environment or it may not open properly and in some cases can kill the jumper in the event of a opening malfunction. The team also purchased the largest high altitude balloons ever made during this year.
In 2010 regulations in the US required Felix to obtain a “gas balloon license” if he was going to be allowed to conduct the experiment. Extensive wind tunnel testing was done to test how every piece of equipment would affect flight and stability at high speed.
2011 saw the USAF involved in testing the suit and capsule for the negative pressure environment of 120,000+ feet. It was here that the suit was certified for the purpose it was built for. Felix spent the year in rigorous physical training, psychological preparation and technical training on the equipment and systems. It is important to note that Felix discovered that he is extremely claustrophobic! It was so bad that he fled Europe to the USA where he sought out the help of sports psychologists and others to overcome his phobia. Some of this was creating an overly elaborate and detailed set of checklists to distract him from the fact that he was locked in a pressure suit in a capsule for many hours.
After intensive training and evaluation, the team then did a complete review of every piece of gear they had built or procured. Was it doing the job? Did they need to improve anything? Did they need to scrap anything. These questions could save lives in the next year.
The secret launch site and facility in Roswell, NM was finally revealed in 2012. It was a very busy 10 months! Unmanned balloon and capsule tests were completed. These were followed by the first operational test of all systems from an altitude of 71,615 feet. This was followed by another test at 97,063 feet where he achieved a speed of 536 MPH.
Then finally, on 14 October 2012, after an aborted launch attempt days earlier, Felix in the Stratos capsule ascended to 128,100ft. The only glitch we know about is a problem with the heater in the visor. Another science note that will be interesting to hear more about was the balloon’s behavior above 115,000 feet. The average ascent rate was approximately 1000 feet per minute. But above 115,000 feet instead of leveling off and stopping, it doubled its ascent speed! There is no telling how high it would have gone if they had not dumped helium from vents to stop the ascent. It may have been due to them jettisoning 60lbs of ballast earlier in the flight in order to punch through the jet stream earlier in the flight. At any rate, the capsule then began to bob and bounce slowly between 127,000 to nearly 129,000 feet but remained in that altitude bracket.
After leveling off (relatively) Felix began the egress checklist. I think his claustrophobia was kicking in because early on he sounded a little shaky when the hatch did not open. Col. Kittinger had to remind him he was still depressurizing. Then as the checklist ticked down it was obvious that Felix was being very, very careful and meticulous. He was concentrating so hard that at times he did not respond to the radio calls and instead just gave a thumbs-up.
The danger was immense. And wrong move could catch something and tear the suit. That would have been a quick and ghastly death. The concerns of this were so great that the “live” feed was actually on a 20 second delay in case tragedy struck. I don’t think I have ever been so desperate to help someone as I was at that moment and I had to constantly remind myself to breath.
Finally, standing on the step outside the capsule, Kittinger told him the guardian angels had him now. Kittinger was the only one allowed to talk to Felix through the entire flight. He trusted the man who had done it before and that bond was unbreakable. It kept Felix calm and focused. If you ask me, Kittinger was the guardian angel that day.
Felix then said a few words that we could not understand. Then he saluted the planet and said, “I’m going home now.” With that he took one tiny hop off the platform and fell, accelerating to Mach 1.24 34 seconds later. He lost control as he passed through 700 MPH entering a violent spin. But as the air became more dense below he was able to stabilize again and regain level flight. Like the hardcore paratrooper he is, he immediately called into mission control to report the spin and the problems and update everyone on how he was doing. I won’t lie, I shed a tear at that moment.
He was still falling at over 500 MPH and he was reporting data. How do you put words to that? Many of you may not understand the fact that freefall is fun between 2,500-12,500 feet. But above that, things get cold and difficult and that is at 120 MPH. It takes a ton of strength and endurance to maintain proper body position at all. But to then start analyzing information and report it back is amazing! But Felix is also part scientist. He knew that the information was important and he also knew that it is NEVER over until you are on the ground and safe. If observation instruments failed and he burned into the ground and destroyed his personal equipment, he wanted someone to know what happened. That took some guts and a clear head in an extraordinary situation.
