Buying a New Boat?

This morning I went to Genesee to take a look at a boat I found on Craigslist. The guy who owned it was a nice person. I stopped in at his house and looked around the boat. It is old, but it really good shape for its age. It seemed like a nice boat.

We took it to the river. It seemed like it was taking on some water. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I think it did. That was a big strike against it. The boat had a good size engine, but it ran at about thirty miles per hour at its fastest. The steering seemed really tight. It would make a great cruising boat and fishing boat, but it is not exactly what I was looking for.

We went back to Genesee. I rode down with him. We had a chance to talk about about web development. That is what he does for WSU.

I left his place and went home. I was pretty tired because I was up late last night. I layed down on my bed and took a little nap. I made myself some dinner and I was watching COPS when the tones started to hit for calls. Before long they toned for people to respond to the station. I went down there and I was there for about two hours.

I never rolled from the station, but it was close. Today was Springfest and there was a lot of minor calls going on up there. At one point though, the police set up a command and started to call in more cops because it was looking like it could get ugly. Nothing ever happened. I went home and watched some SouthPark before I fell asleep on the couch.

Second Arrest

We got called for a fire alarm just before shift change. So I ended up getting a little bit of overtime out of it. I was also going to be going to the ropes training. We were removing a guy from a crane that is at the WSU Olympia residence hall. I was doing photos and photos during the training. It took about two hours from the time I got there until I got back.

I hurried home to get into my uniform for working the county. I went to the office. I gave Paul a ride from the county shop back to the office. Then Tim and I headed up to Tekoa for a report of an attempt car prowl. We took a report and some photos.

When we went to serve some papers. One was on a house that was going to be repoed. The place was trashed. It will probably cost a lot of money just to throw away the trash from around the place. Then we served papers to someone in Pullman. I also pulled about six warrants from around Pullman that I wanted to try to serve. Most of them were bad addresses. We were striking out on that.

Then we drove south on SR One-Ninety-Five. We stopped several people and I wrote some tickets. We started to head North. We stopped some more cars along the way. Tim said that he wanted to head to the gas pumps in Colfax to get fuel. It was on the way there through Colfax when we stopped a car for not dimming its headlights. The driver was suspended. I arrested him and brought him into jail. I spent the next hour and a half writing the report on that plus all the tickets that I wrote through out the night. I didn’t leave the SO until after four in the morning.

Final Day of SFST

We had six at the fire department so that meant I was on an ambulance all day. I was working with Tony. I really like working with him. We ended up working the South part of town. As it turned out every call save one was on the South side of town.

It was a pretty typical day around the station. We did our normal morning chores and rig checks. I had to get my EMS OTEP bookwork done today. That was what I was doing in the afternoon. But just as I got done and before I could print it off we got called out on an EMS call.

We got back to the station in time to have dinner. Then I had to run off to training at the CUE. We were doing the final day of the standardize field sobriety testing. We were doing the wet lab.

I have been doing some practice of the things I am going to say if I do the field sobriety tests. I did my practice on three of the subjects. Then I did my final test on the fourth person. I passed it. Now I am certified in doing SFST’s.

After I got back to the station I sat in on the end of the new reserve class. I got some dishes done. I got to the bedroom and I was going to start to get ready for bed. Before I even got my boots off we were called out to the CUB. I actually got to bed following that call only to get another call an hour later. After that call I was able to actually go to bed for the rest of the night.

IM Playoffs

This IM season hasn’t been one of our best in the last decade or so. In fact three years ago we would not have been in the playoffs, except Intramural’s changed how they do the playoffs. Now every team gets a chance to play and it is based on the record if you go to a recreational bracket or the competitive bracket. Before the change only about sixteen teams signed up to play comp and everyone else did rec. But that wasn’t very good, because a lot of competitive teams would sandbag.

Now everyone is all in the same league. Then based on the record they break the playoffs down. We were only one and five on the season, so we are in the rec bracket.

Tonight our big hitter was not there so we were going to have to do it ourselves. The first game the other team did not even show up, so we got a first round FFT. That gave us a second game. In the second game we were going to be down a player so I called up Heston. He came to play with us. We had ten guys and we hit the ball well enough to score eighteen runs. It was our biggest output of runs on the season and we won the game.

We will play again on Sunday.

Only Calls While on Ambulance

I was supposed to be on the ambulance. But because I have training for the SO tonight I was moved to the engine to make it easier. But for a short period of time in the afternoon I was put on the ambulance with Tony so some of the others could do some drive time training on the engine.

During that time we were doing hydrants. As luck would have it we got one hydrant done and then got called out on an EMS call. That was followed up was followed up with a second call. So the afternoon was shot. I got back to the station and then it was off to SFST training on campus.

I stopped to get some pop and headed up to training. We were doing our final day of classroom training. We watched some videos and worked on grading what we saw based on the videos. We also did a written test. I missed two on that test.

The rest of the evening at the fire station was quiet.

Looking at Property

This afternoon I met up with Craig at ReMax to look at a piece of property on banner Road. I am not impressed with the dirt road. Plus the house sites there would leave me close to two other house. Having ten acres you should be able to have a lot of distance between houses. Plus I would have no place to shoot a gun. We went to lunch at The Emerald.

In the afternoon I went on a ride with Zehm. It turned out he had a call before I got there. I got the reserve call fueled and washed. But I never ended up going out on the road because by the time get got to the office he had to write it up. I spent the time doing my FTO book. I got several things signed off. It sucked I didn’t get on the road, but I got a lot done in the FTO book.

