Pullman High moves on

Aside from getting a couple bugs finished and checked in, I was on call for the fire department. I also was going to work the Pullman High football game. Nick, Ben, and I met up around six-thirty and headed up to the field. The game started around seven o’clock.

Pullman came out and made the presence known. They scored, scored, and scored some more. They only allowed one touchdown the whole game. That is pretty typical for them this year. They do not give many points up. With this win they move to the second around of the state playoffs.

After the call we headed back to the station to park rescue. The rest of the evening I was on call. We now go on alpha calls so that adds some to our call volume. Tonight we got several calls and they were all alphas and bravos. They were spaced out in such a way that we spent nearly the whole evening going on calls and I only got about two hours of sleep.

One call we got as we were backing the rescue into the bay, just after the previous call. It was for someone who was passed out on the grass at an apartment complex. We were there first. He was cold and wet and very drunk. We transported him to the hospital. I spoke with some of the cops who were there before I ran off to the hospital to get my crew on rescue.

The final call came in around five in the morning. I decided to just stay up after it and head back to Colfax when six o’clock rolled around. I figured I would go to bed there until it was time to get up and hang with Ben.

Royal Moscow Circus on Ice

I started by going to PRH for a TB test that all EMS providers have to take yearly. I got there when Meow was there. We walked out together and chatted for a while about his new house. Then I went to the CUB for my radio show. I grabbed a bite to eat and then went to the studio. Tom Forbes of Palousitics was going to be my guest.

Tom write a political blog and covers a lot of subjects that affect Pullman. A big one is Wal-Mart. We spent the whole show talking about the recent election, Wal-Mart, PARD, BREO, other political issues, and Cougar Football. It was a good show and Tom and I agreed on a lot of things.

Following the show I went to my office and started to get some work done. I got a couple bugs completed and checked in, but I also was working on one that was kicking my butt. I could not figure out how to fix it. After working on it until almost five-thirty, I decided to give up for the evening and head to the fire station. I was working the Royal Moscow Circus on Ice at Beasley.

When I signed up I did not know it was some ice skating show. I did not really want to do it. But I signed up for it. We got to Beasley about an hour and a half before show time. I decided to watch the opening act and see what it was all about. I was pleasantly surprised. It was really good. The opening act had a few ten-six-sevens. They had some abs that were rock solid. Through out the show I was impressed with the shows of strength these guys had. It was amazing the muscle control and what they did.

When it was done I was happy that I was there and recommended it to Nick and Russell to go see. Brian and I went to station one to drop off the equipment then we went back to the deuce to drop off the van. I headed home and watched some TV before going to bed.

First time since July Twenty-Fourth

Something happened at the deuce that has not happened in almost five months. No calls at all. Not a single call for service. That is a real rarity down at the deuce since it added full-timers. After doing rig checks and getting checked off on ambulance thirty-one I hung out down there and watched some TV. I was mainly waiting around for SouthPark. Following SouthPark we watched Mind Freak. Then I went to the office.

I was looking up information about online gaming. I had heard about it and I was curious to find out some more. A guy I work with told me about a website his brother-in-law runs. I went there and did some reading on it.

What will the commute be like

I was a little worried about the commute I faced after work tonight, but today was a day to deal with things at work first. There was a meeting to discuss entry of rate sheets for pricing customers. The way it is done now is very labor intensive and it takes a long time for people who have a lot of rate sheets. I was shown some of the rate sheets and it is clear this is going to be no easy way to get a more automated entry system unless people start to make rate sheets more uniform. Some of them would be easy to do, some would be impossible because of the formatting that is used to set them up. It is clear they are meant to look nice when printed and they are not meant to be used to upload to databases.

I also spent some time working on bugs like normal. I would like to get the remaining bugs knocked out by the end of the month if I can. I got a new showstopper assigned to me. After some work investigating it, I found the problem with it was something to do with a missing DLL and not code. So I need to figure out how to get the DLL to copy to the correct location.

After I got done working I loaded up my truck, got some gas and hit the road. It was a pretty smooth commute. Even in the pass where the speed limit drops to thirty-five miles per hour around the rock slide area went quickly with very few cars on the road. I had almost no traffic to deal with the whole way.

I went to the jail when I got to Colfax. I hung out in there for about an hour chatting with the guys. I went home a little before midnight.

An average day the office

I went into the office after having not been there in almost three weeks. It was a pretty average day there. I worked on some bugs mainly. It seems that is all I do there. Someday we will start to build some new stuff, but for the most part we are doing a lot of fixes on things that do not work.

After I headed home for the night, the commute was pretty light. I got to my house and played with Amber, had some dinner and watched some TV. I guess you could say SSDD.

Watching the Boys

When I got up my mom told me that pass was closed because huge boulders fell on the roadway again. They were discovered at about three in the morning. So I made it by about two hours. If I had waited like I planed I would have had to go way out of the way to get home and battle the hundreds of dad’s coming back from Dad’s Weekend.