Shortly after this he reported that his visor was badly fogged up. This is bad because he was using a wrist-mounted altimeter to determine his altitude. If you can’t see it then you can’t pull at the right altitude and it is poor performance to just let your Emergency Activation Device open the reserve for you. Initially I thought he pulled high but that was not the case. He pulled his parachute at 5,300 feet, just as planned (5000ft). The capsule had drifted a great distance from the base and there was a race for the recovery helicopters time to locate him and give him some guidance on what direction to land in.
As if everything he had done was not enough, he absolutely nailed the landing in a textbook ram air canopy stand up landing into the wind. Once the canopy had collapsed he sank to his knees and raised his arms in victory as the recovery crew gathered around him.
An amazing feat accomplished, three world records shattered and the aerospace world changed forever. But astonishingly, thousands of people looked at this event and chose to hate the people, the event and the company that did it. Irony abounds as these people used the very technology these types of experiments paved the way for, to denounce it as worthless and stupid. If this doesn’t tell us our education system is broken, I don’t know what will. Ignorance it seems knows no bounds.
But there are thousands more that genuinely don’t know and would like to know how this impacts them or the world we live in. And that is both worthy of an answer and a useful line of questioning.
As whole, we discovered many things that I have broken down into Science, Equipment, Capability and Other.
Science
Why did the balloon not level off but instead accelerate in the final phase? The lab coats will tell us more but Helium has the second most thermal conductive gas in the world so it may be that as the temperatures and solar radiation in the stratosphere increased the gas continued to expand while encountering exponentially less air resistance. That it critical to further high altitude research.
We can easily achieve Mach 1 without any physiological or anatomical issues. What about Mach 2?
We now know how to make space and pressure suits that withstand supersonic airspeeds without tearing from our bodies. This is caused when the air pressure exerted on the fabric exceeds the tensile strength of the threat and fabric. This information will be very helpful to the military aviation community.
We have truckloads of up to date atmospheric data that will help weather and aviation agencies in numerous applications.
We understand how giant balloons behave. We have never launched a balloon that large before. A lot can go wrong and we learned a lot about how to make new balloons to go even higher.
I’m not a scientist but I know a number of them and they assure me that the sheer volume of information collected from the capsule and the suit is invaluable.
Pressure suit. The advancement to the space and flight industries is huge. A suit manufactured for 121K performed perfectly at 128K. We can now make one for 150K or higher. Those suits can be worn by the pilots and crew of the next generation of reconnaissance aircraft.
Capsule. With the basic design completed and fully tested, larger capsules can be built for a wide variety of purposes. The design features will be used in the next generation of air and spacecraft.
Balloon. The balloon used is of the standard high altitude balloon design type. It’s just bigger. Now we know how the largest atmospheric balloon in the world behaves. That will help us make bigger ones to go higher, thus increasing our range and capability. There should also be some new research to make a stronger balloon because they are very fragile.
Cameras. The cameras used were astonishing. We watched this event in HD from the edge of space! Cameras do not perform well in cold or high altitude environments. The ability to build a camera and high data compression broadcast system is amazing. Consider the fact that with NASA we get only a little very low quality footage and rarely live. When these experiments were first done the film was still on… well… film! The cameras on the ground we able to see 130K feet which is remarkable. That seems like a very nice surveillance system to me. A camera that can see 24km? WOW! And I haven’t even mentioned the optical tracking stuff that is years ahead of what the military has. Well, at least that we know about…
Communications Systems. All we know is that they worked like a charm and took three years to develop. I would love to know more and the implications are obvious. I would love to know if it was a line of sight system of a SATCOM system or something else. I know of some technology that is in production that is just scary, but no word on this new system.
