Starting Code Complete Week

April 30th, 2006

I woke up the only call we had over night around five in the morning. I listened and did not hear Rescue go en route. It was almost ten minutes. I decided to go to the station and respond on it. I got there and only Hickey was there. We loaded up and went on the call. As it turned out we were cancelled right after going en route. It had almost been fifteen minutes since the call went out.

I got my timecard printed and got some breakfast from McDonalds. I dropped my timecard off at station one. Then I went home where I heard someone call in a domestic. They mistakenly gave Russells apartment as the scene. So I called Russell. We talked about it for a few minutes. The cops got to the area but never went to his apartment. Once on scene. They looked around and then found the cause at some other apartment. Russell thought I was joking with him until he saw the cop cars.

I went to Colfax and took a nap. I got up and just hung around the house. I got myself some lunch at Rosauers. I also got a chance to watch my Sunday night shows. I decided to stay in Colfax and drive to work in the morning.

Emerald Downs Burning

April 29th, 2006

When I got up this morning I figured I would watch some TV then head to Colfax Fire to hang out for the morning. I had to be in Pullman by four in the afternoon. But that changed when I heard D-Twelve get toned out to assist Pullman Fire with a structure fire. I thought about it for a minute to think if it was a training or real. But the address they gave I knew it was not training. So I called the Deuce to see if they still needed reserves to respond.

Reed was there and he said we was waiting for someone else to come to take Rescue to the scene. I went to Pullman and we went en route. Once on scene we got rehab set up and I was told to fill air bottle. Oh joy! Not what I wanted to do. The fire was the Emerald Downs, a new apartment complex. It covered three apartments in one building that was under construction.


What the fire looked like when the police got on scene.

Engine Thirty-Two laying in a supply line.

We got the fire knocked down. Rescue stayed after to help with the investigation. We were there for about four hours. Reed and I helped draw out the building and the apartment layouts. We also helped do grunt work including photographing stuff.

When we were done we went to station one to clean up some equipment. When we were pulling into the station it was almost five-thirty in the evening. We got called to a fire alarm. We were already in our turn-outs so we went up to the scene with Engine Thirty-Two. We went inside with Turpin. It turned out to be a pull station. We reset it and went back to the station.

I went to get into my uniform for being on duty. I was on engine tonight. Chuck and I went to the store to get stuff for dinner. When I was backing him into a place at Dissmores I could smell gas. So I looked around and I saw it leaking out of a truck box. So I went over to it and saw a gas can and tipped over. I righted the can. We put absorbent on the gas spill. We called for Engine Thirty-Two for more absorbent. Turpin joked that we are busy enough without us going out and looking for stuff to do.

Once we mitigated that scene we got our food and went to the station to cook it. We all sat down to eat. We had a good time. It was also good food. We had BBQ chicken, tater tots, salad, and ice cream for dessert.

After dinner Chuck and I did our Engine daily checks. We found a few problems, including low air on some SCBA tanks. We took them down to station one to top the off as well as topping of Engine Thirty-Three’s water tank.

When we finished with that we went back to the Deuce. Reed and watched Rescue Me. I went home shortly after midnight. I was tired, but I decided to work on the website for the department for a little bit. I got pictures from the live burn put up as well as an old set of pics from the stair climb that some reserves did a few years ago.

More live fire training

April 28th, 2006

This morning I went to a training for the new livescan fingerprinting system at the jail. That went for about two hours for classroom training. Then they went into the jail to do some hands on training. But I had to get to work. So I headed to Pullman.

I was at work for about an hour when Ryan and I went to Rancho for lunch. We talked about his new job that he got an offer for. He will be moving to Spokane in about three weeks. I am not very happy about it. I will rarely if ever see him now.

I went to the fire station to talk to Heston about my idea for recruiting new firefighters. I want to make some small flyers and business card sized advertisements to hand out to people. They would include the URL for the reserve website. He likes the idea and is going to go over my proposed wording.

I also picked up the equipment for working the WSU baseball game this evening. While I was doing that I learned they are going to do an afternoon session of burning the house. I went to work and found out the dev meeting was cancelled. So I E-mailed an update to Chris and left to go to the live burn. I got there as Engine Thirty-One was going to go en route and take care of the fire like they would in a real call. The fire was really starting to get going when I got there.

There were people all around watching the whole thing. I got a pack and was assigned to the RIT team. So we hung out by our equipment. Once everyone was pulled out of the building they decided to use the PL’s bucket to spray some water on the fire. Howell and James went up into the bucket to do that. I was in RIT with James. So I traded roles with Howell and I became the staging officer. That was my role for the remainder of the fire. We got the fire put out.

Following that we did a quick critique on the site and when we left the critique the college students next door gave us a round of applause. They had a BBQ set up and all sort of chairs. This was their afternoon entertainment. It was really hot outside. Probably the hottest day so far this year.

