Paperwork Hang Over

October 31st, 2010

For being a Halloween I was not in the festive mood.  Mainly because I was going to be crazy busy today.  In fact I had to put things on hold.  It is all due to working my butt off on Saturday night.  I didn’t get home and in bed until nearly eight in the morning.  This caused my hold day to be off.  I wasn’t able to do my second load of laundry.  I wasn’t able to get some computer work done.  I pretty much had time to get up and go to the Halloween event at the Pioneer Center.  It is an event I have worked before.  A bunch of little kids come through in costume and they get to play games and get treats.  A bunch of college co-eds were there to help out, like they do every year.

When that event was done I got my things together and went to Dissmores to get some dinner.  Then I went to the SO to do my paperwork.  I had a DUI, an Assault, and a couple other reports I had to write up and submit.  There are two I am going to postpone until next time I am over there.  I just didn’t have enough time to get everything done.  I was there until just after eight o’clock writing my reports.  That is the thing about law enforcement.  It is fun, but there is always lots of paperwork to do in the end.  I don’t mind the paperwork so much, but it can sometimes be a drag when you just don’t have the time, but you know you have to get it done.

I then hit the road.  I made decent time even though it was raining hard from the time I hit the pass until Renton.  That did cause some slowing.  It has been rush, rush, rush all weekend.  Now it is hurry up to get to bed in order to get as much sleep as I can before I have to be up and at work.

Letting in More People

October 28th, 2010

This morning started with got to Carlton’s funeral.  He had become suddenly ill.  After about two weeks he died.  He had been a Pullman cop and that is when I first met him.  Later when he came back from working for the U.N. overseas he got into doing his own home energy evaluation company.  We got together as he was in the process of starting the company and I talked to him about websites and about what he was thinking about for a website for his company. 

It was great to see several former Pullman police officers who served with him.  The fire department had great representation. 

I got home and started to work my SQL scripts while later I was going to head to the Coroner’s Office for our monthly meeting.  When I was at home I got an e-mail from the chief at the FD about one of the comments I had in a recent blog.  He opened a door of communication about my future with the fire department.  I went to the fire department to chat with him about what is going on. 

The problem I have is several years ago when I had gone to work for NU I left for about fourteen months.  When I came back I was told if I leave again I wouldn’t be able to come back.  Because of that and not knowing what my long term future holds at this job, I don’t want make waves anywhere.  I figured if I keep everything on the downlow and things go back to normal in December, then no harm no foul.  It is amazing how often information, even when it comes from the source, gets twisted and passed along incorrectly.  I figured by playing my cards close to my chest until I know what is going on there would be less confusion than having the situation always changing.

So I let the chief in on it.  I felt sort of bad after reading the wording I used in my original posting about “hiding it”.  I probably should have said it a little more accurately about what my goal was.  I hope the chief understands I don’t want to leave the fire department.  I hope he understood from the meeting that not even I know what is going to happen after December and I just didn’t want a lot of limbo.  He said he would keep my situation on the downlow.  He pointed out that putting it on a public blog makes the information available.  Most of the time I just assume that I don’t have a lot of readers outside of a couple friends.  But every now and again someone I know lets me know they saw my blog.  It is fun because a lot of times they like to read what I wrote and it strikes up a conversation. 

But bottomline I am still keeping my job situation on the downlow because I don’t want lots of misinformation floating around until after December when I know what is going on. 

After talking to the chief went home and got my uniform on and went to Colfax.  I had the coroner’s meeting.  We got November and December filled and we talked about a couple recent cases. 

I then went out on patrol with the county.  Matt came out with me on patrol.  So tonight I was just there to look pretty.  Pretty much I just double check things he does and I always watch out for safety issues.  Every person has their way of contacting, what they say, and how they do their thing, so I let Matt do his way.  But sometimes on technique, like when to radio that a car stop is taking place, I will give him some ideas to think about.  We were out until about two in the morning.  We made some stops, but it was relatively quiet tonight over all.

After I got home I did a couple things when my SQL script because it had died on an insert because of a primary key problem.  I worked to figure out what it was that caused that problem.  I coded to fix that one problem and then kicked off the script again.