Commercial tracking systems. The Stratos team used a wide array of compact and micro tracking equipment. They always knew the exact coordinates of Baumgartner and the capsule. They knew the altitude, wind speed, capsule speed, jumper speed, O2 saturation, air density, air pressure and so much more. The Stratos jump was one amazingly precise operation! That sort of micro tracking package can be used in an unlimited variety of applications world wide.
Parachute. The parachute used was designed for tandem operations. It has a drogue chute, a main canopy and a reserve canopy. However, a normal tandem drogue is set over the main canopy low on the jumper’s back. This one was set over the shoulders. As a parachute instructor I am dying to learn more about this new system! It was built this way to further reduce the possibility of spinning out of control. For those of us in the parachute and aviation world, this is very exciting.
Capabilities
Transcontinental personnel delivery. Imagine if you will a large capsule with a 4-man SOF team that goes aloft in Germany. At 135K the team exits in wing sleds and crosses the sea to land in Syria. That used to sound crazy to me. Not any more… I am quite sure that with a little work we could drop people from Main and reach Europe with little effort.
Transcontinental aerial gliders. Building on the previous idea, imagine a large glider with 60+ men hoisted to that altitude for the same mission type. I have this vision of the Aliens movie and again, 2 weeks ago it seemed silly. Not anymore.
Modern day floating bases. Could you have a floating missile base manned by 4 people at 100K? Seems plausible now… As do a very wide variety of defense and surveillance systems. It’s the same type of deterrent as a submarine to many lesser countries.
That Star Trek stunt. You just saw the early development of that stunt and capability.
Higher shuttle bail out altitude. Currently if there is a problem at a given point in flight the astronauts are supposed to chop the engines and glide down to 50,000 feet before attempting a bail out maneuver that has never been adequately tested and is assumed to not work anyway. Now that minimum bailout altitude can be pushed to 130-150K and use a better bail out system. (Yes, I am well aware that the shuttle program has recently been retired)
Better astronaut/cosmonaut recovery and rescue capability. The current bail out and recovery procedures are a sham. No one expects to live through them. They have never even been realistically tested. This experiment proves that a conventional form of bail out is indeed possible and a reality. Astronauts can go into orbit knowing that at the very least they can cut the engines and get out anywhere below 150K.
Better pressure suits for high altitude pilots. We are still using the old 1960’s suits. Pilots would love to get into something modern and rated for Mach 1.24!
Better bail out methods for high altitude pilots. High altitude aircraft like the U2 use capsule ejection systems. Now the technology exists that makes a bail out at 70K an easy reality.
Better safety for space tourism. It’s real. The technology has been proven. NASA is already contracting them. This will help them design better bail out and recovery procedures.
A 150-200K jump. The ease with which the Stratos team pulled off 128K leads me to believe that a much higher jump is in the near future. A few equipment tweaks and we’re there!
Transcontinental high altitude flight. The design of the Stratos capsule will be the number one design reference for the next generation of high altitude aircraft. The dreams of high altitude supersonic commercial flight just got a lot closer to reality.
Spacecraft design. Commercial companies are subcontracted to build space hardware. As such, new revolutionary spacecraft designs will use the Stratos capsule for reference and inspiration.
High altitude tourism. Why not? A lot of people would pay for that.
Other
Extreme Sports. The folks at Red Bull Stratos believe that a new extreme sport is right around the corner. They think 50K skydiving is going to become a reality. And why not. They already have the capability to do it easily. That sort of thing would drive some very extreme innovation.
The open ended unknown. The original jump was a part of the space program and led to the current space suit designs. That type of research has given us so many things from Velcro to Post-it notes, to tang and thousands more every day items. Who can say how many new everyday items were just created and tested?
There are many things I have unintentionally missed in the list above, but I’m sure you get the idea. This was a very important event for the civilized world, science, aviation and space exploration. The ramifications will be felt for decades. I encourage everyone to keep looking up and pondering the next great adventure. It could be you next time!
