No Patrolling

April 30th, 2007

I stopped in at NU for a while before I had to go to Boat Patrol. I didn’t really have much to do, so everything was all good. I headed out and got to Mercer Island. I got my uniform on and then as it turned out I just sat around the office reviewing the County EMS Protocols and the book on safety rules and laws for the water. Keith had so much stuff to get done around the office that he was unable to get out and patrol. I spent about five hours going over all the book stuff.

Finally he said I could head home. When I got home I got some dinner. Then just mainly hung around the house. There was not much to do after that in the evening.

My First Marine Patrol Shift

April 29th, 2007

I was excited about working today and I was also nervous. I drove to Seattle. I then went to my mom’s house and got my uniform. Then it was off to Mercer Island.

I put on my uniform. I met up with the officer I was working with, John. We spent some time getting my duty belt put together. I got a new belt with cuffs, peperspray, and a glove pouch. I also got a new set of keys with additional keys.

We spent some time talking about what he expected out of me and what kinds of things I needed to do. He talked about what he likes to do and how he likes to patrol.

Then we went to the boat. We went through some things about the boat and then we were underway. We made a couple stops of people who were breaking the wake zones. I saw him do an inspection. Then on the next stop I did the inspection. We spent some time driving along the shore line of Medina, Hunts Point, and we were working our way to Yarrow Point.

Then we got called to a boat that was stuck in the water. We towed it back to Mercer Marina which is next to Newport Shores. We dropped off the guy. Then we went back to port and tied up. We drove to get some dinner. After dinner was done we were near the end of the shift so we went back to the boat and got it all secured.

We went back to the station. That was the end of the shift. We had some time to go fast in the water. That was fun. I can’t wait to do some more.

The Thunder Back in Lapwai

April 28th, 2007

I went to station thirty-one to get things ready for the physical agility test for the paramedic list. Jerrid was going to be testing. It turned out only three people took the test, so the chances of him getting a job here is good assuming they look at the things he has to offer.

Then it was off to Lapwai for the Palouse Thunder football game. It was against the Columbia Basin Riverhawks. They have not won a game all season. Today would be no different as the Thunder went on to win. The Riverhawks kept it close.

Small Fire at NU

April 27th, 2007

Today I was planning on cutting out early and heading to the jail to put in some time when I got a call about a major problem with one of our biggest customers. We had one week to fix it or they would have to shut down the site which would mean we would lose them. Because of that I stayed at work. I also got a call from Pete about someone found at the river.

I worked until I got the problem solved. I was unable to get away to even help Pete by going to the river. But I did make plans to meet him at the funeral home. I then had to find someone who could come over and run my poker game until I got back. I called Andy, and he said he would do it.

I went to Kimball Funeral Home and waited for Pete to arrive. There was an odor from the garage when the person was, but Craig had sprayed some pleasant smelling stuff all around.

I put some Vics under my nose. Actually, I put a lot there. Then we opened the body bag. The sight was bad. The person had been dead for about forty days in the water. This is my first “floater”, as they say. It was pretty graphic. Pete and I checked everything over to see if we could find any markings or damage that would make us believe that there was some perimortem trauma involved. But we did not find any.

I left there and went to my house to find a full table of poker players. They had been there for about two hours. I got in on the action. It took a while but I finally started to win a little bit. I ended the night winning a little bit of money. *knock on wood* I have been doing pretty well at poker lately. I am playing a little more aggressive, but I am still playing smart. I am not making bad plays. I am making some good plays, and I am getting to know people and how they play.

Softball Preseason game one!

April 26th, 2007

As always softball games are great. I love playing softball and I always look forward to playing softball. I will get out of everything there is in order to play softball because it is very important to me. I had a reasonable day at the plate today, going two for four with two runs scored and an RBI. I also played the whole game at first base. I think I have reclaimed first base as my primary position. I think I will end up sharing it from time to time, but overall it is mine.

In the past I had it, then Dan came back to the team taking first most of the time pushing me to pitcher. But with the other pitchers I ended up playing catcher a lot as well. But it sucked because I had to share playtime there with another guy who couldn’t play anywhere else.

We ended up winning the game and it looks like we are going to have a very strong team. I think we can make a serious run at being in first place.

Printer Shopping on Accident

April 25th, 2007

I went to the training tower to see the people doing the physical agility test. I got some photos of the people doing it. It looks interesting. I am going to try it for myself and see how I would do at it.

My new hard drives came in today. I got those to my room and started to work on them. I got two five-hundred GB, and one eighty GB hard drive. One of the big ones was SATA. But I didn’t have an SATA cable handy. I had to go buy one. I went to Office Depot. When I was there I looked into getting a couple things for my new coroner’s camera.