I headed to Apollo to get the boys from Jon. They were up doing some litter clean up with Brian’s boys. I took them to Jon’s house. We played a couple poker tournaments while we waited for Lisa to get home.

When she did I took off and went home myself. I hung out there for the rest of the day. I did not do much of anything for the rest of the day other than watching some football games and then watching my Sunday night TV shows.

WSU Football… SSDD

I left my stuff on Rescue last night because I figured I would go to any call between the morning and game time, plus I was going to be going to the game on Rescue. But I was able to sleep in due to the lack of calls. I got up and went down to the station around eleven o’clock.

I met up with Michael and we loaded our gear and headed to station one. There was a big breakfast and the typical pre-game meeting. Unlike in times past Rescue was slated to get up there two hours before game time. I drove us up there and we got into position. I wore my sweatshirt at first, but as time went on, I put on my turnout coat and hat and gloves. It was chilly for sure.

The Cougs let Arizona State get a pretty good lead on them, but the Cougs battled back. With about three minutes to go in the fourth quarter the Cougs had a fourth down and four. They were on the five yard line. They kicked the game tying fieldgoal. But Arizona State jumped offsides. So the result of the penalty would give the Cougs a fourth and one or three points if they decline it. Harrison to that point hand more than two hundred yards rushing. We needed the points. The defense was not going to stop Arizona State. The defense has given up five hundred yards rushing.

Doba decided to go for it. Took the points off the board and only needed one yard. Harrison was stuffed and the Cougs lost the game by three points. I supported the decision at the time and I still support it. I like that they were aggressive.

After the game Michael and I were going to go to the hospital and drop off a blanket that was used by someone. It took a while to navigate the campus with all the people. After dropping off the blanket we had to stop by station one and then I was going to head to Seattle. We were at Crestview and Grand when a Delta call went out on Fountain. It was right up the street from us, so we hit the lights and went to the call. We beat everyone else on scene. So that slowed down my response to Seattle.

I debated on whether to wait until the morning because of the snow that was falling and my nearly bald tires. I decided to go. It was not that bad. Even in the pass I just kept the speed down and make good time. I got back to my mom’s house at about one in the morning.

Slow day at the fire department

I got a few of my bugs completed and turned in. Actually only two of them. But I am working away on them. I am going to try to get as many or all of them completed before the end of November if I can.

I was on call at the fire department. I came down for rig checks. A call came out and we went in route only to be cancelled en route. So we turned around in the driveway and parked the rig. I talked to Andy a little bit about his job offer with Seattle FD. Tonight was his last night. We did get one call that was pretty big, but for the most part it was quiet.

The called was for a guy who had fellen from about ten feet up and hit his head on the sidewalk. He was bleeding pretty badly and it was a PUHA situation. Rescue got on scene and helped package the guy and sent him off. Then Josh and I cleaned up the sidewalk. We first put Red-Z on the blood. Then we scooped as much as we could. But there was a fair amount of blood left, so we called the engine to see if they could come and spray it down.

At first we were told to use some bottled water. But that did not do anything to help. So we told the engine it did not do anything. They came by from the hospital and we hooked up a pony line and sprayed it down. There was still some left the water pressure would not get, but for the most part it was taken care of. A cop asked to use the shovel and get the rest.

We went to the hospital and got Andy, who went with the ambulance. Then we went to station one to get the shovel decontaminated and to get some more Red-Z for the rescue.

A few hours later we were dispatched for a guy who was really drunk in the big parking lot next to the tennis courts. We transported him to the hospital. That was it for calls on this dad’s weekend at WSU.

Big poker tournament in Oregon

I got up this morning and zoomed off to Pendleton Oregon for a poker tournament. I got turned around in Walla Walla and it caused the difference of being on time and being late. Thankfully they were taking entries late. I could not find Bobby who had my entry fee, so I pulled out the money from my ATM account and I figured I would get it from him after I found him.

I made it through the first couple rounds and won a few small pots and one decent pot. Then we had a fifteen minute break. One guy sitting across from my came up at the break and introduced himself as Ryan Franklin. Not the baseball player, but someone who knew me from back in ninety-four living in Stephenson.

Once the break was done I got to playing. The blinds were going up and I needed to make some money or it would be eaten up by the blinds. I got dealt a pair of sevens so I raised. Someone else went all in, and I had about six hundred bucks left, so I called. He flipped over pocket aces. He ended up winning sending me home. I stopped and talked to a couple of the guys who had played in the Zeppoz tournament with me, who had also won a buy-in. One guy was already out and one guy was doing pretty well. I was early enough I thought I could do the Pullman High football game.

I called Phil and found out one seat was available. I claimed it and made my way back to Pullman. It was just under a three hour drive from Pendleton to Pullman. I got my uniform on and went to the fire station. Shortly after arriving we got a call for an overdose. We went on that, then got ready for the football game. It was rainy and ugly outside. We wear a few layers of clothes for protection. Pullman High was winning the whole game. In fact they only let up two first downs in the whole game. Pullman came away undefeated for the season. It was a nice season for them.