I helped get some stuff cleaned up and then I had to go the WSU baseball game. I got some dinner and pop and headed to the stadium. I was working the game alone. I staked out my spot in the stadium. Frank from the Tax Dodgers was there. He sat next to me. Bryce was also there working the game. He was assigned to the area I was. We all talked softball for most of the game. The Cougs were playing USC. The Cougs got spanked. Once the game was done I dropped off my stuff at station one and went to the office. I spent the next couple hours on the computer.

Live Burn Training

April 27th, 2006

Today was the day for live burn training. I got to the fire station around three o’clock. George asked if I could run to the Deuce and get the camera from Rich. So I did that and jumped on the Engine to go to the burn today.

We did some classroom stuff. Mainly talking about who will be doing what and figuring out the responses to calls should anything come out. My first role was on the outside of the house manning two protection lines. It was easy work.

Then I got to go inside. We were in a small room and a fire was lit. It grew rapidly. I watched as the smoke started to descend off the ceiling and the fire started to roll. It got warm inside. As it turned out it was about one-thousand degrees at the ceiling level and several hundred at the floor where I was. The turn-outs really make a difference.

After we were done there several people went to My Office Bar for some drinks and food. We sat around and talked shop for a while and then also talked softball.

IM Softball Championship

April 25th, 2006

Tonight was the night I have been waiting for a long time for. But I had to get through the day before we got there. I woke up around five hours after getting to sleep. I worked hard on my Sollen stuff. I am right at the end of the tunnel. I wanted to finish it up. There were a lot of, not hard work, but tedious work. It was a matter of going in and connecting all the fields and values and variables between the UI, the codebehind files, the Sproc, and the DB. Back and forth it has to work. Plus transforming the data as it goes around. I got that completed around one in the afternoon.

I had taken a short break around eleven-thirty in the morning for a car accident. But no one else came down so I ended up only doing stand by time. I got some lunch on the way back from the Deuce to my office. I knew I was almost done. There was nothing stopping me I was just working hard. No distractions. Finally I get it done, check in my final work and close the feature.

Ryan and I started to talk about softball for tonight. My mind was going a mile a minute at that point. I could not really concentrate on any one thing. I decided to turn on some Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon and laydown for a little bit. It was nice and relaxing. Just what I needed. I got back up and I was back to normal mode.

We were going to meet up and practice some softball around six-forty-five at the Valley Road Fields and then go to the game. As I was waiting for that to come about we got a fire alarm in Thompson hall. I went to the station and Brian decided to go with me. We took Engine Thirty-Three to the call. It was a nice day for a drive. While on scene the guys were in the attic and said for all units to come up and take a look at where the smoke detector was. It was a maze of there. Brian and I went up there. Sure enough it was. You had to go up and down ladders through doorways three feet high, around walls under ducts. It was crazy.

I got done with that around six o’clock and I went to the office and got ready for softball. I got my uniform on and headed to the Valley Road Playfields. We did some hitting practice. We were only there for about twenty minutes — enough time to get through the people who showed up.

We got to the South Fairway fields into for our game. Don’t Care is our opponent. They are a very good team who have not lost a game yet. We had to be on our A-game. We started off well. And early on had a small two-run lead. But as soon as we got it, they went to work, coupled with several errors, cost us eight-runs. So we were down by six. After that it is like the team gave up a little bit. We could not hit the ball and ended up losing the game. We are the number two team in the competitive league this year! So we are happy about that.

Ryan and I went to Cougar Country for dinner. We were there for an hour talking about the game and my letter to the editor. I told him about the E-mail I sent to a guy in a frat who responded to my letter.

Afterwards I went to Zeppoz and saw Dan, Michele, and Ron. Michael B was there. We was in a bowling tournament that the others were in, but they has already been knocked out. Michael-B won the whole thing. So he won two-hundred and fifty bucks.

After that was done I went home and relaxed for a while before going to bed.

NIMS Training

April 24th, 2006

At work I was trucking on my Sollen stuff. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a train! I had to go to the fire station at five-thirty so we could get to training at six o’clock. I did not want to leave because I was getting stuff done.

But we had training and we talked about the National Incident Management System as well as RIT teams and fire ground operations. It was a good training that took almost three hours when it was done. We did have a fire alarm call and a sick person call right when we were finishing up with the fire alarm call.

After the training we had a small shift meeting to talk about training we would like to do. Then I got back to my office and got cracking on my Sollen stuff. I am really in a grove. It is very slow going because of all the little things. It is like the house goes up fast, but the finishing work takes a long time. For this, the structure goes up fast, but making it actually work takes a while.

It was about four in the morning when I decided to finally get some sleep. I should be done with this tomorrow.

Finally some wins

April 23rd, 2006

Yesterday was lost number three and four for the softball team. But today was different. I played a lot of first base. I only sat out one inning from playing on the field. I had to choose whether I would go back to Pullman and play in the playoff game there or play the two games in Seattle. I choose to stay in Seattle.

I knew the team in Pullman would only have nine people so I kept calling people looking for someone. I finally got a hold of Blake from the fire department about an hour before game time. He played with the team. Ryan was going to call me when the game was done to tell me what happened.