When I was looking at printers again, I found a small inexpensive black and white laser printer. It was fifty bucks off. But when I asked Ryan to look some up online to give me an idea of the cost, I found that they where about thirty bucks cheaper elsewhere. But the guy there was telling me about the OKI printers. So I looked into it. I was pretty happy with the quality of them. I got some information about them plus some info about an HP color laser.

I went to Staples looking for the SATA cable because Office Depot did not have one. Turned out Staples had the higher model OKI printer on sale for two hundred bucks off. So it was only fifty bucks more expensive that the one I was thinking about getting. So I decided I would look into my options and make a decision tomorrow.

I went to Kit’s camera to look at batteries and camera bags as well as filters and lenses. They did not have the battery for my camera and I am going to wait until I get the proper attachments before I got new filters. I did get a new camera bag.

I went home and Beren called me about coming over to Russell’s for dinner and hanging out. I got there and brought out my camera. I took a bunch of photos as we were eating and hanging out.

We started to play with the long shutter time making some images that appeared to make people invisible. We took about two hundred photos of different things playing around. I got some that looked like one person was interacting with someone else who appeared to be a ghost.


Denise is the girl from the Shining

Denise is getting kissed by a ghost (Beren)

Ghost hand trying to grab a bar

A former co-worker died today

April 24th, 2007

I was at home doing some work on my computer. I bought a new webhosting account. I wanted to get some more storage space and it was cheaper to get a whole new account than to buy extra space. So I did that. They were having special where I could get more space and free setup. I took advantage of those specials.

While that was going on I heard a call go out in Colfax for a CPR in progress call. From what it sounded like the person was already cool to the touch so I figured the ambulance would show up and then leave. But then I heard them ask for Steptoe to come and help. Then I heard them go en route to the hospital.

A while later I was getting ready to head to Colfax and I got a call from Pete. A guy I use to work with at the Sheriff’s Office, Kirk Banks, was the deceased. I was sort of shocked. He was still pretty young.

I went to the Coroner’s office to get some stuff turned in as well as download some photos that Pete asked me to download. I also picked up the new camera. I got the one with the big zoom and everything else. I was stoked. I started to read about how to use the features.

I went to Taco Time for some tacos then to the fire station. I ate my food and waited for the meeting to start. We were doing stuff with the new tower we are trying to get put in. We were mainly at the meeting for support. It was a hearing to determine whether we could get a conditional use permit to install the tower that is needed to get what we need done. There were some nearby homeowners who were not happy about it and they were there to try to stop it. But in the end we got the tower approved.

Then I went to the SO and did some time on the treadmill and watched House before coming back to Pullman.

When I got home I worked some on my asp.net applications as well as trying to get the stuff from Will to work. I am not having any luck on it.

Last Poker Night at Mikes

April 23rd, 2007

I did my last radio show of the semester. Ted, the guy who has the show after me also came in early because I had to get out of there for the meeting for work. I spent a while talking to Jerid from the Evergreen Football League. Then I spent a while talking to Ted about Springfest and getting his point of view on the music and the Everclear who performed out there. I left around thirty minutes early.

I got home in time for the meeting. I called in and it lasted a while. During the meeting I got a call from Pete. So I called him back after the meeting and he told me of a possible case getting ready to happen in Pullman. A possible overdose. It never ended up happening.

I went to the fire station to return some of the tests that I had corrected for the guys. I found one person did not do a very good job on his correction of the test. The correction was open book and there was no reason to not do well on it, other than not caring. I stayed there for about an hour. Then it was time to head to Mike’s house for the poker tournament.

I got some pizza and then went to his house. I played on the main table then more people showed up. I went to the low limit table for a while but I could not win a hand. I was losing more and more money. I had to rebuy for another ten bucks.

I went to the higher stakes table to hope to see some new cards. As I sat there I started to win more and more. Pretty soon I had won back all my money plus more. Towards the end of the night I lost a couple hands that cost me some of the winnings, but I still left with fifteen bucks.

My own poker party

April 22nd, 2007

I had my poker party today. Mike came over around ten in the morning to deliver my table. He helped me get it set up. My back was hurting pretty good. It was not so bad last night, but today it sucked.

I called Pete and let him know about the camera. He wasn’t mad or anything. He also told me that he planned on talking to Pullman PD about some cases like we had the other day where there probably did not need to be the big dog and pony show that we had. Sounds like I am going to get the new camera that he bought recently. I am really excited to get it. It had a big zoom on it.

People started to arrive for the game. I had six people play in the tournament. I did not do so hot. I had to rebuy, and by the time we got to the fourth round I did an add-on to get some more chips in hopes of playing with everyone else. As it turned out it did not help. I was not finding any hands that I could play. It sucked.