After the game Meow, John, and I played some cards at my office. We shared a half-rack and played for a couple hours. It was fun to play cards with John again and for a chance to hang out with Meow outside of the fire department.

Coroner’s Meeting

Tonight was the coroners meeting. It had been postponed to today. I was also on call at the fire department. I could not find anyone to cover for me so I told that to Chuck and he said I could just go.

We talked about the recent cases we have had. We also went through clothing. We are going to get a couple shirts, polo’s, a hat, a knit hat, and a coat. All of them with the coroner logo I designed. I also need to create some ideas for business cards. I have a few ideas, but nothing on paper yet. I want them to look sharp.

I am pretty excited to see my handiwork appearing on the coroners office stuff. I made ID cards for us.

I went back to Pullman after the meeting and I was on call. But it was a pretty quiet night over all. Not really a lot to speak of. I did play some online poker before going to sleep.

OTEP Training in Colfax

After work I went to Colfax for OTEP training. It was on preventing diseases. We talked about HIV, HBV, HCV, and some of the other fun ones. Carl, Tim, Jim, and I played poker for about an hour and a half. It was not my night, I donated money to them for most of it.

Did you see Saw?

It is Halloween once again and the plans are to watch Saw tonight at the fire station. It is dark and stormy out tonight. With daylight savings gone it gets dark by five o’clock pm. The wind was blowing hard and the rain was falling in sheets. A couple minutes before six o’clock I head to the fire station.

I am at Terre View Drive and Grand Ave when the tones go out. I decide I will get to go on this call. It is for a utility problem at True and State. Andy and I get in Rescue and roll on it. We get ordered to check the lines from Hall and State down to True. We did not find anything and we were all cleared.

We got back to the station and I told Treff that I had Saw. Everyone from my shift, plus the full-timers watch the movie. It is a wonderful movies with twist after twist. The guys who had not seen it, loved it.

Once that was over Blanks and I wanted CSI-Miami before I headed back to the office for the evening. But I was not to be there all night long, as we had a call in the early morning hours followed by a fire alarm that Rescue does not roll on. But I was stuck listening to the radio traffic from it as I waited for them to clear the scene.

Third Place in the poker tournament

I got up and my phone’s clock said it was later than it was. I thought I was going to be late for getting to Pullman for the basketball tournament. We were not sure if there was going to be one today, but we went just in case.

I met Josh at station one. We got equipment and then headed to Bohler Gym. It turned out the tournament was cancelled all together. I went back to my office and I talked to godaddy.com about the Thunders’ website. Jerry asked me if I could take it over last night. He gave me the login information, but I was unable to FTP into the account and work with the page. So I got the information I needed from them to do it.

I also got an E-mail from JT about some ideas for the Office Pool. One was to make it so people could see the others’ picks once the cut-off time for the first game. I set it up that way. Plus I went through the Thunder website and changed all the places it said Palouse to Quad-City. The Thunder is now the Quad-City Thunder and not Palouse Thunder.

I got those pages uploaded. It was just before three o’clock pm and I planned on playing in the Zeppoz poker tournament today. I got there in time to sign up. There were people who got there five minutes after three and they were on the waiting list. The tournament started at four, but the sign-ups were at three.

I waited around for the tournament to start. I got some lunch and some pop. Then when it was time to start I took my seat. I bought in for sixty-five bucks. It was a satellite tournament. Meaning that you would win buy-ins for larger tournaments.

I played my normal game. A few times I thought about going all-in, but I held back and it was a good thing, because I would have lost those hands. There were a couple people at my table, the kind of people I hate to play with. They make fun of other people and call their playing abilities into question. Those guys were knocked out before I was. In fact one guy was being ripped on really bad and he ended up in forth place and got money for one of the other tournaments.

I battled back from near elimination to make it to the final table. Then things were going fast. I got some good cards and when I did go all-in they would hit for me. Finally I was one of three left at the table. I was short-stacked and the blinds were three-thousands/six-thousand. I did not have enough to pay three blinds. I got a king-five suited. A girl next to me called and she had an eight. The board gave her a straight using the eight. So I ended up in third place with two-hundred and ten bucks for a buy-in and a tournament at the Wildhorse Resort and Casino in Oregon. The tournament is from the second to the eleventh. So I have to decide what day to go. There is a different tournament each day.

I am looking at going on the third. There is a two-hundred dollar no-limit hold-em tournament that would have about a ninety-six thousand dollar payout. I would have to be in the top forty or so to see any money at all. But it would be fun to give it a try. It would be really fun to make it to the final table where those people will probably see pretty good money. I would think first-place would offer about half of that money.

If I were to win that much money. I know the taxes would take a good size chunk out of it. Then the rest would go to pay off all my credit cards and other small bills. Whatever was left over would go towards my truck. So I would not really see any of the money, but I would see the benefit of being nearly out of debt by it. But I am a LONG way from that.