I was at home watching my Sunday night shows when Ryan called. We won twenty-one to twenty with some timely hitting by the bottom of the order. It was a see-saw battle the whole way. Sounds like it was a great game. Phil had two home runs, one grandslam and one three-run shot. After that they always walked him.

I decided to head back to Pullman tonight. So I got my truck packed and headed out. The drive was nice. I got a little tired around Ellensburg, but I kept going and by the time I got to twenty-six I was okay the rest of the way in.

Movie night with the Peterman

April 22nd, 2006

Today were my first softball games with the new team. I pitched both games. We only had eleven people so I played the whole time. We have enough people on the team that we do share some play time. We ended up losing both games. Our outfield is pretty weak and there were a lot of hits that could have been made into outs but they could not get to the ball well enough. My first at bat was a triple. But after that it went down hill for my hitting.

After the game Peter and I met up at the movie theatre in Bellevue and watch Inside Man. It was early so we also caught The Sentinel. Both were good movies. After the movies I got some dinner and we went to Peter’s apartment. We hung out talking about life and work. Peter is going to be coming back to WSU for another year to get a second degree. So he will be back at the beginning of the school year in August. That was pretty cool to hear.

Friday night practice

April 21st, 2006

I had practice tonight with the Maulers. It has been a few weeks since I was last able to practice with them. We did a lot of fielding and some hitting. My first round of hits were bad, but then in my second round I got a homerun.

After practice I went to Dave’s house. We watched the end of a movie that was on TV. I showed him my Snake River video and then we just talked about stuff. He told me he has sleep apnea and has a CPAP. That was interesting to know. So I told him about my doctors visit and my upcoming study.

Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel

April 20th, 2006

The light is starting to shine. I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with my Sollen stuff. Today I had my radio show remotely. We had people on from the one-strike law. Which is for violent sex-offenders. They commit the crime, they do life in prison. I am not for these blanket laws that are specialty in nature. It seems like a patch for fixing a symptom and not the actual problem of how sentencing is done.

After the show I spent my time getting the Sollen stuff closer to being completed. I also had a nice dinner at home.

Umpiring Baseball

April 19th, 2006

After spending time getting the roles taken care of for my Sollen work. I went to Logan’s baseball game. I got there before the game started. Jon was doing some warm ups with the kids on the team.

Jon got me to be the home plate umpire. It is weird rules. They use a hand operated pitching machine. They get ten pitches or four strikes where there was a swing and a miss or a foul ball. The coach had me be very lenient. So we would ignore strikes if the pitch was really bad. So some kids got five and six strikes. They can score up to four runs an inning then it is over.

So I had to keep track of pitch count, strikes, and runs scored. It really wasn’t all that hard. It was interesting being a homeplate umpire when you don’t actually have to call strikes. You only have to observe them happening.

I went home when that was done and we had hamburgers for dinner. I watched Southpark and I tried to watch one more show but I fell asleep.

Sleep Clinic

April 18th, 2006

After getting up at five in the morning and heading to Issaquah for a doctors appointment I was tired. That made sense because I was meeting with a sleep doctor. I feel sort of flawed. I have always been a snorer. But I think now it has gone to the point of apnea. It makes sense with things that happen to me including waking up feeling like I am not breathing or out of breath. I sometimes wake up coughing because of what feels like water going down my breathing tube. Plus with Jon told me on the trip to Spring Training sold me on the fact I may stop breathing at night when I sleep.

I decided that I should have that looked at. Sleep apnea I know is a deadly condition that causes many problems with the heart long term. I don’t want that to happen. So I went to Issaquah for my first appointment. I am going to have a sleep study done at the end of next month to determine what is happening. They will be able to see if it is severe sleep apnea or some other condition all together. I honestly hope it is something other than apnea.

I do know I don’t feel like I have gotten a good nights sleep in ages. I know I am always getting woken up for fire calls and I go to bed late, but there is more to it. Even with eight to nine hours of sleep I still feel unrested. So maybe this is what I need to make life better.

I will know more in about six weeks.

Following that appointment I worked on the roles for the website. It is a very interesting system. There are a ton of pages I have to update to make them work. Ricky has worked on them before and he is going to show me where I need to update pages at.

After work I went home and watched some of the Mariners game and Bill got some pizza for dinner. I had that before it was time for House to come on. I watched House and another TV show, but I was getting so tired because of getting up so early this morning I was ready for bed.

Hardcore Playoff Games

April 17th, 2006

I started by getting the stuff for the coroners cases I had during the last week printed off and turned it. The printer was going slow and it took nearly an hour to print the photos.

Because of the rain out yesterday of my games in Seattle I was able to be here. It was a good thing because we only have nine people without me. Our first game the team was late. We gave them ten minutes, like the rules allow, and then the game got started. We were actually losing by one run going into the bottom of the sixth inning. Phil came to the plate with the bases loaded and hit a walk-off grand slam. We was four for four in the first game with two home runs and a double. Plus he had six RBI. He had a monster game. The other team “Team Ramrod” mostly walked away without shaking our hands.