Well Traveled Mo

October 26th, 2010

I didn’t arrive at work until around nine-thirty in the morning.  I wanted to get some stuff done with the SQL scripts towards the end of the day, so I stayed until around seven.  I debated on making a trip down south towards the Tacoma area to visit an old roommate from my college days, or whether I should just go straight home.  I know his boyfriend was out of town and he wants me to come down and visit.  But it is a very long drive both ways for a short visit to watch some TV and chat.  So I decided to go home.

After dinner I watched the end of NCIS and I watched the Rockford Files as I got into a conversation with a WSU Student who is from the Middle East.  He struck up a conversation with me yesterday and we are just continuing.  He is easy to talk with.  I am amazed that English is his fourth language.  He writes very well.  I kept forgetting that he was not a native speaker.  He is a gay guy.  He has lived all over the world.  He said back in his home country it is illegal to be gay.  That is just crazy to think about for me.  I had to get to bed, but he asked if I was interested in meeting up in person.  I know he has no desires other than friendship.  For me I am interested in learning more about what it is like in other parts of the world.  I think it will be great to chat with him some more.

What Gym To Join

October 25th, 2010

I have spent some time online looking up various gyms.  I want to join one that has a swimming pool that is not just crazy packed.  I went to Twenty-Four-Hour Fitness.  Their pool is actually shorter than the twenty-five yards I was looking for.  There were a couple ten-six-seven’s working out, but overall it seemed pretty packed inside and the parking lot was crazy full.

I then went to LA Fitness.  I got a tour around there.  Yet more ten-six-sevens.  I think they may have been a couple more.  Possibly because of the time of night or just the younger crowd.  But it would be a place I wouldn’t mind getting a workout done. 

They also have a twenty-five yard pool.  Parking is free and it is a little more open.  Their stuff is spread among multiple floors.  I didn’t make any commitments to either place, but I figured I would think about it and look for some good deals before I make a decision.  I am going to go back to my salesman and see if I can workout something a little better.  I am torn whether I want to pay to be able to go into multiple locations of LA Fitness or just stay at this one.  The way I see it, this one is the best location for me to get to after work.  I thought about seeing the one in Renton just to make a more informed decision.

The biggest thing for me is the swimming pool.  If I didn’t care about the pool I would just join the one close to where my parents live.  I had worked out there before.  It did the trick for me.

Poker Tournament

October 23rd, 2010

I played in my second ever Washington State Poker Tour tournament.  I played a couple years ago and this time around I planned on doing better.  The field was smaller than the last time I played, but I knew many of the people there are good.

I won a couple smaller pots.  I got a full-house with one person in it with me.  I also lost a couple pots along the way.  But after the first break the re-buys ended and people did add-ons.  I hoped that I would start getting some cards to play with but I still wasn’t getting a lot of cards. 

Sitting around the room were lots of guys.  It is a guys only event.  There were a couple ten-six-sevens.  There was one at my table I was trying to figure out.  He wore a light weight coat the whole time we were there.  He had tats going down both arms.  I am not a big fan of lots of tats, but there was something that kept my attention.

I finally got dealt a K-Seven suited.  Two of the three cards that hit were of the same suit.  I also paired my King.  I checked to the guy who has raised pre-flop.  He bet and I went over the top all-in.  But it was only about double his original bet.  He called.  He had pocket Q’s to go with a Queen on the board.  He had a set to my pair.  I needed a heart to hit the board to allow me a victory.  It didn’t come and I was knocked out. 

I went to the cash that was starting up.  We were playing dealers choice.  The game was Crazy Pineapple.  I got a pair of Kings and a three pre-flop.  The three and one of the Kings were suited.  The flop came and we threw away some cards.  I threw away the three.  I was sitting on two pair.  The flop had a pair of eights.  One guy bet and I called.  Then the turn brought another eight.  He bet and I called.  The river came and he put me all in.  I had a good full-house.  But I couldn’t beat his quads.  That knocked me out.

I went to Redmond High School to watch Logan play is football game.  It was a night game.  They lost.  I headed home and went to see a movie.  I chose to see The Other Guys.  It was pretty funny.  The theatre on the West Valley Highway only charges three bucks.  The ticket taker was ten-six-seven.  As I walked up he caught my eye.  He was wheelchair bound and very friendly to talk to.  I wanted to stick around and talk to him some more.  I guess that is a second reason to go to that theatre…  the other being really cheap.