I went out of the tournament just as a car accident happened. I went to the station but it turned out to be non-injury. I just did my timecard and went back home. When I got there only two people were in the tournament. They were playing about another thirty minutes and then it was over. I got some help putting the table away and I cleaned up the area.

The rest of the day I worked on my asp.net applications to try to learn a few things. I am having some problems using the new way of keeping the controls lined up. The videos I watched talked about using absolute positioning. That was working but Will at work said that I should use relative positioning. Also that I should make use of the style sheets to line up everything. That is the part I am having some troubles with.

Ouch, I hurt my back

April 21st, 2007

First I went to the city playfields to do some softball practice. I had invited Brandon to come along as it appears he is going to joining out team after two of Kelly’s teammates decided to return for the season. Brandon came and we mainly did BP. I pitched some and the rest of the time I worked on some fielding as people hit.

One play I was going back for ball and Brandon was running in. He went into a slide and sort of ran in to me. I fell over and used my arms to keep me from crashing down on him. I knew I tweaked my back in the process. As it would turn out, as the night went on, it would get worse.

I then went to Springfest at WSU. There were four of us there. It was a good time. Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell was there. He was taking photos with people and signing autographs. He had a long line of people. I was standing near the front waiting for my turn. He had to leave early in the event because of somewhere else he had to be. As the last people were getting their photos I showed interest. He said “I gotta take a photo for the firemen.” Bien and I got a photo with him. Before he left he also signed some photos for us. It was pretty cool.

We spent most of the time watching the events as they were happening. They had some skiers and snowboarders doing some tricks. They had Mad Chad doing his chainsaw juggling. They also had Kyle Cease from Comedy Central doing stand up comedy. The capper of the night was the band Everclear. They did about an hour and a half long performance. It was pretty cool. I only knew a couple of the songs they did.

I got a chance to do one of those strongman games where you hit a sledge hammer down on a board that would send a weighted slider up to a bell. I got it to go on my first try. I also got some photos of some of the reserves who were off duty. They got into a human bowling ball and we had some fun with them.

When we got back to the station my camera fell out of my pocket. I had run it over with the car. It was broken. That really sucked.

Big Poker Party at Mikes

April 20th, 2007

When I got up this morning, I decided that I would get into my den and start to work on the ASP.NET stuff I have been trying to learn. I also had planned on getting the photoboard down at Station Thirty-One updated. I had the photos sent to Rite Aid. I picked them up and went to the station. I cut them out, got the photoboard, printed off the new names and posted them. It took a while to get done because there were a lot of changes to make.

When I was done I went to my place to work more of the ASP.NET application I started. I am making a For Sale By Owner website where someone could post information about a house they are selling. It would be a way to have a web presence. Mike came over and picked up my poker table.

I went to Mike’s close to seven o’clock. I got my seat on the table. I was doing okay for a little while. In fact I was up a fair amount for a while. I was making all the right plays. Then all of a sudden it started to go down hill. I lost a couple hands in a row. I was starting to bleed my chips out. I got a hand with an open ended straight. I also had myself a middle pair for the flop. Only to find the other guy decided to put me all in.

I made the call and lost. I sat down and played some cards and dice with some other people as we were waiting for the cash game. We played until two in the morning. When I left Mike’s I had won back all the money I had lost and went home with an extra seventeen bucks on the night.

When I got home I watched a TV show about the scarries movies. One as a Clockwork Orange. There was a scene they showed in the movie. It was a part of a movie I remember seeing a young kid. I never knew the name of the movie nor much about the movie. But when I saw the part in the TV show I finally realized what movie it was that I has seen and now I can attempt to see it again.

Web Dev Videos

April 19th, 2007

I spent part of the day working through the videos for web development with the new ASP.NET two point oh stuff. I also got the photos for the photoboard sent off to RiteAid via their website.

I went to Ace to get some new wall anchors for my shelving system. The middle bar was coming out of the wall. I tried to use some mollys the other day, but they did not work as expected. I got a different system to try, I think it will work this time.

I went to the fire station to help with the recruit class. I started by printing the quiz that they are going to get tonight. I also went to the tower to set up the engine and other items for the class tonight. Then I met up with Parrish. We went to station one and helped out with the class.

The class was on water sources and supplies. They had a chance to work on turning off sprinklers, taking hydrants, and setting up stand pipes. But the training went to almost eleven o’clock pm. When it was done Parrish and I went to get some fuel for the Engine.

I went home and watched some more of the videos for ASP.NET.

CISD Team Meeting

April 18th, 2007

We had out CISD meeting this afternoon in Pullman. That made it nice not having to drive to Colfax. We discussed the upcoming training the new members need as well as some organizational things.

I also had my softball playoffs tonight. It sucked because we could not get hits strung together. Defensively we made a lot of errors that we don’t normally make. Kelly’s team beat us and now they are going to play for the championship. Joe, Ryan, and I went to Cougar Country for some dinner.