After the tournament I went to my office and check my E-mail and played on the computer for a while. I had dodgeball tonight. We have four more games. Assuming that we win some we may make it to the post-season.

I headed to the gym early to watch some IM football. TJ was playing one game and Bryce was playing in another game. It was fun to watch them out there. Once ten o’clock PM rolled around I went to the gym and we played dodgeball. We lost the first game. But in game two Craig was our sole survivor and he took out two guys from the other team to secure our first victory. It was great. We won one more game and ended the night two and two. With a two and ten record overall.

I went back to the IM football games. Now Meow and Dearth were both playing a game. I watched them play. After Meow’s game I went up to him and told him I watched him complete a pass… to the other team. We laughed about that. Someone’s mom from their team came with all sort of goodies for them post game. She game me one of the home-made donuts before I left.

I went home and watched Scream Three on TV before making my way to bed.

Got the Office Pool Running

Today started out with a call about the IM basketball tournament. That I did not need to work it. That was good because I wasn’t even scheduled to work it.

I talked to JT about doing the office pool in the FFL league. He said if someone else wanted to run it, he would run the money part of it. So I decided that I would look into it. Then I got a call from Josh to see if I wanted to golf because it was a nice day and “we” did not need to work the basketball game. I told him that I thought golfing was an excellent idea.

Before I left to go a call came out in Colfax close to where I live. So I went to the scene and met the engine there. I helped move the patient to the ambulance and then headed to Pullman to play some golf. It was an okay day for me. Some bad putting, but I ended with a sixty-four.

After golf I was meeting up with Ron and Heather at Zeppoz to watch the Cougar/USC game and have a beer. Dan came in later and we played some video-golf. I got a butt-kicking there. Just as the Cougs were getting beat. I can say that today’s game is the first time all season the Cougs have been beat.

After the Cougar game I played in the Zeppoz poker tournament. It was a twenty-five dollar buy-in. I started with two-thousand worth of chips. I made it for about forty minutes before losing on two straight hands that I had the best cards pre-flop, but the flop allowed others to get paired up.

I went to my office and started to work on the Office Pool. I created a database and all the pages to run it and view it. It took a lot of hours to do that because I had to figure out how to build the database to hold the data the way I wanted to do it and figure out how to make it so it would be as automated as possible. I finally got it running nicely around midnight.

After words I headed to Colfax. I wanted to take advantage of daylight savings time ending so I could get the extra hour of sleep.

More Pullman High Football Action

I worked hard today also trying to close out some bugs. I got a couple things closed out and checked-in. That felt good, but I ended by battling a computer problem that is kicking my butt right now. There is some pretty heavy action with some PDF files that get created. It looks like it is going to be a big problem getting that done. I am going to have to work for a lot of hours just doing it.

After work I headed to the fire department to work the Pullman High football game. I was covering for Nick and he found another cover, so he had two people covering for him. We flipped a coin for who got to go. I won. I was stoked about that.

We got to the field and the game just started when we got called to a delta call for someone who had an overdose. We went code from the field and were the first on scene. There was not a lot to do. The guy did not want us to do anything. We had to work to get permission to touch him. Finally I got a set of vitals and helped him to the ambulance.

The ambulance took two Rescue guys with them to the hospital. I got there to pick them up. But it had been an hour. So when we got back to the game it was with three minutes left in the half-time. Pullman was winning thirty-eight to nothing.

We watched the rest of the game without interruption. Then we took the Rescue back to the station filled out our time cards and called it a night.

Working on the SOP’s

I got up and got cracking on my bugs. I am amped up and rocking on them. But it seems like things outside of my control slows me down on them. Namely my computer having issues.

I had someone come in with his computer right around six o’clock pm. I looked at it, but I could not fix it. There was some problem with the motherboard. At least I got him going in the correct direction with it.

Ryan stopped by with some taco’s for me for dinner. That was very nice of him. I ate on those as we talked about his girlfriend and got caught up on stuff. We haven’t really done anything lately.

I headed down to Colfax in the evening. I stopped at the fire station and hung out with Ken and we watched CSI. Then I went to the SO and printed out the SOP’s for the fire department and started to go through them. I highlighted the stuff I should know and so I could quickly reference it. I stayed at the SO pretty late doing that. I finally headed home when I was starting to get heavy eyes around one in the morning.

A comedy of errors

I made up my mind last night that I would get work done today and I did. I did not get as much as I would have wanted done because I was having problems with something that was peripheral to the problem I was trying to fix. After spending too much time trying to fix something that may only be broken on my box, I gave up on it. I am satisfied that the data I want to send is getting sent as desired, so that is good enough for me.

I took my pants to Moscow to a seamstress to fix the hole in the pants professionally. I said I did not need them until Friday, but she said she could have them done by this evening. Good thing I took her up on that because as it turned out that I was put on Rescue tonight. I was supposed to be on Engine, however, with some changes to the manning levels, I was moved to Rescue. I like being on Rescue because you get more calls. Without my pants I would have had to wear coveralls and I don’t like to wear them.