Poker at Newport Shores

October 22nd, 2010

I spent most of the working day at the office working on a small side project to help out one of the developers.  I also was working on a migration script for the databases.  I got one completed and a second nearly completed today, but I have one more thing to do on it. 

I ran all my scripts and they ran without an error.  Now we can do some more in-depth tests on them.

I had to put almost twenty hours in the last two days to get caught up on the week.  I usually like to put in my hours early in the week and then have more free time later in the week.  But this week I was getting stuff done in Pullman during the day.

I went from work to get dinner then down to the club house to play poker.  I was doing pretty well, but the table got so full we were playing twelve handed which makes it hard to play a hand unless you have something good because you know someone else DOES!  They have a ten dollar max bet/raise, so you cannot really scare people off when there already is a hundred bucks in the pot.

I started to lose pretty bad and I was getting ready to go around two in the morning.  I wasn’t having a lot of fun because there were just too many people at the table.  And to top that off at the end this guy who is always drunk showed up.  He slows the game down and just is clueless a lot of time.

Long Work Day

October 21st, 2010

Because of the lack of hours I put in over the first three days this week I want to put in two ten hour days in order to get a forty hour work week.  I got into the office after nine.  I worked on a new project I have been assigned.  I need to write some code to do some file uploads and database saves.

I had lunch at Three Pigs with Jon and the guys.  After that I was back at the office working until nearly nine-forty.  It only took about twenty minutes to drive home.  That was nice. 

I pretty much had some dinner and watched a tiny bit of TV before heading off to bed.

Road Trip with Gollnick

October 20th, 2010

The other day John asked if anyone was going to Seattle soon.  I told him I was.  So we arranged for him to come to Seattle with me tonight.

I spent much of the day during work on the SQL migration scripts for transforming data to move to a new database.  I got some stuff done around the house before heading out.  I am going to be gone until next weekend.

I picked up John after eight and we headed for the Seattle-area.  It was a nice drive. We were able to talk shop and visit.  John said it was a nice fast trip without having to stop all the time like he does when traveling with his kids.  I got home a little after one in the morning and pretty much went right to bed.

New Reserve Class

October 19th, 2010

After I got done working I got my uniform on and headed into the county.  I was going to help out with the academy then patrol for a while.  But instead a call came in where help was needed in Colfax.  I responded and ended up taking the lead.  I made an arrest.  A press release was posted about it.  The press release told about a domestic that the male half assaulted his ex-girlfriend and made her drive him north from Clarkston. 

I had enough time to make it over for the begining of the academy and show my video.  Then I had to leave and go finish my report for the arrest.  I got on the road around eleven at night because of the time it took to do all the paperwork.  When I was on the road it was totally dead.  I didn’t do much of anything outside of the arrest at the start of the shift.

Training in the Audian.

October 18th, 2010

This evening I had fire training.  We were doing firefighter survival training in the old Audian movie theatre.  We did one scenerio where we crawled around the main theatre room.  There are no seats in there now.  We were placed away from each other.  We had to find our partners and then crawl to safety.

The second one we had to use the hose to find our way out of the building.  When we were done I went to the movie theatre to watch Jackass Three-D with BKoe, the Khurt’s, and Burkett’s.  We were going to have a beer, but I didn’t get done with training in time to do that.  Jackass was very funny!

Ticket Writing Machine

October 17th, 2010

I am not one to write a lot of tickets, but this shift I ended up writing five tickets with two warnings.  I took a couple calls for service and I had to make a phone call on one of them and went to meet with the person on the other one.  Those were my only two calls for service.  I didn’t have any other calls for service, so I just patrolled the streets and stopped a lot of people who were going really fast.

Cougar Football

October 16th, 2010

Today was Cougar Football Saturday.  Today the Cougs were going against Arizona.  My article about the Cougs came out in the paper today.  I pretty much said that when someone tries to rebuild a college football program that was at the very bottom, it takes about four years to build it back.  We are seeing some shining moments out of the Cougs now.