While there I got a call about playing poker at Jason’s house. Russell was not going to be there. I hope this summer he starts he get-togethers again. I miss those. I went to Jason’s and we played cards for a couple hours. It was a dealers choice day.

I was doing well, but then started to lose at the end on some silly games. I ended up losing about two bucks on the night. I can’t complain for the fun I had. One hand we were playing a game like Indian Poker. I had a Six and Nine. But with that game you don’t know what you have, only what everyone else has. A six-six-nine came on the flop. Beren bet two bucks. I called. Then a nine hit the board. I bet four bucks. Everyone folded really fast. They started to laugh and told me to look at my hand. I bet four bucks because I was trying to get Beren out. He had an Ace. I figured if I could get him out I could split the pot. Instead I crushed everyone. It was funny.

Second Seven In the Morning in a Row

April 17th, 2007

After waking up around one-thirty in the afternoon, I went to my computer to start to write the case report on the coroners case I worked last night. It took a little bit of time to work on the paperwork, answer some incoming phone calls, and keep up with various online conversations, but I finally completed it and E-mailed it to Pete.

When that was finally done I was just doing some stuff around the house until it was time to go to the fire station for the daily rig checks. One of the new guys was there so I made sure he knew how to do the rig checks and let him do most of the work so he knew what to look for.

Brian and I had been talking about CISD’s and the need for them and when one is needed. We also discussed going to Wesson’s retirement party. We made our way up there a little after seven o’clock pm, because dinner should have been done by then. We listened to the funny stories where Wesson was involved.

Finally I got a camera to take some pictures for Dragoo. I went around and snapped about one hundred pics in the next twenty minutes or so. We went back to the station and I had mentioned that it had been quiet. I figured that a call would come out and make people have to leave the retirement party.

When we got the rig back to the station I did my timecard and went home. I was trying to find some information online when we got dispatched to a lady who was assaulted. When we got onscene the ambulance cancelled us. We went back to the station. I went back home and worked some more to find the hoses and connectors I was looking for to use around the house.

That is when another call came in for a car accident. It was one Two-Seventy near mile post eight. A car had read-ended some of the construction rigs. When we pulled up on scene the car was about thirty feet off the road way. I was curious how this happened. Then after looking at the front of the car we could see there were two impact points. The driver had hit the plow blade of this big tractor. The car hit it and it made a deep narrow dent in the car. Then there was a second dent nearly identical to it about eighteen inches away.

From standing at the front of the car you could see where the gravel and dirt mixture had a slight disruption of the color, where the tires had driven across the gravel. You could actually see two sets of tire tracks about eighteen inches apart. It became clear that the car hit the tractor plow blade, then backed up and hit it again.

We went to the hospital to get Zettler who went with the ambulance. As we were leaving the hospital we got called out to a fire alarm at Terrel library, which is the new library next to Holland. They finally named it after about ten years of being called the new library.

When we got on scene we were first there, aside from the WSU cops. We could not see nor smell anything. I thought to myself, that even though on calls like this most of the people go in without SCBA and whatnot, that we should for good measure, but instead we went in like everyone else always does when appears to be a false call.

We talked to the cops and then Engine-thirty-two got onscene, we invited Clint to come in and play. He had the alarm key that allowed us to work the system. We found where the alarm was coming from. It was stairwell “C” on the first floor. We made our way there. When we went into the main room of the library on the first floor across the room I could see some hazy smoke in the air. We got closer and found that indeed it was smoke. Brian checked the door for heat.

Feeling none he opened it up staying low. There was a lot of smoke in the stairwell. We did not want to go into the environment without SCBA. And of course we left it in the rig. So we had to go out and get on air. When we made entry into the stairwell we made notification that we went on air. We went up and down the stairs and could not find the source of the smoke. The stairwell had a door that also lead to the CUB. That door was cracked open because of an extension cord that caused the door to not shut fully. After we made entry I noticed the smoke was not as bad. We allowed the building to naturally vent.

After a few minutes the stairwell was clear enough to reset the alarm. The main library area still had a good haze, but that would go away over some time of the HVAC system running. We had to fill our air bottles. Then went back to the Deuce as the sun was starting to rise. I went home and waited until seven o’clock to go to bed, just like yesterday.

In The Playoffs!

April 16th, 2007

I had a couple guests on the show today to talk about the Outside the Wire movie that was shown by the College Republicans on campus. The “open minded” Democrats and Progressives took up seats in the front row and staged a walk out before the movie was shown. How nice that they actual see what they hate.

We had our softball playoff game. We were playing a team we beat in the regular season. We went out there pretty much easily beat them again. That means that we will be going to round two of the playoffs against Kelly’s team. Ryan said he is going to come down for that game because he wanted to play against Kelly.