Change in Status at MH

I got notified recently that our benefits will be administered by simply buying them ourselves and then getting reimbursed. So I have been working on finding health, vision, dental, short and long term disability, and life insurance. I have worked with AIA for my car and house, so I thought I would go to them for this.

I am getting situated on my insurance needs. But today I also found out that I am not going to be a real employee. I am going to be a contractor, but it will be hybrid. Due to the Canadian company wanting to overhead me and the other American working for the company will be contractors. But we will have full company benefits as well as vacation, holiday, and sick time. This is an interesting change. I am also getting a small increase in pay to cover the additional taxes I will have to pay.

I went to see a CPA about my taxes. I had a brief sit down with Milt in Colfax. He is going to meet with me on Friday to cover my taxes situation. I also need to find out about my retirement options as the Four-Oh-One-K program is going to be gone too. That is probably a big one. I could do an IRA but you cannot put as much away.

After meeting with Milt I went to the Coroner’s Office for our monthly meeting. We covered the cases we had recently and other discussion covering the budget situation.

SFST

We hit the floor running at the fire department today. Within five minutes of the start of the shift we were out running on a call. Then we went from that one directly to a second call. We had some time but ran a couple more back-to-back calls in the afternoon. None of them were very big.

We were having sloppy joe’s for dinner. Tony and I bought the food for it and I started to cook it when I got back. I had to leave around five-forty-five for training class on campus. We are learning standardize field sobriety tests.

The class lasted about four hours. Matt is teaching it. All the recruits from my academy are in the class on top of a couple older reserves.

When class was done I hurried back to the station to go back on duty. I also watched Rescue Me after I returned.

The Graduation Ceremony

Today was a stressful day. It reminded me of the days when I lived in Stephenson. I was the hall president or some other elected position. I usually was in charge of the Mom’s Weekend Talent Show, as well as being a big player in the Mom’s Weekend Comedy Show. Saturday during Mom’s Weekend was always a stressful day for me. I was always worried about the various things that could go wrong, whether it was the audio, performers showing up, the set up, people actually showing up, and more.

Today was a flashback. I spent the morning working on my speech and getting my laptop set up with the class video. But after I copied it to the laptop I came to realize that it wasn’t a complete video. I had made some changes to it, but I never had it completely exported. So I had to start the export of the video from the video project, then I had to copy it over to my laptop. But it takes a couple hours to export such a large movie.

In the process of doing that I decided that I needed to figure out how to make the sound loud enough to be heard by a room full of people. I plugged in the old speakers that I bought about twelve years ago. They didn’t work, but I figured it was because they were not plugged into power. I had to look hard for a power cable, but I had a hard time finding one. I gave up for a while and tried a different pair of computer speakers. But I found that was a problem as well.

I looked more for the power cable for the other speakers. Finally I tried the power cord from my old Zip drive. I found it fit. So I power the speakers only to find they still didn’t work.

I then realized that I could use my old stereo and speakers that were in the living room. So I went to look into that working while at the same time looking for a microphone to use. But the only real mic I had was an small mono mic. It only had a two foot cord. I thought I could couple it with a longer cable to make it longer. But I needed to go from a eighth inch jack to RCA jacks. I went to Radio Shack and found a coupler, but then I wanted to look at their microphones. I decided to get a new one all together.

I went back home and plugged it in. At first it wasn’t working. Then I tried to plug it into a different input and found it was working. That was something going my way. Now I had a way to use a microphone and play audio from the video I made. I was also trying to create eight DVD’s with the photos and video from the academy class for all my classmates.

The clock was still ticking. My mom and Bill were on their way over to watch the graduation. I contacted my Mom to get an idea where they were. I had to be at the Pioneer Center at three to work with Macy and Malakowsky to get the room setup.

It was about one in the afternoon and I talked to Jessie. She was in charge of the cake and food supplies. I went to Colfax with her to get the cake and also so I could pick up the video projector.

We got back to my house just in time for me to pick up my rig and head up to the Pioneer Center. Once there Macy was waiting and Matt was right behind him. I opened the door to find the room empty of chairs. That caused me some concern, but I quickly found they guys were able to get everything set up quickly.

I worked on getting the computer, screen, speakers, microphone, and other A/V equipment set up and tested. The guys really wanted to watch the video. I finally relented and let them watch it. When it was done we left to get ready. We were supposed to meet up again at the old school building, the Pioneer Center, by five o’clock.

I got home and cleaned up. I got my uniform put on. Then I made my way back to the Pioneer Center. I stopped at station one to let Foster know about the graduation. He said he would see if they could come up. I didn’t think they would be coming.

People started to roll up and I got everyone their ties. Soon McNannay and Myers showed up. We had our meeting to cover the items that McNannay wanted to cover. We also took the class photos. As people started to file in, I was a little nervous, but I had everything ready, so I felt a lot better about how every thing was working. While taking the photos the fire engine and ambulance showed up. I was very happy to see them come.

We made a plan that we would start at six and as Sheriff and McNannay walked up I would call the class to attention one last time. They made their way to the front of the room and I called everyone to attention. The ceremony started with Myers doing his speech followed by Reavis. When Reavis was up front he called me to the front of the room. I was presented with a plaque for my work as class president. I wasn’t expecting that at all. It was billed as being from the class for me.

Then it was my turn for a speech. I did my speech without a hitch. I thought it went well and it was recited without me tripping up over my tongue. After my speech we did the badge pinning. I had my mom pin my badge on. Then we were sworn in.