So before I was to be on call I went to Moscow and picked up my pants. They were nicely done and it only cost ten-fifty. I got into my uniform and went to the station to do rig checks. My shift has to go above and beyond for rig checks. Rather than just the things outlined in the SOP’s, we take all power tools out and run them. We hook up all the tools to the portable power-units for the Lucas tools and run them. The nice thing is that I am getting good at setting them up and running them. The only thing that sucks is that it takes about an hour for us to do the vehicle checks, where other shifts do it in about twenty minutes.

Today was bad. I was cruising along and thought I would be done quickly. I was working on my second tool on the primary portable power-unit. I just finished opening and closing the spreaders. But instead of putting the unit in to “neutral” I left it engaged with the hydraulics still pushing fluid to my tool. Unhooking the tool cause the oil to shoot out of the end of the hose like a spray gun. It got a little bit on me, but covers a fifteen square-foot section of the floor. I turned the unit to neutral to stop the flow, but the lines were both covered in fluid as well as the floor and the spreaders. So I pulled everything out of the fluid and put down some kitty-litter to clean it up. Then I got some help from Shane who was doing the rig check on the Engine.

We cleaned up the mess I made, but we had to put more fluid in the power-unit now. So we had to try to locate the fill on it, and unlike the backup unit which has an easy one to find, we could not find it for sure. We found two places that were possible places. One looked like it had been used often and had tool marks. The other one was still sort of unused looking. So we chose the one with the tool marks after consulting three other people.

But to use it, the tool had to be turned on its back. This was a worry because gas could leak. Once we got it open I poured in a couple ounces of fluid. We set it back on its feet and gas was leaking out of the carburetor. It would appear that we flooded the heck out of it and caused a gas spill right were the earlier hydraulic fluid was spilled. So I got out some more kitty litter and covered that spill. Shane opened the area where the air filter is stored and let it air out and used the air compressor to blow air in there.

We let it sit for a few minutes and tried to start it. It actually started after a few pulls. We let it run for a little bit and then put a tool on it to fill the line that got bled out and made sure the system had enough hydraulic fluid in it. Thankfully it did. We put it away and called it a night.

I stayed at the station and studied the SOP’s a little bit and watched some TV including the new SouthPark.

Directing Traffic

I could not get into work very well. With working all weekend at the HazMat class I felt like I needed some time off. I left work around two in the afternoon and headed to Colfax. I figured I would get the coroners ID cards finished. I had to go to the human resources office to get what I needed from them. While I was in the office I heard some stuff over my pager. Main street was blocked off because of power, cable, and telephone lines across all lanes of traffic.

I ran across the street to the fire department and donned my turn outs. I was with Carl and we went to the scene which was right near the courthouse. We found out no power lines were involved, but I saw one of the telephone lines with probably around one-hundred pair of wires heavily damaged.

Carl told me to get Rescue-Eleven and go to the Canyon and Main street to block it off from Northbound traffic. At the station Tim came with me and I used Rescue to block the two Northbound lanes of traffic. Then I stood on the corner of the intersection. I saw some problems of people not merging quick enough, so I put out some cones to merge the people to the right-hand lane so they could turn on to Canyon and then on to Mill street to make their way around the obstruction. The only problem came with the fact that semi-trucks had to make the corner. They only way they could make it is if we stopped traffic up the road a little way to give them room for the turn.

This would work out okay, but after a short while it became clear traffic direction was necessary. So I went out to the middle of the intersection and started to direct traffic. It was pretty easy. I just made sure I knew where cars were so I did not get hit and so I could get the big trucks on to Canyon without many problems. For the most part it worked okay. Soon Barney from the city PD came and directed traffic at Canyon and Mill street. The only problem was that we did not have portable radios. So I would relay my needs to Tim who was on the corner of the intersection still. He would radio to Jamie who was near Barney. This was working even though it was not the optimal situation.

At one point Andy from Public Works came by and gave me a hand-held stop sign to help me in directing traffic. At one point a girl who was on Canyon was stopped. I had the people going North on Main turning on to Canyon and the Southbound Main street traffic was moving. Then the girl started to go. I yelled “HEY, HEY, HEY STOP!!!” Then I slapped my hand on the stop sign several times and told her that it means “STOP!” Once the Southbound traffic was done I allowed her to go.

A couple times due to bad communication we had problems getting the big trucks turned on to Canyon. A couple of them I had to get to go down a block or two and them make the corner.

We were there for about two hours directing traffic. My shoulders were getting tired. I was having a hard time holding the stop sign at arms length.

After that was done I went back to the HR office and got my coroner ID cards taken care of. I went to Rosauers for a cheeseburger and back to the station to eat there and wait for training. It was a good and productive training. We played with the master stream on Engine Three. We worked the lighting on Rescue and we did some stuff with the extension ladders from the ladder truck.