This is the third post in my series on lightweight backpacking aimed at helping you reduce your overall pack weight without sacrificing any of the comfort or the necessities. In my first post I introduced you to the concept of lightweight backpacking, the benefits, how to get started, taking less stuff, and smaller amounts of things. In my second post I focused on weighing your gear, using a detailed gear tracking list, weight summaries, and the importance of keeping it up to date. How else can you know how much you are carrying if you don’t weigh your gear?
For this third installment I wanted to focus on the three pieces of gear that every backpacker must have and which collectively account for the majority of the weight you will be carrying – we call them “The Big Three” – your tent, backpack, and sleeping bag.
The Big Three
If you’ve been following this series and have completed step 1, you should have a detailed list of all of your gear with accurate weights. If you take a careful look you’ll notice that your three heaviest items are your tent, your backpack, and your sleeping bag. If you want to get serious about reducing your overall pack weight and going lighter, you’ll need to tackle the big three to achieve that. The goal is to try and get each of these items under 3 lbs each (9 lbs in total). That might sound drastic or impossible to some of you, but it’s easily achievable with todays lightweight gear – and affordable.
Unfortunately the only real way to achieve this is by purchasing alternative version of these items if yours weight too much. I wish there were some clever hack or modifications that I could share with you to let you reduce the weight of these items and save money, but that’s not gonna happen. If any one of your big three is over three pounds, it’s probably a good time to buy a new version anyway and take advantage of the improvements in build and technical materials being used today. If you time your purchases right (think end of year sales) you can pick up some great deals and save a lot of money.
Tent
Let’s start with your shelter or tent. Chances are that if you don’t own a relatively new tent it’s probably going to weigh more than our goal of 3 lbs (48 oz). If that’s the case, then it’s time you replace it with a newer version or alternative shelter. The lightest tents on the market today tend to all be either single-walled tents or tents with intreated rain flys. The fabrics used by tent manufacturers have improved so significantly in recent years that single-walled tent are just as waterproof as double-walled tents and are no longer the condensation traps they used to be.
Combined with advancements in the technical design of tents and you now have some extremely compact and lightweight options available in most of the common outdoor stores. REI, Big Agnes, Sierra Designs, and EMS are among some of the better known brands that offer one and two person options. And while we’re on the subject of tent size, unless you regularly backpack or hike with a significant other, go with a one person tent and save as much unnecessary weight as possible. Many one person tents now come with vestibules for storing your gear under cover outside of your tent.
I’m personally a big fan of using a tarp as my primary shelter. A tarp can be an extremely lightweight option (my Gossamer Gear SpinnTwinn weighs just 12 oz) but requires a little more experience to pitch properly and may not be as easy to use in as many environments or situations as a tent. Last year I really struggled with my tarp on Mt. Whitney with the high winds and rocky surface. I couldn’t drive a stake in to the ground and couldn’t get a tight pitch. As a result I had two very miserable nights of fitful sleep above 12,000 ft. Hammocks are another lightweight alternative to a tent. However, like a tarp, these require certain characteristics of your campsite (can you say trees?) in order to be used. I’d personally recommend that you invest in a quality, lightweight one-person tent and then consider going to a tarp or hammock as the next phase of going lighter if thats what you want to do.
Sleeping Bag
Next let’s talk about your sleeping bag. Again, if it weighs over 3 lbs or is so old that you can’t remember the year that you bought it, it’s probably time to replace it. There is a lot of debate among backpackers and outdoors people over what the ideal rating is for a 3 season sleeping bag. I can only tell you that based on my own personal experience of having tried many different rated bags over the years, I finally settled on a 20 degree F bag as my “go to” option for 3 season camping. A 20 degree bag is easily regulated using the zipper and your clothing choices if you want to use it in warmer temperatures.