We had a second game following that against The Oleruds. I pitched the first game so I let Dave pitch this game. In the forth inning they started to shell Dave. After the sixth run scored I took over at pitcher. I was able to get out of the inning with only one more run scoring. But that gave them a big lead over us late in the game. We only play six inning games with IMs. But in our half of the fifth inning we came alive with the bats and scored six runs to tie the score. We went into the sixth and final inning. I got them out three-up, three-down. So it was our turn and we went to work. We had runners on base when Phil came up. He was already two for three. He hit a deep ball to dead-center field. It took their player to the fence when the ball landed. Easily scoring the winning run. It was awesome to come from behind and beat them. I did pretty well with a homerun and a walk in this game.

That means we are going to be playing for the semi-finals on Sunday.

Sticking around instead

April 16th, 2006

Today I was supposed to be in Seattle playing softball, but instead the rainouts there allowed me to stay in Pullman for the day and let me play in my playoff games on Monday. I am pretty happy about that because I wanted to be there for them.

I spent the rest of the day at the office just playing on the computer and listening for a fire call to happen. But as the day wore on nothing came out. I decided to leave for Pullman around five o’clock. Long after my coroners reports were done and in time to lay around the house.

I planned on watching my normal Sunday night shows until it became clear they were not going to be on. So I gave up on that idea and watched a movie.

Easter Bunny Delivery

April 15th, 2006

This morning I was part of the crew taking the Easter Bunny to Kruegel park. I went outside wondering how hard it would be raining. Instead it was snowing. Oh, how nice. I got some pop and went to the Deuce. We all got ready and I had my camera for taking some pictures for the department website.

We stopped and got some more pop at the gas station and then went to the park. I took about seventy pictures through out the day. It was pretty wet ground and caused my pants to get dirty.


The Easter Bunny on the Fire Engine


The Easter Bunny with Wakeman and Hickey

We had fun doing this activity. When we were done we got back to the station and washed the engine. I went to the office and started to prepare for the football game today. I also had to do a few other things. I got the webpage created for the Easter Bunny on the city’s website. I also played some poker.

I got all the stats sheets created and photocopies made. I went to Moscow and got to the Kibbie Dome. I got all the things ready to go. I was set by game time. The Thunder was playing the State Line Miners. It was a close game with some missed opportunities on the Thunders’ side. We lost by two points. At one point in the game I said “Number thirteen to number fifteen for a touchdown.” The Thunder were fifty-five yards from the endzone. That is when Adkison, number thirteen, passed the ball to Winston, number fifteen, who went fifty-five yards for the touchdown. It was just like I had called. Abraham said I should go buy a lottery ticket.

When the game was done I met up with Mitz to sign the roster for softball. I got my uniform on and took over for being on call for Pullman fire. It was a slow night with two calls, neither of which were college students. I think the rain and cold kept people subdued.

Getting closer?

April 14th, 2006

I was woken up by a call from Brian. I had missed the conference call he set up with Sollen. I had been sleeping since about five o’clock this morning after running calls all night long. It was a little after ten when Brian called.

I had not seen his E-mail about the teleconference. I was still able to call Sollen. We did a few things so I could get the responses from Sollen, but there was a problem with figuring out how to grab it. The other problem is it only worked while he was on the phone. As soon as I hung up I could not get any more responses. So I am dead in the water again.

I worked on another bug for a little bit but then I realized that it was actually fixed by Andrew, but Andrew did not know it right away. So I E-mailed him and let him know what I discovered. He was happy about actually having it done.

I was working a play at Beasley with Travis. We went up there around five-forty-five. It was a boring play. About five minutes into it we decided to go back and watch TV in the first aid room. The play was meant for kids.

After the play we stopped by the baseball game for about half an inning and talked with Dearth and Blanks who were there working. It was starting to rain so Travis and I left. At the station I hung out there for a little bit talking to Reed. While there Jesse and Nelson showed up. I had not seen Nelson in more than a year. He said hello but that was it. He was never a friend of mine.

With hanging out down at the station I did not get out of town early like I had hoped. I also have to work early in the morning so I decided to stay in Pullman tonight.

The Pullman Easter Massacre

April 13th, 2006

I got ready for my show this morning. I had Karl on the show talking about the Easter Massacre. He was on for the full two hours talking about the events leading up to the shootings and the actual day of the shooting. It was fun to go over it. It seems like I learn more each time I hear Karl talk about it.

After the show I went to work. I was helping Andrew with a problem he was having. During the a call for a car accident came out. I went to the station but ended up not going on it. I went back to work and did some more things before I got ready to go to My Office to sign the roster. I walked out to my truck and remembered I needed a new battery for my pager so I went back inside my office and I heard my scanner. A call was going out. So I grabbed the battery and went on it.

That was the start of the night for the calls. We pretty much ran calls from then until four in the morning with some breaks. After the first call, however, we were doing some training about extrication. During that training Station One guys were going to Cougar Country for ice cream and invited us to go. We went along with the full-timers from the Deuce as well.