After training we played cards for a couple hours. Robert from the city PD came down to play with us. We had six-handed games for part of the night, then Scott had to leave. So we played out the night five-handed.

I did awesome. I probably won around ten-twelve bucks on the night. I was just getting all the right cards and making good calls. It is all nickel-dime-quarter stuff so it is hard to bluff people out of the games.

Like it was years ago

I feel like I did years ago. I would be running and running, never enough time to do any one of them for any length of time. Always seeming to run out of time.

So after four hours of sleep I got up for my last day of HazMat tech class. We started with reviewing for the written test, then taking the test. Following the test we went to the training tower to set up for the final scenario.

The situation was a truck off the road way with several fifty-five gallon drums with unknown contents as well as a compressed gas of some sort that was leaking out.

Truck in HazMat Situation

in the situation we set up a command structure and many people had many roles. In HazMat situations there is no such thing as hurry. Things go slow and deliberate. My role was as the computer operator. I ran a computer hooked to a piece of equipment where we can put a small sample of an unknown liquid or solid and it will analyze the substance and return results about the item we are testing. It will give the probability of it being a certain substance. It is very accurate.

I also ran another computer where I looked up the information about the substances once I found out what they were. I could find out all the chemical properties of the substance. I could look up what kind of protection the people going to the scene would need to wear. I could find out the potential of it being a fire danger or other dangers to the public. Then I could use another application in conjunction to map out where the probable areas of contamination based on the weather patterns that are captured by a weather station that we set up. It is all very neat stuff. When it was all done we had mitigated the problem.

Following the scenario we broke down the decontaminating areas and the command post. Then we had final words from the instructor and some of the other HazMat team leaders. Over all it was a very good exercise.

Moby the HazMat Vehicle

I headed to my office and I got all my pictures downloaded from yesterday’s HazMat class, plus from dodgeball, and the coroners case I worked. I uploaded the pictures from the HazMat class and posted them on line for the instructor to download.

Then I went to the fire station and we did vehicle checks followed by our OTEP training in respiratory emergencies. We got checked off on using a bag valve mask, oral and nasal airways, and the combi-tube. It is something we do every year to make sure people stay proficient in their skills. I got back to the office at about eleven o’clock pm. It has been a long day. I am on call today as well, so I hope I can sleep through the night without a call because I am so tired. But if we get a call during the night I just hope I am not too tired to wake up from it.

Starting Early, Ending Late

Today was a very long day. After going on several calls through out the night keeping my sleep to a minimum I was tired but we were moving into the final classroom day of the HazMat tech class. It started out with me being appointed to an Incident Commander role. I had an eighteen wheeler crashing by the Grange in Pullman on the railroad tracks spilling gas with the driver injured. It is always hard to remember everything you can and should do when you are thrown on the spot. But I guess that is what it would be like in a normal situation. You do not get a ton of time to have all your plans before rolling out the door on a call.

Thankfully we were not in the class the whole time. Part of the day was spent putting people in the Class A HazMat suits so they could get use to it and do some work in it to understand what it is like in the suits.

Getting someone in the suit is a long process. It starts with putting on SCBA, SCBA mask, and a pair of latex exam gloves. Then comes the suit itself. A Class A suit is fully-encapsulated. That means that there are no opening except for the zipper. The zipper is very special and forms a vapor barrier to protect the person inside from fumes, liquids, and solids. The person puts in their feet into the booties and the suit is pulled up to the waist of the person. Then a pair of boots are put on over the booties.

The person who wears the suit is usually dressed by one or two helpers. Once the lower part of the body is in the suit, then we work on getting the arms and hands in the suit. The suit has a pair of gloves attached to the suit. The hands are worked into the gloves, so now the wearer has two pair of gloves on. A final pair of outer gloves are put on, making it so there are three pair of gloves on. This makes it very hard to feel anything or grab anything that is small. A hard hat is put on. There is a towel taped to the front of the hardhat. That is used to wipe the inside of the suit where there is a clear plastic that the wearer looks out. It usually gets fogged up. So the wearer needs to constantly wipe it clear. The hardhat is taped to the SCBA mask to keep it from falling off.

The person in the suit then sits on a seat until he is ready to actually make entry. Once that time comes then the helpers puts the person on air and zips the suit shut. The person is now ready to go into the Hot Zone.

The Final Steps of Going On Air

After leaving the Hot Zone he needs to go through Decon. That is a process where the person’s suit is washed in couple different steps. Once he is washed on the outside, then someone will help him take the Class A suit off in the reserve order it was put on.

Normally in a decon situation the people doing the decon are also wearing a HazMat suit, but for drills we do not put those in decon into a suit. Decon can be a couple steps like in the picture I have below, and in some cases can be many steps. It all depends on what we need chemicals are being worked with.

Decon

There is one other thing that those in the fire department joke about, it is the blue canaries. In the old days of mining, miners would bring a canary with them. If the canary died while in the mine, the miners knew there were some bad gases in the mine and they would evacuate. A blue canary is a police officer who has gotten himself too close to the scene and “dies”. The joke is that the Hot Zone starts where the first blue canary is found.

