Certifitied Scuba

Officially certified Scuba Diver now.  Not sure what I need to do from here besides shoot for a Adventure Scuba Diver.  Last instructor was pretty mean and took the skills test really serious. Not sure if there are any more dives with skills you have to show or not but happy I’m done with that.

Tips when buying open water scuba certification packages

If you are a deal hunter and looking at scuba deals at daily deals sites you are probably wondering what is the difference between all the packages.  There is quite a bit of price differentiation and lots of fine prints.

Lets first go over what is entailed in open water scuba certification:

It will probably take 2 weekends at least (4-4.5 days). Mine is 2 weekends plus one weeknight

  1. Classroom.  This will probably be 1 day or 1.5 days as it was mine.  You have to go over the diver manual, do questions from the manual, and then take a test inside the classroom.
  2. Confined pool dive.  1 day practice indoor
  3. Open water dives. 2 days doesn’t have to be back to back days but can be. You want to do the open water dives soon after learning so you don’t forget. Will describe options later in post.

Here’s a breakdown of things to look for when buying a open water scuba certification package.

  1. Classroom – A basic scuba deal probably includes the classroom sessions, indoor pool dives, and provide scuba gear like wetsuit, air tank, and other scuba gear (BCD, vest).  Not covered would be the scuba log book (~$20) and mask, snorkel, fin, gloves, boots.
  2. Gear (mask,snorkel,fin,glove,boot) – This part is a bit tricky as most places will advise you to buy your own and these equipment is not provided.  Not sure if most places even have rentals but some may do.  That’s something you may want to call and ask about. Depending on the quality of equipment you get you are most likely looking at $200+.
  3. Boat – The open water adventure can be done from the beach where you have to crawl out to the ocean from the beach or the easier method is to take a boat and just dump yourself overboard.  A single day boat excursion is probably 100+, mine was $115.  One needs to do two days of open water scuba diving so you are looking > $200 for the boat.  Of course you could just do the beach but I’ve heard bad things about it since you’re lugging around >60lbs of gear.    Did my first boat dive, 11/9 and there’s a 15-20% recommended tip for boat ppl.

 

I did the Beach Cities LivingSocial deal.  I think they are OK but there can be better packages. For Beach Cities, their boat is in Dana Point which is a trek if you’re not in South OC.

Transitions

Lots of things going

Finished another session of 2 classes which appropriately was about Organizational Development and Accounting. OD is all about change and one of the books we read was Transitions by William Bridges.

A transition I’m going through is a changing of jobs. decided to move to IT.

Next couple of week is going to be dedicated to taking scuba lessons which should be fun. Buying equip is another thing.  Scuba deals on deal websites are tricky. Will try and write a post about it.

Anime

Watched way too much anime this summer:

Fate/zero – link

Not so good. Kinda cool characters but storyline was a bit confusing and no idea what the ending was about.

Zetman – link

So so. Not sure what it’s about. just monsters attacking each other with so human in iron-man type suit wanting to be a hero.

Hajime no Ippo – link

Currently watching this.  classic underdog story.  seems out of the times with all the stories about long term effects of head injuries of boxers.  All the guys in the anime take a huge amount of pounding. one of those things that could give kids the wrong impression.  Like it though old school anime.

Hacked!

Arg someone hacked my website.  Luckily the hosting company, imeanhosting, was able to restore last week’s backup.  Was going to do it myself but in trying to delete the entire web directory ran into permission errors which was strange so asked them to do it.

World War Z

This movie was pretty entertaining. Kept me on edge on the most part until it slows down near the end. Classmates and co workers had said it was worth watching and it was.