The calls were running most of the night from that point on. I had time to get some dinner around midnight. I was doing some stuff on the computer, but each time I got going on something a call would come in.

Our final call came in around four in the morning. It was after that when I was able to go to sleep. I was getting pretty tired. I had not planned on staying up quite that late.

Hanging with Russell Night

April 12th, 2006

I had a couple bugs in my pipeline I was able to retire from the system. One took a while to troubleshoot it to the point where I found the problem. The other one was quite easy to take care of.

I was at the office when I head about a motorcycle accident. I went to the station and Travis showed up. We both went on it, but we told to go non-code to the scene. It was by Bishop and Grand so I knew we would not make it there having to go through the traffic across town at five o’clock PM. Sure enough when we got near Crestview we were cancelled.

We went back to station one and Travis checked for his EMT scores and then we took Rescue back to the Deuce. We cleaned it up and wrote down our times. I called Russell and went to my office. We were making plans for the night. We were going to see Lucky Number Slevin. It was a pretty cool movie. It was all about revenge. Very cool stuff.

When that was done we went to Applebees for dinner. Russell and I talked about whether those on the West Coast have an accent or not. I argue that we are the normal and the others have an accent that can be identified. It was fun. It is always fun to see how people react to my statement about that.

Colfax Fire B&B

April 11th, 2006

John and I talked about his taking of Brad to the Tax Dodgers softball team. We talked about softball in general and about how Brad would fit in on his team. I had decided that I wanted to not work Pullman Fire tonight and instead go to the Colfax Fire Board and Business Meeting. Then afterwards we were going to play poker.

I called around to find someone to cover for me and I finally found that Reid would do it. So I did not have to worry about that.

I headed down to Colfax for the meeting. I got some dinner at Cougar Country along the way. Board and Business was a very fast meeting. We did not have much to talk about, but I did learn they are talking about getting an IV class set up. I would like to do that if I can.

After the meeting Carl, Tim, Jim, and I played cards. We were only going to play for a couple hours because everyone was tired from running a lot of calls early this morning. My pager did not go off so I did not know about them until tonight.

I did well tonight. I think I won a couple of bucks when it was all said and done. When we were done playing cards I went home and cleaned up a little bit because some people were coming to look at it tomorrow.

Department Photos

April 10th, 2006

After having worked late last night I was hoping to sleep in, but that thought was dead when I remembered I had to take department photos. I got up and to the station by eleven o’clock like I was supposed to do. I got the photos of everyone I needed to get.

I was back at the office and Heston had asked I put together a One-Hundred-K run page on the website with photos included. So I got photos cropped and set up. I also worked on the photos from the department photos. I got them placed online. I also burned off all the photos I had for Brenda. I took them down to the to her.

With no fire training tonight at PFD, I decided I could relax tonight. I was going to do that, but I ended up getting work going for myself at the office. I stayed there until nearly nine o’clock pm. I went home only to find that Prison Break was on at eight. I missed it. So I went to Colfax Fire and hung out there until midnight talking to Carl.

Golfing and Softball

April 9th, 2006

Today started with Ben, Ron, Joe, and I playing eighteen holes of golf at the Colfax Golf Course. We rented a couple carts and went out. I did okay for a while. I only lost one ball. For about three holes I was on fire. I got a birdie and that was the only one of the day from the whole group. It was nice that I got it. Joe is a good golfer.

When we left there Ron, Heather, and I went to Zeppoz. We had some beer and talked about baseball, softball, and golfing. Then I went to their place and helped them set up their new DVR.

I went to my office and got ready for softball. The fields were the worst I have seen them. In a game before ours a guy was running to first and his shoe fell off. Well, more accurately, the mud held his shoe and his foot came out of it. For our games they moved the home plates to the outfield and played into the field. In the first game Dave retired the first five batters on five pitches. Then they started to get hits. We got some too.

We ended up with the winning run on third base with two outs in the bottom of the last inning. I was at the plate and I flew out. So we ended the game as a tie. In game two we played Ron’s team. They beat us pretty easily. No one was getting hits. It was just ugly.

After the games I was invited to Jory and Chad’s place to play cards. It was a five dollar buy-in. I held my own. I was one of the last three people there and the top two places were paid out. I was the short stack and figured the others would just wait for me to lose the rest of my money. But as it turned out one person went all in, and the other called him. It was Chad who had gone all in. He won everything. So it was Chad and I heads up. I kept playing my game but I was down to only a couple blinds.

In did a couple all-ins and won some money. Then at one point I caught Chad trying to buy my blind, but I had a good hand and I beat him. I was now the chip leader. But that would only last until I got the Big Slick. I went all in and Chad called with a pair of fives. Nothing came to help me and I lost the chip lead and I was back down to a couple blinds again. A couple hands later I found a hand that I could play and nothing came again. I lost to a pair of queens to my pair of jacks. I won fifteen bucks.

Then I was on my way home when I heard about a coroners case. I told Whitcom I was available if Pete wanted my help. As it turned out Pete just had me take the case. Someone had choked on some food. I did my investigation and got home around four-thirty in the morning. I was very tired by that time. It was nice to get to bed.