A deputy demonstrates usage of the Blue Canary system

Once our group was done with this drill we went to lunch and the second half of the day was spent doing the classroom work. I was so tired I was having a hard time staying awake at some points.

We got out of class around five o’clock pm. I went to the office and got a nap before I had to go to Smith Gym for dodgeball. We lost all four games again, but we lasted about twice as long.

Rich in jail, Ben making his way there

After dodgeball I went to Colfax. I was watching some news before I was going to go to bed. That is when I heard on my scanner a call for CPR in progress. I waited for a while to see what was going to happen. I was thinking I may be called out on it. Sure enough about an hour after the call, I got a phone call from Pete asking if I could go to do the investigation.

I drove to Uniontown and did the investigation. By the time I was done it was past three in the morning. I decided to go to Pullman and sleep there rather than going all the way to Colfax. That would give me four hours of sleep rather than three hours that I would get if I went to Colfax.

HazMat class day two

Today is the second day of Hazmat class. I am also on call this evening. Today there was a lot of book work as well as some demonstrations. Class is fun when we are burning stuff and showing how gases move around because of their density compares to air.

After class I went to the fire station and did vehicle checks. During the checks we had a call. One other person showed up and we went on the call. It was a frequent flyer. But this time the person needed a priority transport to the hospital.

The rescue crew went out and did some GPS coordinates of several buildings around town. Then we went back to the station and I watched the Cougs. They were playing Cal. The Cougs were losing, but made a strong showing in the second half and made a come back. They were leading by ten points with five minutes to go. Then they Couged it. It is something that have done in the last four Pac-Ten games. They have blown late leads to lose the game. It is killing me. No one was even giving them a chance when they were down by about eighteen points. But I knew they could do it.

After the game I headed to go to bed. But we had several calls through out the night that really made it hard to get some good sleep.

Forty-Hour HazMat Tech Refresher

I took Friday and Monday off of work so I could go through the HazMat Tech class. I wanted to get back up to speed quickly and I figured with the class I could do that pretty easily.

I got pretty good sleep so I was not all that tired going into the class. I got up and went to Rosauers and got some breakfast. Then I went to the fire station. I got my pick of seats. The class was a lot like the one from before. The instructor was the same one I had in my first HazMat class back in ought-one. It was a great refresher. I was learning many of the concepts that had gotten dull in my memory.

After the class was over with I went to my office and did some stuff on the computer for a few hours. Then I went to Colfax and hung out there. I did some stuff for the coroners office. I had to laminate the cards I printed out a few days ago.

On the air with Leif

I did not wake up in time to go to work first, so I went to the radio show. I started by running to the jail and I saw Captain Ingalls and Pete. I confirmed with Pete that I was going to cover him today. I then went to the radio show. On the way I got pulled over by Vinny on the Albion Road. He came up and when he saw me he cracked a smile and said “Dude, Sixty-Eight”. It was a fifty-five MPH zone. I took it easy from there.

I got to the third floor of the CUB and Leif was there. We went into the studio and started the show. Leif was nervous at first, but as the show went on you could hear his voice get stronger and he was having more fun. I had one guy call me up and say that he was in jail and wanted to request a song. At first I thought he was lying. Then I talked to him. He said he was in Colfax. I asked how he was listening. He said that he wasn’t listening, but wanted to let everyone know he was doing okay. After getting more information from him about his situation in jail I realized that he was really there. I was cracking up.

Then I got a call later by someone who wanted to hear my thoughts about a couple political situations. One was about lawyers helping to end common sense. I explained what I meant by it. Then I was talking about the statutes of limitations, but I could not remember what it was called. I was struggling. I said I bet people were at home yelling at their radio what the answer was. Then the phone rang, it was the guy who had called before. He said what it was. Then we got into a conversation with him for about fifteen minutes ending out the show.

After the show I went to work. I spent a few hours trying to figure out some of the bugs that I have assigned to me. I did not get a whole long of work done.

Working on the new show time

This evening after work I spent time working on getting information for the radio show. I have a new show time. It is Thursdays from eleven o’clock am to one o’clock pm. Leif is now able to do the show with me. We talked on the phone about what we were going to do on the air tomorrow.

I also spent some time going over the WSU map test and I went to the Deuce to do some studying of the department SOP’s. I did that for a few hours.

Then I went to the SO and printed out the EMS protocols so I could have a copy of them in my notebook. I went through some of my paperwork on command structure and roles on the fire ground. I highlighted the main points on each of them. I was up until after one in the morning. I wanted to get to work before the radio show tomorrow so I hope I can up in time now.

Poker time

After spending most of yesterday trying to figure out what was wrong with my computer, I spent today rebuilding it. That was the only thing we could think of that had not been tried. Once it was rebuilt I started to work on bugs. Things went pretty quickly at first and I got a fair amount of work done, but then I got bogged down by the lack of specs to go with the bugs.