After the swearing in we did the class awards. Pelissier gave away a knife to the best shooter, who was Jesse. Melcher got a nice flashlight for being best overall academy. The Sheriff got up front and called me up again. He recognized me for having been in the academy when I was twenty. And for working hard to lose weight. He said that I came to him a year ago about doing the academy the next time he had one. For that he gave me a challenge coin. I am going to carry that coin with me everyday I patrol. After those awards were given I did the awards we voted on.

I showed the class video. That went over very well and it got a lot of laughs along the way. Then Chaplain did the benediction. It was over. It went off awesome. After that Dean from the Daily News, who was there taking photos, got us outside for a class photo. We got several of those taken.

I got some cake and we did a lot of hand shaking and getting a lot of congratulations from a lot of people. My Mom and Bill went back to the hotel while I worked on getting the room cleaned up. I went home to change. I went to the hotel to pick them up and then we went to Cougar Country for dinner. Rhonda gave us the meal on the house. We sat around and talked for a while before I took them back to the hotel.

I went out to Hans’ place on Wheelen road for our after party. Macy, Melcher, and McCleary were all there. Dan and Michele were also there. I said hello to them. Tory came up to me and shook my hand and said hello. I was a little surprised by that because I have seen him many times in the last few years and it seemed like he never acknowledged me.

i was there until midnight talking with everyone and hanging out around the fire. I had plans to meet up with the parents for breakfast so I went home to get some sleep before breakfast and work for tomorrow.

Busy Day and Quiet Night

Most of the day today at the fire department was spent running calls. We didn’t have a lot of downtime between all the calls we were running. But after the four calls we received at this station everything went dormant.

The afternoon melted into dinner then that melted into the evening which melted into bedtime.

Opening of the Ought-Nine Softball Season

This afternoon I spent some time on a telephone conference meeting. We were discussing some of the new code that I will be in charge of and what I am going to need in order to get my computer set up for the dev environment.

Tonight was the opening of softball season. Ryan was coming down from Spokane. I started to make sure my equipment was all together and ready to go. I got my cleats traded out with some new plastic ones. The old ones had rubbed way down. I made sure my uniform was all together and then I started to change into my uniform.

I got the score sheets, the schedule, and drove to the field. I walked down to the field we were first going to play on. I had three new players who were going to meet up with me there.

Our first wasn’t the greatest. We scored two runs per inning as they were. Then one inning we only scored one. But in the final inning we took a nice one run lead. But we were not able to hold on to it and lost in the bottom half of the inning. That did suck as they had their bottom three batters coming to the plate. The first two got out quickly. Plus they only had nine fielders.

The second game was worse. The team was good and crushing the ball and our outfield struggled to make all the outs that we were able to make. We had one guy with no cleats. He did some good slipping and sliding.

We ended up losing both games. Ryan and I went to my place and talked about life in general. We were going to go see the Fast and Furious around ten o’clock.

We headed to the theatre around nine-thirty. We got to our seats and the movie previews started within a minute of us walking in. The movie was good. It was great to see Paul Walker on the screen. He is looking great still.

The Secretary, I Am

We had our monthly reserve association meeting down at the SO. I was going to be riding with Reavis after the meeting.

I went to the SO around five in the afternoon. I was going to spend time working on my speech for the graduation ceremony. But I never got to that. I was doing a couple other things along the way to the start of the meeting.

We met up at six o’clock in the basement. We had some pizza and went over some things. One of the first things said was by Jordan. He was that we need to have a new secretary. He said that we should nominate a new reserve for it. He looked right at me and nominated me. Then they voted and it was unanimous.

So I was handed the yellow notebook to start to take notes. We covered the topics of the meeting which was pretty brief.

Following the meeting I typed up the meeting minutes and sent them out to everyone. I was riding with Reavis. We didn’t hit the road right away, but we finally went out. We were heading to Pullman watching traffic and chatting along the way.

When in Pullman they were getting sent to a person who possibly was involved in a robbery earlier today. But before we got there they decided the person was not involved. But we then heard about people breaking into the Armory. We were at the other end of the viaduct from the building.

We pulled into the gas station parking lot and waited for the Pullman cop to pass us. He was just up the road. We followed him in. We then learned the suspects were around the corner. We ran around the building and stopped them. I pretty much acted in the role of a cover officer.

After they were taken in I went to the Police station and got my handcuffs that were used to cuff one guy. We cleared the PD after hanging out for a little while and went back to Colfax.

BBQ and Game Night at Matt’s

I worked on moving the Bumblebee from the street to the driveway so I can take a look at the waterpump. I was having a hard time doing it because the truck will not start.

I used the quad and winch to move it around for the most part, but being by myself posed challenges to not run it into other cars and the house. I worked that for a while and finally got it in a funny position on the driveway.

When BKoe got home he helped me get it better situated. He steered while I used the quad.

BKoe also said that he was going to Matt’s house for a BBQ and game night. He invited me over to it. I decided that I would go. We went to Safeway first to get some meat and then to Matt’s. At Matt’s we got there as the food was getting ready to come off the grill.

He said that he had enough food so we didn’t need to cook our stuff. We had dinner and conversation before going inside and playing a game. It was one where you had a word to get people to say. But you had to do it without using the word nor acting it out. The other part is that there is a timer that keeps counting down. If it was in your hands when the timer went off you would lose.

We played that for several hours while having a great time laughing. The first three rounds I was the first person out. Everyone was laughing really hard about that. It seemed to tickle their funny bone when I got out.