Working Beasley Events

April 8th, 2006

Getting up this morning is what I thought would be the hard part. I was wrong. It was harder to watch the Step Show. It got old after a while as it seemed like everyone was doing the same thing over and over with different costumes. The craft fair was easy to work because we just sat there.

I went back to the Deuce with Travis when we were done working today. I got some food from Cougar Country for the guys at the station. We all ate. Then Tadema showed up and we did more work. We were doing the Bill Engvall Show. That was fun. It was worth all the work today to see that.

We were seated inside the arena again in section twenty-three. We had a guy come up to us. He was a Beasley employee and said someone had fainted. We went with him to section five. Where we would normally be posted for the first-aid room. We dealt with that problem and got an ambulance to come and take the patient to the hospital.

We went back in and watched the show. It was so funny. My sides were hurting and I had a headache from laughing so much. To me he was a lot better than on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

When that was done for the night I went back to the Deuce. I hung out there watching the end of Saving Private Ryan with the other people as we were telling war stories with Dearth’s family.

Early Morning Coroners Case

April 7th, 2006

At about five-thirty in the morning we got a call for a possible unattended death. We got on scene and were told the person was dead and we were sent home. I figured that Pete would be giving me a call about it.

Sure enough a little bit after getting back to the station I got a call from Pete. It was six o’clock in the morning and I had yet to really get more than two hours of sleep. I went to the scene. It is where we had gone on the unattended death.

Pullman PD was there. After doing my part of the scene we learned that indeed it was a case that could be considered attended so I only have to do a short report and I will give it to Pete. I was pretty tired so after being up for a couple hours following the call I went to sleep for about four hours. I wanted to sleep some more but I kept on getting calls from people. It was really annoying. I guess I could have turned the phone off.

After getting up and doing some things on the computer, trying to get problems solved with my computer over in Bellevue, I got ready for working this evening. I am going to be covering the Fashion show tonight. No, it was not because I wanted to, it was because they needed someone and I am willing to help out as much as I can. So Travis and I went to Beasley. Tadema was up there. We relieved her and sat around until it was close to time for the show to start.

With the craft fair going on all the doors going into the coliseum were blocked. The only way in for us was on the opposite side. I talked to someone from Beasley. I was told to just go inside the arena area near section twenty-three. So that meant we would be forced to watch the fashion show, whether we wanted to or not. It had some points on interest for me. It was neat to see all the students’ hard work get shown off for the moms. But it is not my thing, and I was very bored by it all.

When the show was done we saw Blake there. We talked to him for a few minutes. His cousin was in the show so that is why he went to it. I sort of wanted to do something else tonight when I was done working, but it was getting sort of late and I have to be back early in the morning. I decided to go home and relax there for a while before going to sleep.

Explosive Device Training

April 6th, 2006

I had plans on going to a explosive device recognition training at the SO today. I am also on call for the fire department, but I told Chuck that I would be going to that and I went to the training that we were supposed to do tonight on Monday. So I was caught up with that.

I got down to Colfax for the training. It was about three hours long. We talked about the devices and how they can be made and how easy it is to disguise them to cause people to get hurt or killed.

I headed back to Pullman and worked on the photo board pictures as well as pics for the Website. I got that totally completed. We got called out to two calls. Both turned out to be ones that we were cancelled on shortly after getting on scene.

Looking into Willies Eyes… Again

April 5th, 2006

After waiting for several months after I wanted to get brakes I finally got them done today. One would wonder why I would wait for several months after needing them. There in lies, The Rest of the Story.

A quotation from Freaky Friday – When Scotty Met Willie

Willie, came over and was jacking up the truck. He was kneeling down and operating the floor jack… When he started to talk he looked up at me. I was looking down at him, and then his eyes caught my attention. The way the light was in the building, it made his eyes look the deepest, most awesome blue I have ever seen. From that point on I could not help but to stare into his eyes. They were amazing. My friend Russell was thinking the same thing. He was a good looking guy, but who would have known since all you can see are his awesome eyes.

Knowing that I can tell you this: I waited for Willie. If you had read the whole story about the boat trailer tire going bad and having no money you would know I got a credit account through Les Schwab in Clarkston. What is interesting is that the account is based out of Clarkston, so if I want to use it at a different Les Schwab I have to get permission from the Clarkston branch.

I knew I needed brakes and I wanted to go to Clarkston to see Willies eyes again. Who hasn’t returned to a place with someone who is a ten-six-seven, just to see that person again? But where I go above and beyond is that I called Les Schwab looking to see if Willie still worked there. After all it had been three years since I was last there. I call in January. I was told he had been laid off until February. So I figured I would have to wait on the brakes.

Finally, February came and I procrastinated on calling down there. I decided I better get it done. So I called down and made an appointment to take my truck in. In general I have noticed at every Les Schwab there is usually about three or four ten-six-seven’s working at any given time. I went down there hoping and waiting to see Willie. Finally, he walked in. I tried to look without being noticed. I think I did a good job at doing in.