I was at home and working on the stats for the team. I also was cruising around the net as well as watching some TV. I finally found my way to bed at three-thirty in the morning. Before I was even deeply sleeping I got a phone call. It was about four in the morning it was Pete. There was a death in Pullman he wanted me to look into.

It appeared to be a natural involving an elderly person. But there were some questions about why there was a delay in contacting us from the time of death. Pete said to let Pullman PD know what was going on. I called Whitcom to let them know what I was doing.

I got on scene and I got a call from Pullman PD. They were going to have to investigate because the person was not in hospice. So I waited for the first officer to show up. It was Heidi. When she got on scene she started to run my truck plate. I heard her over the radio. I looked back and then she said disregard. I also hear the Sgt request Pullman Ambulance show up.

We went to the house and introduced ourselves. We did our investigation. The ambulance showed up. I made sure they did not do anything to the body, like running a strip, like they like to do. They pretty much showed up and left.

I spent the next couple hours getting information and waiting for the detectives to show up. They got on scene around six in the morning. We went to the room to investigate the body and get photographs. I was out of there around seven in the morning. I went home and got a bowl of cereal before going to bed.

Pete was thinking it would be a quick hour or so, but it turned into nearly three hours.

Walker’s Last Day

April 15th, 2007

I had been needing to make a trip to the store for a while now, and I finally made it there. I went to Safeway and spent well over a hundred bucks on the things I needed. Sometimes it is hard to make the time that I need to go to the store, but I finally made sure I got there because I was really getting low on items. Upon my return I made sure that I had time to get to the fire station well before the meal time.

With this being Anthony’s last day, I wanted to have a meal for him that everyone could come to. I had invited the guys from Station one and the Deuce to participate in this. I also had the reserves bring along something to contribute. I got down there early to make sure that everything got set up and it went off smoothly. I helped to get tables set up and we got the chairs out of the shed. I wiped everything down to make sure it was clean.

People started to show up around five and we sat down to eat. It was good to have everyone around. We had BBQ hamburgers and hotdogs with all the fixings. When the meal was done we had some pie then did a quick introduction of everyone at the party.

We went to the bay and started to do our rig checks. They went pretty quick overall. We also spent some time training Williams on Rescue and filling it up with water. We had to go to the city shops to fuel the gas can from Engine. That was pretty much it for the night. We did not get any calls for Walker’s last night.

In the Win Column

April 14th, 2007

Today’s Palouse Thunder game was played against the Okanagon County Commandos. They were missing some of their players because one of their teammates’ child died recently and they were attending a funeral. We had a moment of silence before the game started.

Playing in the Kibbie Dome was nice. I did not have to go far, plus I was able to spread out. It was easier to play the music that I needed to play as the cheerleaders danced and for the Thunder when they scored. The Thunder won the game. It looked bad for a little bit, but the defense stepped up and made some big stops. The offense line is hurting due to some recent injuries. They were playing with some brand new guys on the line.

When the game was over with I went to my house and started to work on going through my books in the garage. I got them all sorted. I am going to put all my academic books on the shelf I have. But the middle bracket bar started to come loose. The plastic molly was not holding. I had to take down all the books until I can get to the store and buy some metal ones.

My garage is coming along. I have a long way to go, but I think when I get the desk and a few other items out of them I will be in good shape. I will be able to move all the items to one side of the garage and start to put things away in the cupboards that are in the garage. Then when I get those things put away, it will make the garage more roomy. I hope that very soon I will be able to get those things put away in the garage. I really have only made a small dent, but it felt good walking through it and feeling like there is more room.

Movie Night with Peter

April 13th, 2007

I spent some of the day working on watching the videos for ASP.NET page development. There are a lot of videos that I have to watch to get caught up and I also downloaded several others to watch. There are several more hours to watch.

Later in the evening I sent a message to Peter about getting together to have some pizza and watch House. He came over for that. He helped me break down a lot of the boxes at my house. We took those to the recycling center at Pullman Disposal.

After House was over we watched Thank You for Smoking. That was a really funny movie. We then spent time talking about some changes for my room and then he was looking at the collage I made for the coroner’s office. He left around five in the morning and I headed to bed.

Training All Day Long

April 12th, 2007

Starting with teaching first aid at the WSU Recycling Center. I wasn’t sure I was going to like to teach it. After doing it with John recently it seemed like first air training was all about saying “Stay calm, I am going to call for EMS.” But through out the class I really realized it was a lot more than that. It was actually a good time teaching it. I had some good students in the class who asked some very good questions.

After that class I went to the Deuce to return the van. Rich got me to play some X-Box for a little while. Then I went home and got my stuff for the Recruit Class. I have spent two days working on it. I was not happy with the results. I felt that I did as good as I could, but the material sucked. The Powerpoint went on and on and on. But finally it was over and we went to the tower.