We left just before eleven. I hurried home to watch Rescue Me. It was the season premiere.

My New Durango

After I got off work I went to Lewiston to pick up my new Durango. I worked on getting the things transferred over to it. It has leather in all three rows. That was nice to see, because I only negotiated the first two rows. It must have cost less to do all three than they thought it was going to cost to do the first two rows.

I have lifetime powertrain and bumper-to-bumper warranties. It has a DVD player built into the radio. I have a rearview camera and backup sensors. It has the Hemi with MDS so it shuts down some of the cylinders when they are not needed to help save fuel. It seems to have some get-up and go. It feel great to drive it. Plus it has the newer traction control system so I feel better about driving it on the bad roadways.

When comparing my Ought-Seven vs Ought-Four it was night and day. My rig has traction like the Ought-Seven. The Ought-Seven was one I would try to put sideways on the snow covered roads and soon as it started to move sideways it would straighten out. I was easily about to put the Ought-Four sideways. I didn’t like that in terms of safety.

It looks very nice. I also have the navigation system installed. I have a huge hard drive so I can input songs and play straight from my hard drive. It also have satellite radio. I have enough space to put all my music on the hard drive.

I decided that I would find an application to update the ID3 information on all the songs. Then I am going to go through and clean the directory. I am going to work on properly naming all the songs and fixing the errors in naming of the songs. I am going to get rid of all the duplicate songs as well. I expect this project to take many hours.

After getting the rig I went to Costco to get some groceries. I hadn’t been to Costco in a long time. But I was able to get several things that I needed including paper plates, a push broom, and a sixteen gig thumb drive. I spent nearly four-hundred bucks in all.

Nathan came over and we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith. We were not able to watch the whole thing because he had to go to a meeting, but we were going to get together after his meeting.

My softball games that were planned for the afternoon were cancelled so I didn’t have to worry about those.

A call came in for a transfer to Spokane. I decided to take the call. I went to Spokane with Blake. It was an ALS transfer. Following that call I went home to continue to working on my music. I ended up staying up until nearly two in the morning.

Old Fire Photos

Other than our normal things at the fire station, we didn’t have a single call all day. We pretty much left to go to EMS rounds. We also went to get dinner. But other than that there was nothing going on there.

We did a couple inspections in the afternoon but that didn’t take up a lot of time. Then I spent the rest of the work day helping Rich go through a bunch of old fire investigation reports. I was pulling out photos of interest to work on scanning them.

I have a box full of them. It will be my project to work on during the days where we have time to work on projects. I hope to get through one case a day. If it is a smaller one I can get through more than one. I am going to put them onto the website under the department activities.

Five Hour Airport Transfer

I got about four hours of sleep and I made my way for my ride along this morning. I was told to get the reserve car ready and fill it with fuel. I was ready to go but told that due to the fact I worked last night and only got four hours of sleep I couldn’t work this morning due to safety reasons. I was disappointed. But I went home and went to sleep for a while.

I was sitting at home when a call for a transfer went out. I came to the station to go on it. We ended up never leaving the hospital. I did some CPR while at the hospital and instead of driving to Spokane I drove to the airport with a the Medstar crew. It was almost six hours of being there when it was all said and done, never making it to Spokane. But the nurses were very happy with the work we did there and wanted to give us an atta boy to the Chief.

I then spent about an hour talking to Nathan on the phone and chatting with Jon on IM.

Fifteen Year Old Video

I worked on finishing off my Town Crier column. I got that sent in to the Daily News. I went to the rec center to work out. It has been a while and I could feel it. I was weaker, but I have to get going with it. I am going to start to do my Body for Life program again. With the academy completed I would like to get back on a good sleeping routine so I can get my workouts in.

I got a hold of Rick and I arranged to work with him. We met up at six at the SO and I went out with him. We got asked to help PPD with a case they were working. On the way we stopped at Rick’s house for dinner and I also saw some of the video for the academy that we were in together back in Ninety-Four. He son is going to get a copy created for me tonight.

We went to Albion to talk to someone involved with a case in Pullman. After that we went into Pullman. We were heading South one One-Ninety-Five. We made a stop there. Then Rick had me start driving. It was my first chance to drive.

I made my first stop out on Two-Seventy. I walked up to talk to the guy. I got his license and I thought I recognized the name, but it wasn’t until I started to talk to him. I asked where he was going. He said he was on his way home. Then I asked where he was coming from. He said work. I asked where he worked. He said the City of Pullman. I asked what he does, then he said he is a cop. That is when I realized why I knew who it was. I cleared that stop.

On the way out Two-Seventy Rick was telling me a story about what happened with him over in the academy while he was there. The point of it was that he was family. I got some fuel and we worked Two-Seventy for a while. I made several stops. I wrote one ticket for speeding. The driver was doing fourteen over.

We started to make our way back to Colfax. I got one car doing ten over. We stopped him. I radioed in saying the license plate and instead of saying Xray I said Xword twice. The dispatcher confirmed I meant Xray. I talked with the driver. He was in a newer Mustang. When we were getting back in our patrol car after clearing the call he started the car. It sounded great. I mentioned that to Rick and he agreed. I cleared the call by saying “clear of the scene.” Cooper got on the radio and said “was there an incident that I am not aware of?” He was making fun of me saying clear of the scene.

We went to Ricks house to get my video and then back to the office. I got my ticket wrote up and I went home.