I worked the Rescue during the game.  I watched most of the game, but we got called to one open fire that we had to put out.  Other than that there were no calls.  After the game we did parking lot patrols for illegal fires.  Fires are okay as long as they are in approved containers.

We walked through several parking lots.  We talked with people and watched some other football games on the various TV’s people had set up through out the stadium.

I was on call for the fire department as well.  It was pretty slow we ran two calls and a third one just before four in the morning.  We were cancelled en route to the final call.  It was pretty slow for a football weekend.

I am Employed

October 12th, 2010

There has been a long stretch of my not writing blogs.  It has been the longest stretch since I started this blog.  It is not something I wanted, but with my old webhosting company and the problems I got out of the habit of doing it.  Then trying to get caught up makes it difficult.

Then to top that off I have been in a situation where I am undergoing a major life changing event.  I was offered a contact job at Brian’s company.  This was something I was expecting.  Actually I was expecting a full-time job offer, but it is for one year.  The thing is I would be working out of the Kirkland office.  When I interviewed with them I was ready to move to the Seattle area, but lately that feeling has changed.

I decided to take the offer, but I haven’t told anyone.  So I went to Seattle for a visit, as far as anyone else knew.  But some people were suspicious.  Now, it is a lot more obvious as I have been working in Seattle for more than three weeks now.  I haven’t been keeping the secret so much anymore.  I have told some of the people in the Seattle area.  I also told Ryan.  During my second week the office manager came into my office and said he was offering me a full-time job.  It would be doing something similiar to what I was doing, but I would be more of a tester/developer.  But I could work my way to doing dev full-time down the road.  But it sounds like they are willing to let me learn on the job.

I am going to learn some new technologies life Flex and Iron Phyton.  I get to work from home on Friday’s so I will be going over to Pullman a lot.  But I also plan on staying home on some weekends. 

Yesterday I told them I was going to take the full-time job offer.  I have also done a couple projects that they are happy with already.  So it is good that things are going well for me right now.  I am not going to make as much as I would like to make, but I figure I will go in and work hard and do a good job and earn a pay raise as I show them I am worth it.

So my plan is to try to hide it for another month and a half at the fire department.  At some point I am going to have to do something there.  I don’t know if I will have to quit or if we can work out some sort of deal.  I hope we can just work something out.  I will cross that bridge when I come to it. 

Cooper pretty much knows that I am working in Seattle.  He wants me to stay on there and just put in my hours to keep my commission.  That is what I want to do as well.  I love being a deputy.

I am going to have to work something out with Pete as well.  I let him know that I didn’t know what the future held, but I do want to be the next coroner.  So I need to do what I have to in order to make that come true.  I also need to make sure I stay up with my OTEP training for my EMT certification.

For the last couple weeks I have been in Seattle Monday through Thursday night and then I drive to Pullman where I am until Sunday night.  I am probably going to stay there on some Sunday nights and come back on Monday morning.  But I have been playing all that by ear.

So far I have been doing what I did last time I lived in Seattle.  I work all day and then come home and do nothing until the next day at work.  I want to start to find things to do, but I need to start to rekindle some of my old relationships with some of my friends.

I am going to let the Sgt know at the marine patrol that I have my stuff with me and I am around a lot more so if they need someone in short notice that I should have some availability.  But it sounds like I will be a very busy man at work as well.  Once I start working as a FTE I will be working lots and lots of hours every week.  So with my other activities I may have a hard time doing they hours they want me to.  But right now it isn’t a big deal because all I do is sit around the house when I go home.

It is also important that I start some sort of work out program.  There is some workout equipment at the office building where I work and I have access to it.  I need to take advantage of it.  Maybe I can work out following work and get on the road around seven when the traffic isn’t as bad.

Outside of that I have been a busy guy.  I played in a co-ed fall league for softball with Spellman.  I also played in a softball tournament this last weekend.  We went three and out, but it was fun to play and it could be my last tournament with the Garden if I keep the job over here.  That sucks because I do like the team and the guys I am playing with.  Plus we picked up a ten-six-seven.  We played another touranment with him.  He is blonde and blue eyes.  Plus he is very cool.