What's going on with AquaticDiscovery.com?

So many of you have noticed the website is frequently down for short periods of time and various services seem to go on and offline at will.

In this day and age of cloud computing, 99.999% up times and co-located technologies why is this happening?

Quite simply our web hosting company we've been with 2002 was recently absorbed and, of course, everything seems to be breaking a lot of the time. We've tried to resolve things amicably but apparently reliability and customer service are not virtues the new web hosting parent company pride.

So over the next week we'll be migrating to a new hosting provider with a proven track record of reliability...EC2 here we come!

Julian, you're famous!

Can you believe it?!?!

Our own Julian is currently the top-rated photo on Whites Dive Unit website!

Check it our and vote for him at: whitesdiving.com

If that's not enough you can rent this red devil for Divemaster Guided Tours!

ooops...server crash

For those of you who haven't noticed the weirdness with Aquaticdiscovey.com, the online store and email then great! For everyone else, ooops...we're sorry!

Our primary server went down last week amidst an odd, head-scratching set of circumstances. But, to add insult to injury, our backup server melted down the next day AND our T1 connection went down the day after that.

Keep your fingers crossed that we got about 5 years worth of IT problems out of the way in 72hrs!

So, if you sent an email and haven't received a response please send it again... Thanks!

What's a scuba valet?

Congratulations to Julian and Todd for becoming PADI Divemasters over the summer!

One of their first acts as PADI professionals was to create the new Divemaster Guided and Valeted dives. Divers can enjoy the ease and comfort of having a Divemaster lead small groups on two fun shore dives. Divemasters will select a dive site based on your desires, conditions and level of experience. You'll enjoy two guided dives where your Divemaster will point out many of the creatures you might otherwise have missed like octopus, rays, nudibranchs and so much more. To top off the experience your Divemaster will even valet your equipment up and down the beach and help you get your fins on. Diving so easy and fun you'll forget it's shore diving!

For more info see our Divemaster Guided Dives page

What happend to "Nitrox-while-you-wait" ?!?!

Well, we made a small mistake when calculating flowrates which resulted in the wrong supporting systems to be speced and built. While we wait for hardware to be built we just have our regular 1-2day turn around on nitrox.

Damn you math, you used to be cool!

Jeremy becomes a PADI Scuba Instructor!

This past weekend was the PADI IE (Instructor Exam) which is the last step to becoming instructor. Our own Jeremy Schrader passed with flying colors...way to go!

Jeremy started diving through the Santa Clara University Scuba Club's Open Water Class in 2000. While he didn't dive very much during his undergrad years because of his rigorous SCU crew team rowing schedule (plus all those pesky mechanical engineering classes!) he was president of the SCU Scuba Club his senior year and became a PADI Divemaster in 2002.

In the last 7 years he's logged 100's of dives all over the world, assisted with 100's of student divers, helped rebuild boats, been instrumental in everything from breathing-air systems to marine engines and been an anchor around the shop. All this and he still found the time to hold down a 60+hr a week engineering job and stay happily married...wow!

Now, as an instructor, he has another job but it's the best one on earth: he gets to take new divers into the water for the first time, sharing his vast knowledge and experience while showing them all the cool stuff that makes scuba diving awesome!

Do you want to become an instructor too? It's just five easy steps:
1) Dive a lot
2) Become a PADI Divemaster
3) Dive a lot more with divers and student divers
4) Take the Instructor Development Course
5) Pass the PADI Instructor Exam

Nitrox-while-you-wait!

On April 3rd we'll officially release our new Nitrox automated blending system (one of our patent pending inventions).

Here's why it's awesome:

1. We can now blend ANY percentage from 21-40% in about 20mins.
2. We don't have to empty your tank before filling it.
   
3. O2 clean tanks are not required (if your tanks are already O2 clean, they won't be contaminated)
4. It's computer-controlled for unattended operation and precise blending.
5. With the rising price of oxygen we can still keep our nitrox fill prices low: $7 for any blend!
   

What's this mean to you?
Let's say you have a tank with 800psi of 31.8% nitrox and you want it filled at 36%. No problem, come back in 20mins and you're tank will be full @ 36%.