Mom’s Sixty-Seventh Birthday

I slept in a little bit, but not too much. I got a call from Russell and Nick. We planned on getting breakfast together. We ate at the Old European. I have only been there a couple times. It is good food. We also spent a while checking out the ten-six-sevens all over the place.

When breakfast was done we said our goodbyes and I went to the fire station to get a file that has information for me to get files from the YouTube website for Chuck.

I went home and started to do some stuff around the house. Nathan and I are getting together this evening. Before we met up I called my Mom to wish her a happy birthday. She was out to dinner with everyone over in the Seattle area.

I went in to Starbucks and met up with Nathan. We sat there talking for about two hours. We were hitting it off pretty well. He has some effeminate features and he definitely has his fruit flies aka fag hags.

We went to dinner together. We hit Quiznos. We sat there for about an hour talking some more. He is into sports and likes guns. He is not overly politically correct and he seems more along the lines of what I am looking for in a guy.

We went back to Starbucks because he rode with me to Quiznos. We sat in my rig for about forty more minutes talking. As we were talking he took my hand and we held hands. Then he reached across towards my seat and gave me a peck on the lips. He did that several more times as we sat there. We are planning on getting together again.

Mike Knows My Mo Friend

With the transfer to Spokane I started in the wee hours of the morning I was running later than I wanted to be. We had dinner at Frank’s on the way out of Spokane. Then it was back to the fire station. I cleaned up and went to my house to change into my street clothes.

I went to Phil’s house for the draft. That lasted nearly five and a half hours for me. I ordered pizza for the whole group. We got five large pizzas. I was drafting my team. As always I was working on getting players I hadn’t heard of. But I also picked up some of the players who I knew, but are not great for fantasy baseball. Players like Griffey are fun to have, but they will not get me a lot of points.

I had to leave with enough time to run to my house and put my fire department uniform back on to go to the Deuce. I was taking Engine Thirty-One to Smith Gym for the Family Fun Fair. We were there to show some of the equipment to the kids. We also got dinner out of the deal. I had a couple reserves go up with me.

When we completed that I had to rush back and wash the vehicle. Then I went home to change into my county uniform. I was working with Mike. I called him up as I was leaving because I was running late getting to the SO because of the previous event.

We got on the road after he finished up some of his DUI videos. Then we hit the road. The weather sucked. We got called to Endicott for a person who said that a friend was going to hurt himself. After clearing that call as unfounded we went to dinner at Zips.

We then headed over to Pullman. We ran some traffic out on the Pullman-Moscow Highway. While out there I heard EMS get dispatched to the same address we were at earlier in Endicott. We didn’t respond because the snow was really bad and there were people closer than us.

We made our way to Colfax as we were called out on a Nine-One-One hang up. En Route we talked to the residents and got information that there wasn’t a problem. We stayed in Colfax for a while running traffic. We made a lot of stops. One stop was of a couple guys who use to have a radio show after my show.

Mike and I talked about how it seems in some ways that things are not as busy as they use to be. I talked about how Pullman PD would be dispatched on at least one beeper call each weekend night. Now it seems much more rare. They have tons of noise complaints and whatnot though. I was talking to Mike about a friend of mine who is a deputy that I met while in Stephenson together. We worked in the jail and he was at one time a reserve.

Mike told me about how that guy probably doesn’t like Mike at all because when they were in the academy together Mike outed my friend to many of his co-workers one night while in a bar together. He said he feels really bad about it and wanted him to know he is sorry.

I asked how he knew, and he said that he has a good friend who is gay. He said that he can tell based on “gay radar”.

At the end of the night I got my paperwork completed and went home. It was about four in the morning when I went to sleep and that capped off my twenty-four hours without sleeping.

Two Late Transfers

I was working the fire department today. We had a call for a fire alarm today. We found some contraband. We were not going to do anything about it. But then there were some other issues. We contacted the prevention officer who said to call it in. We called it in, but someone snuck inside and removed the items before the cops got permission to enter.

We had training this afternoon and then got called away for a call. But the training was pretty much done before we got called away. In the evening I was the third in engine instead of being on the ambulance like I started out on.

As the night went on, I went to bed around eleven. I got woken up several times to do transfers. The first was to Colfax. I was the attendant on that call. Later on I did a transfer to Spokane. That sucked because I would only get three hours of sleep on the night.

Dual Transfers

I was hoping to work at the SO today, but I wasn’t able to get something set up. So instead I did two transfers with Colfax. We first went to the hospital to do one to Spokane. But when we got to the hospital they were not ready, so we left to go to Spokane and get someone from up there to bring them back to Colfax. But after we got outside Steptoe we got called back to the hospital in Colfax.

We turned around and picked up the patient from Colfax. Then off to Spokane. After we got to Spokane we went to pick up another and drove back to Colfax. I was the attendant for the second patient.

Before we left to head to the hospital a rep was there selling fire related items. They had some very nice structural gloves. I asked about the kangaroo gloves. I was told they are not good because when they get wet they get really slippery. I tried on a very nice pair with some good dexterity. I bought two pair. One for each department.

I was at Colfax fire for a while longer. We were listening in to the missing kid search from near Malden. They think he may have fallen in a creek.

Later we had the coroner meeting. That lasted about two hours. We discussed recent cases and then did our schedules. I got home and wrote up the schedule and sent it off to Whitcom and updated the Google calendar with the schedule. I brought up the idea of using the calendar to the group after Annie’s husband brought up the idea to me.