I worked on teaching positive pressure ventilation. We were up there for a couple hours. I got a call from Mike about a poker game at his place while I was there.

I went to Mike’s and played poker until almost three in the morning. I was kicking some butt. I ended up winning nearly eighty bucks on the night. I was happy about that for sure.

CPR Class at Station One

April 11th, 2007

It has been a little while since I did a class at the station. I had only eight people show up because of cancellations and sicknesses. It turned out to be a good group of students. One guy was ten-six-seven. We talked after the class for a tiny bit. Turns out he is going to become an Eastside Fire and Rescue volunteer. He said that he had been on ride-alongs with Pullman. But he is leaving school so he did not try to sign up for the reserve program, though he had thought about it.

When the class was done and I got everything cleaned up I had to get home pretty quickly because I had to be up early for my first-aid class tomorrow morning, but I also had to get some more work on the class for ventilation that I am doing in the evening.

I have been very busy most of today working on the class material for ventilation or doing the teaching of CPR.

Late for Training

April 10th, 2007

After talking with Brown on Monday my understanding is that training for ventilation would be on Wednesday. But at around one o’clock I got a call asking if I was coming down. I told Howell I would be right down. I was not as ready as I would have liked to have been, but I was able to do an okay job with everything.

After that was done I went home and continued to work on getting the presentation put together with the readings from the book as well as other sources. I also found a couple videos that I was thinking about showing.

Then it was time to go to the CISD in reference to the fatal car accident from Sunday night. That is my third one in less than one year. Honestly I have not had to go to them for myself, but I feel like by being there I am showing support to the others.

When it was over I spoke with Pete for a little bit before heading home. One thing I don’t like about it is when people talk about physical reactions, such as feeling ill, not eating, not sleeping, nightmares, etc, I don’t have those things. But I don’t want to say “it has not affected me at all. In fact, as soon as the call was over, I was done with it.” That just seems cold. I asked him about it. He said something that is important for us as a Coroner is to be able to compartmentalize our calls so we do not get eaten alive by them. People who cannot do that do not last long in this line of work.

When I got home it was late I has some cereal and watched some TV, but I was pretty tired and I got to bed around one in the morning.

More Reserve Training

April 9th, 2007

After the longer than expected night I did not have the time to get my prep work done for the recruit academy class. That meant I was going to have to spend the time after my radio show working on that. And speaking of the radio show, I did not have time to do that last night, so I had to get up early in order to have time to get through that.

When I got to the radio station I was not sure what I was going to talk about, but I was able to go on nearly an hour long talk about the WASL, school teaching, WSU’s education department, and more. Then the second hour I talked about the WSU Police Chief stepping down and the fact he is a scapegoat. Following the talk on that I was starting to discuss the Seattle School District claiming that future time orientation and summer break are racist. How laughable. Tom called in and I did a quick recap.

I went home and started in on the reading assignment for class for today. We are going over hose loads and fire streams. I was not doing a PowerPoint presentation, so I was able to sit back and just watch what people were doing. I also had been assigned to respond on Rescue if there was a call. We got one for a roll-over accident, that turned out to be nothing. But when we got to the scene, in the South part of Pullman, there was about two inches of hail on the roadway. It was like it was covered with snow. The hail coming down was a little smaller than a marble.

I did help out with some of the hands on stuff. I also did some talking, but it was mainly just adding on a point here or there.

The class lasted until almost ten-thirty. When it was over with I went home and started to look at the Ventilation PowerPoint slide show. I am going to be teaching that one on Thursday.

Cutting it Close with Poker

April 8th, 2007

My poker game started at one in the afternoon. I was scrambling to get players. I was nearly ready to cancel when I found I was going to have a fifth player. So I kept it on.

We started to play at one. I was doing alright for myself. I was holding my own not having to rebuy. A couple others had rebought before the final rebuy round. A few people also did add-ons at that point. I went from the chip leader, to someone in the middle of the pack. I did not do a rebuy nor an add-on.

As the day went on we were getting closer and closer to softball time. I gave Ryan some money to go get some pizza because we wanted to eat before the game. He had been busted out by this time and was bored watching golf on TV anyway.

He went off and was gone for a while, I was starting to wonder where he went. Then he came back with some pizza from Pizza Pipeline. At it turned out Little Caesars was closed today. So he had to order and wait for the pizza from Pipeline.

I was eating and trying to play cards at the same time. It was working out okay. But the others started to bleed me a little bit. I wasn’t getting anything to work with and soon my stack started to go fast. The clock was getting close to time to go to softball. As it turned out Dave, Ty, and I were the only ones left. But we all had to be at the field by six for the softball games. Ty played for a different team but he also had the same game times as Dave and I. I started to push on some bad hands because I still needed to get my uniform on.