Then at one point I had my chance. I forgot to tell them to rotate my tires. I went to the counter where Willie was and took my time making it up there just to basket in the glow coming from Willie’s eyes. I asked him if I could also get my tires rotated while I was there. He said it would be no problem.

After waiting a couple years to have a reason to go back, I went there and Willie was still there. Lucky me. Too bad Russell couldn’t have come down too.

So I planned on going to Ryan’s to watch South Park because they were doing something on the Family Guy. I thought that would be fun to see. But as it was getting close to that time I wanted to work the jail for a few reasons. One was because of the suicide last night. One was because I wanted to be in Colfax before it got late because I am pretty tired.

I called Ryan and asked him to record the shows for me and I took the time to go to Colfax. I got some dinner from Rosauers and went to work. It was a pretty slow night. I helped do a round or two. I also cleared a bunch of expired warrants. The rest of the time was spent hanging out in Control or over at the fire station. I stopped in there to talk to Carl.

I also got a fire lit under me the last couple days to start to record and edit some videos. I have been getting Family Memories recorded. I am planning on putting it on a DVD for viewing later.

Late night coroners case

April 4th, 2006

I went into work today and started to work on some stuff with Sollen when I saw several bugs bounced back to me. I investigated the first one and found that everything was done right, like there would be a question of that to begin with, but I double checked. Everything was okay. After some work with Ricky he realized the build they were using to test our work on was hosed and they were not getting the correct results. So all the bounced bugs went back to them, but that ate up a lot of my day.

I went to the fire station around five-thirty for training on trench rescue in Pullman. Pretty much the bottom line is that we are not trained for it. We don’t have the equipment. There is very little we can actually do.

Towards the end of training we got called for someone needing a ride to the hospital. We took care of that. Following the call I watched Scrubs and House at the Deuce. Then I got some dinner and went to do some work. I was working on making some videos from some of my video tapes that I had made. I was also eating my dinner. When a call came out. I got to the station when we were cancelled. So I went back and finished my dinner.

Around eleven I started to work on some stuff for NU. I got my box put back together and talked with Ricky about the problem we had today and fixing out boxes. It was a little after midnight I heard a deputy say he was en route to the jail and to notify Paul-One. That is usually something big. I listened in some more trying to figure out what was going on. Then I heard Colfax Fire get dispatched to an attempted suicide at the jail. I listened some more and I heard an ambulance go en route to the hospital with one. So I figured a life was saved and headed off to bed. After about forty-five minutes of sleep I was woken up by my cell phone ringing. It took me a moment to realize what was making all the noise.

Mark was calling from the jail and said that Pete would like me to come down there for someone who had committed suicide. So I was running through my mind why I heard the ambulance go to the hospital and someone had died at the jail. So I was starting to think it was a double-suicide attempt or something like that.

I headed to Colfax as quick as I could with the thick fog. I got my coroners uniform on and went to the jail. I was told to go to Yellow and when I went inside the captain, several deputies, the funeral home director and Pete were there. I was quickly briefed on what happened and went into investigate the scene. Pete said seeing what I saw was very rare as most of the time the person is taken down and life saving attempts are started. This was an obvious death and the people did what they were supposed to do.

So after I did my investigation at the scene and collected some evidence we went to the funeral home to do a more thorough investigation. Once that was completed I got some pop from Jackpot Foods. Mark was down there. We talked about what had happened for about ten minutes before I headed back to Pullman. I got to bed right away. I needed to go to Les Schwab in the morning so I wanted as much sleep as I could get.’

That is when a call for a structure fire came out. We all started to head to the sewer treatment plant where someone said they could see flames inside the place. They had watched it for about twenty minutes before calling. When I heard where it was I was thinking that it was a situation where they saw the flame from the gas being burnt off. And sure enough that was the situation. So there was no emergency.

Super short training class

April 3rd, 2006

I got my stuff for the stats taken care of for the football team. I got them sent out to the commissioner of the league. I also got some stuff done for the Sollen project. There was a call that came out around four in the afternoon. I went to the station to go on it. Brian was there so we both went on it. It was a Charlie response so we got to go code the whole way. Brian was playing the British two-tone siren most of the way.

Back at the station we were talking about the fire I missed. I turned off my pager at seven in the morning. The call came out at ten minutes before eight. Every time I turn off my pager I miss a fire.

I went to Cougar Country and got dinner for Tony, Dan, and myself and took it back to the station. I went to training tonight with Tony and Dan in Engine Thirty-Two.

The training was less than one-half hour. We were discussing fire behaviour. After the training was over with I was hanging out at the station chatting with Dan for a while about houses before heading off to Colfax for the night.

All Day with the fire department

April 2nd, 2006

This morning getting up was hard but I got going and made it to Wawawai Landing just after eight o’clock in the morning. No one was there so I took the time to work on compiling the stats from last nights football game. I got everything done on the computer except for the offense. I would do that later on.