Another Colfax Structure Fire

I slept in today because I was up pretty late last night. I talked to Pat about the property out on SR One-Ninety-Four. He is thinking about re-listing the property and wanted to give me a chance to make an offer before he puts it on the market. I told him about the things that I have done to learn about the property and what it would take to build on it. I am going to do some more work and then we will meet to discuss it. I think the only way I will get it to work is if I work out a deal to buy it via owner financing.

Around six o’clock today a call went out for a structure fire outside of Colfax. They called for Albion and Steptoe to respond. I went to the station. I made it to the scene in Brush One.

We were there for several hours. I was able to throw some water on the fire in the mop-up mode. It was pretty much out by the time I got there in the Brush rig. I helped to clean up the scene and took the rig back to the station. I was out of there around ten o’clock.

Got An Oil Change

I was excited this morning to go to Lewiston to look at a Durango I found online the other day. It appeared to be exactly what I wanted. It was a fully-loaded SLT model. Last night, however, I noticed when I was online that it didn’t have leather seats. That made me a little nervous. I figured that would be one thing I can overlook.

But when I got there I found there were other things it didn’t have. Including navigation built into the radio. It has DVD, but not rear DVD. There were a lot of things like that. But the two biggies where the leather seats and navigation.

So we negotiated. I was able to get more money for my trade in. They offered to have leather seats installed. I still wanted the navigation. So we worked out a deal that we would install the radio with the navigation built in. But then I wouldn’t get the leather. As it was the rig was discounted about nine-grand.

So I made the deal that the leather would get installed at the cost the dealer was going to have to pay. I would pay that. The radio would be installed and I would have the rig. So I have to wait about one week to actually pick it up. In the mean time they are letting me “borrow” my old rig until the new one is ready. So the rig I am driving actually now belongs to the dealership.

It took several hours to do this deal. I was down there for a while. But I am excited to get it. I like the new rig.

I got home and then headed down to Colfax for fire training. We were doing stuff on fire alarms and sprinkler systems. We went out and looked at sprinkler heads and wedges to get the sprinkler shut off. We also looked at the alarm panel in the station. Then we talked about all the buildings with FDC and Knox boxes in Colfax.

After training I went home and I was working on my computer when I heard Colfax get dispatched to a structure fire around eleven o’clock. After I heard the update and a request to dispatch Albion and Steptoe, I went to the station. I didn’t get to the fire itself, but I did stand by the station until three in the morning.

I went to the hydrant that was set up to refill the water trucks. I was up there for about an hour helping to fill the trucks. Then they didn’t need a lot of water for a while so Tim and I went to the station. I left around three in the morning.

Long Tiring Day

I was pretty tired a lot of the day today at the fire department. Having stayed up pretty late last night was keeping up with me. I was trying to keep myself active. That wasn’t too hard. We one had one call during the day. It was for a fire alarm. We cleared that just as it was turning into lunch time.

I spent most of the day getting work done on the computer. I wanted to make a web application where I could enter data that I have to type up for tickets. That would be saved into a database. This could be done while in the car or at the station. Then it will take that data and print off all the reports without having to type them up later on. It would take the few pieces of data I wrote up and it would merge it into a Word template. The nice thing is that I would have to save separate Word docs. It would all be in the database so if I did need a copy of it, I could have it reprint it.

It took some time to write it up and find the necessary resources on the web, but I was able to find it. I don’t have it polished, but I have proof that it will work like I hope. So now I just have to do the work to make it nice and save the data to the database, etc.

I had to stay up until midnight to sign my softball team up for this coming IM season. For the first time in, probably a decade, my team will be playing on a night other than a Sunday night. We are going to do Thursday night so I can make all the games.

Patroling Twenty-Three

When I got back to Whitman County from being in Renton I went straight to the SO. I hung out for a little bit. Then I decided to go get some food for a late lunch. I was working the road tonight.

I was working with Jimmy. We started by taking Jessie to do her shooting qualifications. We went to the county range and set it up. She passed, so officially we all have passed the academy. We took her back to the SO and Jimmy and I hit the road.

We headed out SR Twenty-Three. We were stopping cars for speeding mainly. I did all the contacts. Jimmy and I switched off on the tickets. We wrote a total of eight tickets, having stopped thirteen cars for anything from poor lane travel, no use of turn signals, and mostly for speeding. We only wrote people who were doing twelve MPH or more over the speed limit. The fastest we got was someone doing twenty-one over the limit.

We worked that road until almost ten-thirty. We were going to head out Twenty-Six for a little bit. When we go to Colfax we stopped for something to eat and drink at the food mart. As we were leaving we got a call for an open nine-one-one line. We went to the scene. I talked with Jimmy about how we would handle the situation. It turned out to be nothing.

When we got back to the SO I spent the next hour doing paperwork for the tickets as well as typing up a report for the nine-one-one open line.

My Gay Day

I made my way to the Red Dragon casino for a poker tournament that my old softball teams was putting on to raise money for the team. I got to the casino about an hour early. I got signed up for the tournament and then waited around for it to start. I was disappointed that none of the older players from the team were there.

The tournament was set up that you had to qualify to move to the next round. Any money you won didn’t matter, because you would restart at three-thousand chips during the next round. I didn’t qualify the first time through, so they had one rebuy round. I was bleeding my money away. I was getting a lot of Queen-scrub hands. I threw a lot away. I was down to my last six hundred.

The big blind was coming at me. It was four hundred. I put it in. I had a four-eight off-suit. I had to decide if I wanted to throw in my last two-hundred and hope of the best, or wait with the two-hundred for the next round. I decided to throw it in.