I finally got busted out. Dave and Ty decided to split the pot between them with some extra going to the person in the chip lead.

We actually got to play two softball games today. Normally we only get one at the most. The first game we kept up with the other team just fine and started to get a lead on them. They would have some innings where they would score some runs, but they were not a great team. We went into the final inning. I got a clutch basehit and I was standing on first. Nick came to the plate and hit a walk-off three-run homerun for the win.

The second game was against a team that had a very bad pitcher. But the guys would not be patient and allow for some walks. No one was getting any hits. In fact when the game was done, as a team, we had four hits. There is no way to win a softball game on four hits. I was pretty mad about the whole thing. Some of the guys were saying softball is a hitters game.

I don’t disagree, you have to be liberal with what you choose to swing at, but when guys are swinging at pitches over their head and popping up all the time, we have to do something. We lost that game because really no one cared to win it.

When that game was done I was heading home so I could get my uniform off and head to the station for rig checks. As I was coming down Terre View from the fields I could see people were leaving the station. I figured that rig checks were done. I called Bien and talked to him. He told me what had transpired on the telephone with Jacob so I could get the full story.

Because rig checks were done I went into the house and got my uniform off. I was sitting at my computer when I head Pullman and D-Twelve get dispatched for a car accident. It went out as Bravo-Injury. But I listened in and I could tell it was worse as time went on. There was one person trapped and barely breathing. As I listened in more, Tyson and Reed were both on IM chatting with me. I heard a call for two more ambulances.

It was fourteen minutes into everything when I got a call from Pete. I knew then what was going on. I was given the message to call Whitcom. I then went in service and went to the scene. As it turned out an elderly lady had been involved and killed by the car accident. When I got on scene I also found out the people in the accident were related to some firefighters. That caused many people at the scene to be more stressed than normal.

I got on scene before the first person was even transported to the hospital. I started to look at the scene and make my impressions of what happened. I photographed the scene and then spoke with Vinny about removal. I was given the greenlight by him. He needed to do his investigation and I did not want to mess up anything he was doing.

I got Kimballs to come out and got the removal done. I spoke with IC and a few of the cops there. Pete had also called me a couple times while I was out there wanting to know what was going on. He decided to come out. He met me at the funeral home. After I had a chance to make my determination of the cause of death, Pete went over it on his own and did the same thing. When it was done he concurred with what I had found and what I said was the cause of death.

By the time that scene was done and the funeral home part was done it was pretty late. I still had to get back and write my report about the rest of the incident and what I had found.

Early Morning Class

April 7th, 2007

Having to wake up early to teach the recruit class was tough after last nights call volume. I also had to do some of the powerpoint. It turned out that I was woken up early for a car accident. I went to the station and no one was around to go on it. So I ended up not going. I got some stand by hours though.

I went home and did some final preps for the class, then it was off to the fire station. I had a quiz that I gave to all the guys. It covered the last few chapters that we had gone over in the book. It was a pretty long, but it only included a couple questions from each chapter. Many of the questions were multiple-parters. It was a great chance to see how people were doing.

Many of them did not do great on the test, but I set it up so they had to do what Grimes use to have people do when they failed a test. They would have to look up the answers in the book and cite the source of the correct answer as well as answering it.

We went to the tower and started to work on all the practical things which was mainly ladders for my guys. It took a while to get people through the stations. It was a good training session.

After training Peter and I got together to watch some movies. We watched Saw Three then Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. It was a great night hanging out with Peter.

No sleep for the tired

April 6th, 2007

This evening I went to My Office to start the night off. It was to get people signed up for the softball team. I was there to help Dave find Brian when he got there. Then I had to head to Colfax for our Coroners meeting. We had been trying to schedule one for several weeks and finally got this one going. We talked about my case earlier last month. We also got the on-call schedule set for the next two months.

After the meeting I got back to Pullman to be on call for the fire department. It was one of those nights where we ran calls most of the night getting very little sleep. I have the recruit class in the morning so I had to make sure I was up in time for that and I knew I would be dragging due to my lack of sleep.

Doing the Second Training Class

April 5th, 2007

I finally got everything in order and I had to sit down and relax for a while. I was wound up and needed to release some of the pent up energy. I watched some Married… With Children. Then I made my way to Station one. I got a call from Blankenstein to cover for him while he is taking a test.

We started the class off and we were in the middle of the PT portion when a call went out. I told Drew to do his Powerpoint first and I would get to my Powerpoint when I got back from the call.

When I got back I was able to do my teaching. I started the video I created from the video clips. A second call came out so I had to leave again. When we got back the video was done and they were doing some of the hands on stuff. I got the training room cleaned up. Then I went out and just mainly hung out while they were doing the hands on stuff.