I stood around waiting for runners to finally come through. Around nine in the morning the first runner came through. Then the relay teams started to come through. It took until about noon for them all to get through. Pullman Fire had some people running in the race as well. I got pictures of people running the race from the fire department.

After I was done at my post I went to the next one and talked to Tadema. The other Pullman Fire guys were there. I got pics of them. I also talked to Brad about him not playing softball for us tonight. He is going to be there next week so I wasn’t too upset about missing him tonight.

I was told that we needed to be at the Colton High School. I went there and District twelve was there. So we were not needed there afterall. I decided to take off. I got to my office and worked on the stats some more when a call came in. I went to the fire station. No one else showed up so I did not get to go on the call.

Around three o’clock in the afternoon I was really hungry. I went to Dissmores for some lunch and pop. Ryan called about going to get some ice cream. I went to my office and got into my softball uniform. I also got a hold of Brian about playing for My Office Bar mens team this summer. He said I could play. I also got Brad on the team. I am happy about him playing for us. He is a good player.

Ryan came with Anna and we went to Cougar Country. We got the line up taken care of and talked softball for a while just burning up time. When it was close to five-thirty we went to the field. It started to rain really hard while we were warming up. But then it stopped and it was decent the rest of the day. Our first game was a FFT. So we were going to play a practice game against another team. Just as we were going to start it the IM people decided to have us play our second game right then. The team we were playing also had a FFT. So we played. We were the away team. So we went to the plate first and scored one run. We were using a mush ball.

During the other teams’ at bat they tried to get us to use a hard ball for them. We refused and said that we would use the same ball so they did not have an advantage. I think that was our undoing as they scored five runs on us. We were only able to get one more run for the rest of the game. The only got one more as well. We were using the hard ball for the rest of the game and no one hit it out.

After the game I went to the fire station. We had some dinner and the guys from station one were there with us. After dinner we started on the maintenance. It went off without a problem. I ran the pump test of the engine for practice in doing so.

When they was done I stuck around and watched Walking Tall with some of the guys. They we watch Ron White stand up. Finally I left to get some sleep. Then we got a call. We went to it only for it to be a transport, but we were not needed. So we went back to the station. I got to bed again only to be called for a fire alarm.

Shane showed up and I was getting in when no one had gone en route. I was thinking we would beat them en route. Whitcom retoned the call. I got on the radio right away and said we were en route. They gave us the update. We went code to the scene as we were technically the primary unit. I got there and gave the size up. The PL showed up shortly afterwards and I had the captain come to assist us. I went to where they thought the alarm was. But the alarm panel was saying it was on the second floor. We checked the second floor without finding anything. They had already reset the alarm so we could not even find the detector that had activated.

After that call we got back to the station and I went to bed again. A call came out at five in the morning. I was pretty tired. We ended up helping the transport of the patient to the hospital. Shane was the one who was in the back of the ambulance. After that call I got some breakfast and went to bed once and for all.

April Fools Day without a joke

April 1st, 2006

The Palouse Thunder had their opening day today. I got up and went to the office where I started to do some stuff about the stats. I was building some infrastructure to store the stats into the database as well as updated them. I have had the table for a while, but I never had anything that would touch it because I did not know if I had everything the way I wanted it. I found there was a field here and there I wanted to be different, but over all I am not going to worry about them. One was about blocked punts. It is so rare I am not going to have a special field for it. I have almost seventy-five different fields as it is.

I built a way to enter the data. I just need to build the engine that will take the data and throw it into the database. Plus I need to link that data to the players’ profiles and some other place for the game stats. There is a fair amount of work to get the stats stuff done. There are also some other issues with logging in. People are having a hard time with the username and password stuff. I need to figure out how to allow for easier passwords.

It was getting close to the time I wanted to be down at the field. I showed up around three hours before kick-off. I got my equipment set up and talked to the other coach about name pronouncations. I got those updated on my PA Announcer textfile. I spent the next two hours helping get the little things taken care of.

Finally as the game time was getting closer I talked to the coach and we figured out what we were going to do for the pre-game announcement of the player. We went back to what we did last year. I would announce the team as they ran on the field.

We got going on our game. I had one guy next to me who was a player from the ought-four season. He is going to do write ups about the games for the website. I gave him my E-mail address so he could get the files to me.

Once the game got underway it was clear the Thunder would have a very hard time if they were going to win this game. The Rams from Wenatchee Valley were getting the field position. The Thunder always started deep and the Ram started near mid-field. It was ugly how quickly the Rams were scoring.

By the end of the game the Rams still had their first string team in and they were working on scoring against the Thunder with only two minutes to go. They were driving hard and going for a long bomb scoring yet again.

I was upset that they kept pouring it on with their first string guys, but then I realized our coach probably would have done the same thing. I left and went to the office. I started to work on the stats stuff some more. Then I remembered that I had to work the one-hundred-K run tomorrow. I left around midnight thinking I would get a nice six hours of sleep. That is when I realized that it was daylight savings time tonight, so I am only going to get five hours of sleep at best.