The cards were coming and I ended up going head up against someone who had me dominated. The flop didn’t help. But the turn gave me a small glimmer of hope. I had to have a seven hit on the river to win the hand. It had to be a seven. It was a seven! I won enough chips to allow me to survive.

I made it through that round and went onto the next round. The next round I had to make it to the top three on my table to go to the final table. But on the third hand I had a K-J off-suit. I ended up getting trip-kings. But I lost to a guy who had an ace-high straight. My tournament was done.

I stopped at Nordstroms on my way south. I was up in Mountlake for the tournament. I was on my way to downtown Seattle for Nick’s birthday. I got him a gift certificate. Then I called Russell. I was invited over to hang out until the party started. Nick had many of him extended family members over at their apartment.

While there another friend of theirs came over. He was a younger guy who was very skinny. That was the story of the night. All the guys who came over were all Mo’s. They were all skinny as a rail too. I recognized several of the people from their MySpace profiles. I have seen through Nick’s MySpace. A lot of them were ten-six-seven.

I got to Russell’s around four in the afternoon. I was there until after eleven o’clock PM. It was a huge gay fest.

Friday Night Poker at Jon’s

I spent most of the day at Mom’s getting some stuff set up for my insurance. I was told by my company last night via E-mail they want me to get my own medical insurance and then they would reimburse me. I had already completed the leg work, so it was mainly a matter of signing up for it.

But when I called my insurance agent I found out that I had to have the money and the paperwork turned in today. So I had to drive to downtown Seattle to turn it in directly to the office of Group Health. I had to print off the forms and get them filled out. It had to be turned in today if I wanted to have coverage starting the first of April.

When I completed that I went home and waited until it was time to head to Jon’s for the poker game. It was their normal monthly game at the clubhouse. I didn’t do too hot at all. I couldn’t get a hand to save my life. I won about three small hands on the night. Other than that I threw my money away.

Traveling to Renton

Brandon and I met up at Tam’s Place for breakfast. We both had the same thing and talked shop including about the recent shooting that happened in Pullman.

When we were done I went home and got ready to head to Seattle. I got my rig loaded and headed out. The roads were clear and the traveling was nice a fast. I found that my speedometer was off by three miles per hour. I found this out by using a GPS to watch my speed. Now I know why it seemed like I would get passed more often than I use to. Normally on any given trip I am the one passing others.

On the way I got detoured by a semi truck fire near LaCrosse. There was a road construction related detour near Othello.

When I got home I got my rig unloaded and hung out. We had pizza for dinner and I watched TV most of the night.

Spring Break Slows Work at PFD

I have been dealing with the engineer issue about me not being able to stay under the reserve guidelines. Brown and I talked about it for a while. He pretty much said that he knew that by setting the standards and not dealing with a couple of us who are engineers under the old system that we would get hosed. That is what happened. He said it sucks, but that is the way it is.

We got dispatched to a structure fire that turned out to be a cooking problem. It was burnt food, but it smoked up the apartment to the point where we had to ventilate it. While doing that I got an ambulance run. Our turn out smelled like the burnt eggs from the structure fire call it was nasty.

Later in the evening we got called to a fire alarm at the Child Care Center. The night janitor was not there. We cleared the alarm which turned out to be nothing. But we spent a while looking for the guy. We never were able to find him. We cleared it after being there for about an hour and went to bed.

Training at Colfax Fire Again

With fire training tonight I decided that I would see if I could set up a ride with Paul. We started by going to meet up with Vinny. We did a walk of one mile to see how long it would take us. This was to help with an accident investigation Vinny was doing.

Then we went to deal with a dog bite problem near Tekoa. It was a pretty quiet day with Paul. But he had some good information for me. One was that he uses the odometer. He resets it every time he passes a mile marker that ends with zero or when he starts on a new road so he can easily tell someone exactly how far he is from a known point to have people more easily be able to find him.

Fire training in Colfax was building construction.

One Big Call

I was pretty upset about the engineer thing. I wrote a blog entry about it to help get rid of some of my issues. I had to vent, but I feel like I cannot trust anyone at the fire department to say anything to. I believe that no matter who I talk to the information will get passed around at some point and I don’t want that. So I will just keep it to myself. Brown wants me to continue to do my engineer stuff and get it done. He said he will make sure my captain will work with me to get it done. I have no interest though.

I was sleeping when I heard the pager go off with a call for a shooting. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Sure enough there was a shooting at Providence Court. According to the press release the guy was shot with a shotgun. But the press release said that he was going to be okay. It was my first shooting call.

Peeved Yet Again

It is days like today that make me not want to work as a career firefighter. There is so many politics. Plus people who think that if they got shafted, it is only fair if everyone else gets shafted down the line. For example. If one person has to wait for a year to be eligible to do something, then everyone who comes after that person should have to wait. Rather than going with the flow and the changes in time, people will whine if it appears that someone else is getting off easier or gets into a better situation. It is crazy.

In the case for me now there has been a battle with me being an engineer. At first I was one. But then they took it away. But they say I will be an engineer again if I become a reserve. They talk about integrity of the program between the engineers system and both career and reserves, yet today I am being told I am good enough to be a reserve engineer, but not a career engineer when I actually have more training than a lot of the current career engineers. I was granted an exception recently due to the fact that as a temp the captains are not interested in getting me trained on the PL. So becoming an engineer is nearly impossible. But now that has been taken away because some people whined about it. I had to do X so, he should have to do X. It is a bunch of crap.