I’d highly recommend buying a down filled bag versus a synthetic one. Down bags tend to be much lighter in weight and far more compressible than synthetic ones. Having a sleeping bag that is more compressible is important when it comes to choosing a backpack. The smaller the bag can pack down to means you can choose a pack with a smaller volume, which in turn will save you some weight.
I carry a Western Mountaineering Ultralite down bag with me that weighs 1 lb 13 oz and is rated for 20 degrees. I highly recommend WM as a quality sleeping bag manufacturer, but a bag such as this is a big investment and doesn’t come cheap ($300 -$400). A quality down sleeping bag can last you over 10 years and easily pay for itself if you take care of it, clean it properly and store it uncompressed so that you don’t ruin the loft of the down fill. Also look at some popular brands like Marmot, REI, Big Agnes, and Montbell that all have a good selection of quality affordable down bags in the $100 – $200 price range.
Backpack
Finally, we get to the last of your big three items – your backpack. I’ve deliberately left the backpack to last because you really don’t want to choose a smaller backpack until you know how much volume you’ll need for your tent and sleeping bag! Chances are that a 40L backpack will be sufficient for just about any type of trip you are planning from an overnight hike to a 6-moth thru hike of the AT. Just about every mainstream backpack manufacturer has come out with a “lightweight” (2 – 3 lbs) version of their packs to try and capitalize on the growing trend in lightweight and ultralight backpacking – which is good news for you. Some of the better known brands include GoLite, Osprey, REI, and Granite Gear.
The lightest weight backpacks are going to be the ones with a minimal internal frame or stay, or completely frameless. No more external frame backpacks please! Advancements in backpack design have resulted in innovative ways to combat the lack of internal frames such as using your ground sheet as a folded pad in the back of you pack to provide comfort, support, and rigidity. It also lets you use your ground sheet as a multi-purpose piece of gear, something we’ll look at in more detail in a future blog post as a way of further reducing your base pack weight.
Conclusion
Your tent, sleeping bag, and backpack are the three heaviest pieces of gear that you carry – don’t take my word for it, check your gear list (step 1). Reducing these three items (the big three) will have the largest impact on reducing your overall base weight. As a rule of thumb aim for getting each piece under 3 lbs. Look for off season deals on sleeping bags and tents, and consider some of the online gear swapping forums that sell lightly used gear for reasonable prices.
In my next post I’ll take a closer look at multifunction gear and reducing your base weight further by using pieces of gear for more than one purpose – double-duty.
Editor-in-Chief’s Note: Brian is an avid lightweight backpacker and author of the popular Brian’s Backpacking Blog. Originally from Southampton, England, Brian has lived in the US for over 15 years, finally settling in North Carolina. His love of the outdoors started at a very early age, almost as far back as he can remember. Now he spends as much time backpacking as his work schedule and family life will allow. Be sure to check out his blog for other great backpacking tips & tricks and gear reviews.
My phone started to ring. Was it really who I thought it was? The display said that the connection was secure but I had to be certain. We verbally verified that we were seeing the same two random words (secure authentication string) on our phones.
“skydive amulet”
The green “Secure” text appeared so we knew there was no one listening. This technology isn’t just for spooks. This is a $20 a month service you can sign up for today.
Yesterday, an app for the iPhone (Android coming soon) was released that promised to protect your privacy when calling and sending texts. Silent Circle uses TLS and ZRTP protocols to encrypt packets of your phone call across the Internet making each call secure.
http://youtu.be/txISfd-pROo
It costs $20 a month (with different plans available) and all of the data from your phone goes through a custom built encrypted network, the Silent Network, providing you with a secure line. Check out their site for a full rundown on the capabilities of the Silent Network.
The Silent Phone app handles the call side while Silent Text app encrypts and secures your text messages. In the Silent Text app, you’re even able to set a duration for the visibility of that specific text. Once it hits the time you designate, the message “burns” and disappears.
Silent Circle is careful to spell out what they do and don’t do. Of course, it’s worth noting that you have to use your best judgement when using the apps. If you are in a public place, people can still eavesdrop on your conversation.