Following that training I went home and watched Shark before going up and working on the Powerpoints for the Ground Ladders. I spent a couple hours getting data and information for that presentation that I have to do in the morning for the career guys.

Training Class Prep

April 4th, 2007

I went to the fire station around eleven o’clock for getting some training equipment and talking to the training officer. By the time I left it was after three in the afternoon.

Finally I got home and started to work on the videos. I got a lot of videos about forcible entry. I had to boil it all down to just some of the main parts. It took several hours to get all the videos copied onto the computer. Then I spent time getting those videos made into a DVD.

Finally I worked on going through the Powerpoint. I was working on going through all the tools that we have on the rigs and putting the information into the presentation. That way I can let the class know where the items are located on the rigs. It turned out on Monday that the Powerpoints were so close with the book no new information was given out. So I had to add some to talk about.

I pretty much have spent ten hours working on everything over all. When it is all said and done I am going to do actually about twenty to thirty minutes of teaching. But the digitizing of the tapes took a lot of time. If all I had to do was digitize the whole tape rather than bits and pieces it would have been quicker.

First Aid Class

April 3rd, 2007

Today I spent working with John to see how he teaches the first aid class. I have not done one in ages so I was getting a refresher. It was a good group of people but as the class went on I got the feeling that all first aid teaches them in this class is to say “I know first aid, relax, I am going to call nine-one-one”. There was some stuff that they did to help, like stopping bleeding, but for the most part it seemed like everything was based on calling EMS.

After the class I went to the meeting for softball. When I got there I learned that I did not need to be there for Co-ed until later this month. But as it turned out no one from My Office went so I registered as being there for My Office.

After that was done I was hanging out at the Deuce so I could talk with Howell about the training class on Thursday. I am going to help with teaching it and I wanted to get to know what items I needed to teach.

Andy Savage in the Morning

April 2nd, 2007

For a long time I listened to Andy Savage while I was spending my days in Seattle. He would get me to work every morning. Then there was Jack-FM. A crappy radio station that killed K-Rock and with it Andy Savage. After being off the air for a couple years he is back with an Internet based radio show. It is called bigbuttradio.com. It is a show dedicated to getting people in shape. He worked with a personal trainer and started to get into shape. He was feeling better and decided to work on this show.

I had him on my show today. It was a fun experience. When I was in the studio waiting for my show time, the girl who is on the show in front of mine had never received a caller. I even asked if someone had called in. She said “no”. A few minutes later the phone rang. She lit up, and I was very happy for her. Then after talking for a few seconds it was clear it was not for her. She looked all sad and then handed the phone to me saying “it’s for you.” The other person in the studio and I both had a good laugh over that one. It was Andy Savage on the phone. I was so stoked.

We did the interview on the air. I had him about twenty minutes. It was a lot of fun. Following him I had Jared from the Evergreen Football League on the show. Then I spent time talking about some of the issues that are floating around including the murder over in Moscow.

When the show was done I called the station to find out what the plan was for training. I was told that I was going to do the PPE slides and assist on other parts. I went to the station to get the slides and a book. Then it was off to go home and work on my teaching notes.

I got to the station about fifteen minutes before the training and all my A-Shift guys were there. That made me happy in the face of the E-mail I sent out letting them know my expectation that they were on-time. In fact I said “If you’re on time, you’re late”.

The class took about four and a half hours to do. We spent about half the class working on tying knots. I like to do that and it was a great refresher for me. In a lot of ways I am looking at these classes as refresher for me. I am able to practice some of the basics again.

A Day with Ryno

April 1st, 2007

With Ryan staying the night he was around all day. We started with playing some video games. We played a couple games of Baseball Stars and Tecmo Bowl. I blew him out on Tecmo Bowl and we beat me a couple times in Baseball stars, but I did get him on one game of Baseball Stars.

We had some breakfast and hung out until it was time to get ready to play softball. We had week two scheduled for tonight. Like last week we only got nine players. That sort of made me mad. We ended up only playing one game because a different team did not show up tonight. But there is a chance that the team that had the forfeit with us last week will show up the final week of the season because they were there today.

We won the game by ten-running the other team. That was fun to do. I only got one basehit. Kurt and Jake both had at least one home run, and after two games they both have three homeruns, which is the team record in the current era.

After the game was done Ryan and I went to Cougar Country to get some dinner and I tried to relax but I felt like I had so many things that I had to get accomplished in the next few days I was sort of stressed.

I went to the fire station after dinner for rig checks. Rescue had gone to station one to get some air bottles filled and I helped get the bay washed out and went through the engine with one of the new guys as well as Bien. We were there until a little before eleven o’clock.

I then went home and started work on the stuff for my radio show for tomorrow. I am going to have Andy Savage on the show and I wanted to sound like I knew what I was doing.