Later on I am sitting in the training room. The Lt from the other station comes down and I hear him call my name. I thought he wanted something computer related because I am always doing computer stuff for him. Instead he wanted me to make coffee because I am the lowest on the pole. That just royally pissed me off. It was in a public manor meant to outright embarrass me. Then the senior FF from that station started to speak up. I couldn’t care less to hear from him. He pissed me off when I bought everyone dinner and he complained about the selection. Plus he has a problem with me because I am not union.

So I walked in to make his coffee. I then walked down the hallway without saying anything and tried to relax. I was boiling. As I sat there I heard them call me into training.

I sort of feel like being too busy making coffee in the future to be able to help with computer problems. I feel like I may be too busy in the future to help out with other things.

I have struggled over the engineer stuff in the past, and I have felt like screw it I am not going to work on it. Then I have felt like screw THEM I am going to find a way to get it done with or without their help.

I really feel like I should say screw it and wait until I become a reserve again. I am tired of the crap. I am tired of dealing with it. I am going to be fulltime for almost a year before something comes of this, and if I get hired on, then I will have a whole nother year to put up with it. That is why I don’t feel like I want to take it.

Paybacks

Today I was repaying a twenty-four hour trade with Blake. I got to the station and was put onto the ambulance. We ran several calls through out the day, but once dinner rolled around we were nice a quiet. We made a nice dinner, taco salad.

I was tired from being up late and getting up early the last couple days that it was nice to get to bed sort of early. I was still up until nearly eleven.

First Arrest Made

I set myself up to ride with Bogenreif this evening. I got down to the department around four in the afternoon. We had the swearing in of the other new guys as well. I helped to hand out their BDU uniforms. Then they got their swearing in. I took photos of that going on.

Then Bogenreif and I hit the road. We talked about law enforcement. I worked to see how he did things and asked questions. We were told to do things the way the deputy we are with tells us to do things. So I spent most of the time listening to him and taking advice on how I should make contacts, say things, sell things, and more.

On the first stop he took the contact. Then I took the next one. We sort of switched back and forth on the contacts. I only wrote two tickets. One was for running a stop sign. When we went to pull the vehicle over the driver threw a lit cigarette out the window. I warned for the thousand dollar ticket and gave the stop sign one. The driver was thanking me for the ticket.

I also had one person who had expired registration for twelve months. I wrote for that and forgave the running of the stop sign. On the way back to the station we found someone speeding through Uniontown. We stopped him. He was suspended. I arrested him and searched him. I ended up doing a cite and release rather than taking him into the jail.

I got back to the sheriff’s office and did my reports before heading home for the night.

First Day on Patrol

I was excited today because I passed my written test yesterday and I very well could be out on patrol today. I started by heading to the sheriff’s office to see who was working today. I made a phone call and got myself a deputy to work with. Then it was a matter of waiting. I was very excited to get out on the road. It had been a long journey to get where I am today.

I had my uniform with me and as it was getting closer to time get sworn in I put my uniform on. A couple other guys were also getting sworn in. Craig was riding tonight with Jordan. We started with getting sworn in by the Sheriff.

Getting Sworn In

After getting sworn in I got my badge and put it on. I was getting some crap from people because I was wearing the Class A uniform. Many people prefer the BDU style or the jumpsuit uniforms. I think the Class A looks sharp. Plus I wear a leather basket weave duty belt instead of the nylon. I think that also looks nicer.

In uniform after being Sworn In

Following the swearing, Jimmy was doing a couple things at the SO before we left to hit the road. We went north on One-Ninety-Five looking for speeders. We pulled over one car, my first as a reserve deputy. I was the cover officer. I went to the car and the passenger was talking with me. The person was given a warning.

Then we got someone else speeding along. I ran that person’s name through the dispatch center. From that point on I pretty much did all the radio traffic.

We headed back to Colfax and met up with a couple troopers and some other deputies for dinner at Subway. We hung out for a while and talked shop. We were going to go to Whitcom and give Jamie a paper with the names and phone numbers of the new reserves. It took nearly two hours to get there because we kept getting side tracked.

The first thing that happened was someone was doing forty-eight in a twenty-five in Colfax. We pulled over the van and I took the lead. After running him I was going to ticket him for speeding, but the ticket book was at the SO. I ended up giving him a written warning. He got lucky, but it is in the system so if he gets stopped again the fact he has been warned will be known.

When we got into Pullman we witnessed someone outright run the stoplight at Davis and Grand. We pulled over that driver and I ticketed him for failure to stop at a stop sign and for no proof of insurance.

We got to Whitcom and I gave Jamie the paper and we hung out at dispatch for a bit talking with Jamie. When we left we went up Terre View to Merman and down to Valley. We stopped someone for having an obstructed window due to the snow that was not removed. That guy got a warning.

We headed out to SR Two-Seventy for some traffic. We stopped one car for speeding. forty-eight in a thirty-five. I was going to do a warning, but when I ran the ADR I found lots of tickets. So I wrote the driver for speeding. Later we stopped someone else for doing thirteen over. I also cited the driver because I wanted to be consistent. If I ticket one, I should ticket the other person for the same speed today.

We stopped another car for no brake light and speeding, but gave that person a warning. When we were done I ended up ticketing three people and giving one warning. We had a total of ten stops. I did the contacting on most of the stops and all the radio traffic. Jimmy said if we had finished the driving course in EVOC he would let me drive because he felt I was ready for that already.

We went to the SO and I did the paperwork that goes along with writing tickets. It includes writing a short narrative and getting the tickets turned into the sergeants. I went home after having worked a successful first day.