While we are still trying out the app, the one thing that caught my eye is that the iOS app isn’t made for the larger screen of the iPhone 5. That’s probably just a problem for early adopters but it’s something I noticed right off the bat.
Does it Really Work?
While we consider ourselves a fairly techy crew at ITS, some of the specifics with this app and network are a bit foreign to us. We asked someone with more security knowledge to weigh in on Silent Circle:
“It’s a proprietary system, which means that nobody knows the real workings of it. The only choice is to trust that the company does what they claim they do, never makes any mistakes and always does the right thing. For a piece of software that is just a fun toy, that may ok, but for security software, it’s unacceptable.” As the Free Software Foundation said, “Proprietary security software is an oxymoron — if the user is not fundamentally in control of the software, the user has no security.” [0]
Furthermore: “In the cryptography world, we consider open source necessary for good security; we have for decades. Public security is always more secure than proprietary security. It’s true for cryptographic algorithms, security protocols and security source code. For us, open source isn’t just a business model; it’s smart engineering practice.”[1]
Until we get some further time behind this app to test it, we leave you with this appropriate web comic from XKCD:
Update: Some questionable practices have been brought up that are worth your time to read. Follow along through this comment thread on GitHub for the back and forth conversation.
ITS Tactical Editor-in-Chief’s note: I wanted to republish Mike’s write-up here to highlight the technology methods he used to track down his new laptop.
I was browsing Gizmodo on October 2nd and noticed they had a post with some great car photography. Looking over the gallery, the last image stood out. A picture of a laptop? That’s odd. But I read the caption for it and turns out they were running a contest. Find out where the picture was taken and win a brand new Ultrabook computer. Well, I desperately need a new laptop and I also love a good contest.
I’m in.
Just one problem… I don’t have a clue as to where this photo was taken.
Many of you know that the forum has been down for a little while and we know that because we’ve received a lot of questions as to when it would be back up. Well, today is your lucky day. For the past few weeks, we’ve been working behind the scenes on a full overhaul.
This new forum is leaps and bounds better than our old one and finally up and running. We know that a lot of you are itching to get back in and we truly appreciate your patience through the downtime.
Could there be bugs? Sure, but we’ll keep working them out to make it as awesome as possible! Read on to hear all about the new features and to see some screenshots of the forum in action. (If you’re still seeing the maintenance message when visiting the new forum, please try clearing your browser cache.)
Last week, my family and I went on a much needed vacation to our adopted home of Montpelier, Vermont. Kate and I have been going there about once a year since we’ve been married, and we even lived there for six months after I graduated law school. Vermont’s natural beauty really renews my man spirit. I try to get out and enjoy the Green Mountains as much as I can during my short visits. One of my favorite places in Montpelier is Hubbard Park – it’s 134 acres of nothing but beautiful Vermont woods and perfect little trails for rambling.
While Montpelier has a small, not-so-great gym, most Vermonters stay in shape like Kate’s uncle, the famous Uncle Buzz, does – by doing household chores and walking their ubiquitous canine companions. While I don’t own a VT homestead that needs tending, I was able to stay in shape using only things I found in the woods of Hubbard Park (and a trusty maul). Exercising outside with simply the equipment found in Mother Nature’s Gym pushes your body, boosts your manly vigor, and, as you can clearly see in the pictures below, aids you in growing a really sweet mustache.
Below I share my Vermont exercise routine. So wolf down your flapjacks, put on your flannel shirt and boots, grab your axe, and head outside. It’s time to do the Woodsman Workout.
Selecting just one person from this list was tough. We asked you to share with us why you wanted to attend a GORUCK Challenge for free and we were blown away with the responses.
My phone started to ring. Was it really who I thought it was? The display said that the connection was secure but I had to be certain. We verbally verified that we were seeing the same two random words (secure authentication string) on our phones.