We had the fire critique for the fire last month. It was pretty tame and we come out of it with a few ideas for future training, but for the most part it was sort of slow. Rich’s information with the cause of the fire was pretty interesting.

I went to Colfax afterwards. Everyone except for Carl were off training. Carl said that we were going to play cards this evening. So I went home and not extra change and brought it back to the station.

Carl, Tim, Jim, Scott, and I played cards for about two hours. It was fun. A lot of good laughs. We were playing R.F. when Scott and I decided we would go in the blind. I agreed to it. Then I dropped my cards. Scott stayed in. Everyone was laughing so hard that I dropped them. Because the assumption was that Scott and I were both going to stay in. I am glad I dropped because I saw cards were not very good after I dropped them.

After cards I took off home and watched some of my evening TV shows before finally going to bed.

Starting five point three.

I covered the six to nine am radio show today. I was going to replay my interview with Coach Akey and I was going to replay my interview with Ed Swan. I played Ed’s interview at six and eight am. I played Akey at seven am. It was an easy show to do. I only had to play some music and that was about it.

We are starting our new release called Five-point-three. There are no bugs in the pipeline for me. My job was to start to go through the bugs and take the ones that I thought I should work on. I got a couple of them solved and checked in. Then I got the point where the rest of them needed more work before I could do any work on them.

Today I spent most of the day not doing much of anything. We had fire training at station one at seven o’clock. I was also on call tonight. We were told by the officer in charge of us that we had to go more in depth on our daily checks. So we spent an hour-plus doing that. Because of how long it took the training, which was actually hose testing was cancelled. That was good because there would have only been six people total. That would have made for a lot of work for everyone.

Dodgeball!

This morning I got up after a short four hours of sleep to play golf with Travis and Jesse. When I got there Jesse could not make it so it was just Travis and I. We shot pretty close to the same on most of the holes. There were times I had good drives only to ruin them with my short game. Actually, many of my drives were pretty decent today. I ended up with a fifty-six for the day.

After golfing I went home and took a long nap. Almost seven hours worth of napping. I got up in time for the Seahawks game. I decided to see it at the fire station. So I headed to Rosauers to get a hamburger and fries then to Colfax Fire. I watched the first half of the game with Ken.

I had to get back to Pullman because I was playing dodgeball tonight. I thought the games were going to be from eight o’clock pm to eleven o’clock pm. I told people to be there by seven-forty-five. Only two others showed up. I found the schedule and it said we play at nine-thirty. So that was not as bad. I had time to find people. I also got the rules of play.

I got two more people to show up, Rudolph and Craig. With Dave and Ben who showed up at Seven-forty-five we were down one person. We spent time watching the other people play and practicing for ourselves. When our game time came up we got ready to play. The format was to play four games that would go for ten minutes or until everyone was eliminated on one side. All four games lasted a total of ten minutes. We got beat pretty bad.

When we were done there I went to my truck and I saw a couple guys from Pullman Fire who were playing football. I stopped to say hello to them. Then I went to my office to start to record CD’s with the Robb Akey interview and the Ed Swan interview. I could not get my CD-Burner to work on my computer, so I figured I had to get up extra early and burn them at the radio station.

I split each interview up into two parts so I could do station breaks and other things I have to do every hour.

Rip out my heart… and feed it to me

With Cougar Football upon us I was excited to say the least. I was going to be working in the fieldhouse for three hours before the game then I was going to be watching the Cougs beat up on UCLA. I met up with Brian at the Deuce. We took Utility down to station one for the BBQ and to get equipment. When we got there Heston told us there was a change in plans. We were going to be assigned to the booking room for the whole game. So that means I am thirty feet from the field and cannot see the game. I was not happy about that.

We got served some hamburgers and other trimmings. Then it was time to go to the fieldhouse. When we got there we mainly hung out and walked around. We talked with Rod, the fire inspector, who works for WSU. At one point I saw Copes there. It was nice to see him. He came over and shook our hands and talked about his latest news.

Close to game time Brian and I went to the Booking Room and took our positions. For being at the stadium and not being able to watch the game, at least it was entertaining in the booking room.

We had a lot of drunk people coming in. A couple of them needed to be checked out by us for possible detox. One person was sent to the hospital. One guy would not cooperate with the cops so they took him to jail in Colfax. He was dumb for that.

One of the cops in the booking room had a Coke. Someone was brought in late in the game with a Coke with rum in it. They were both on the desk and the cop accidently drank out of the wrong one and got a surprise. The rest of the night we spent making jokes about the cop drinking on the job. It was pretty funny.

I watched the game on the TV in the room we were in. The Cougs were gaining a huge lead over UCLA through out the game. I was able to get out and watch a couple plays live. But I had to stay near the booking room the whole time.

Then the Cougs let UCLA back into the game only to go to overtime and lose the game. It was another case of Couging it. It was very bitter to say the least.

After the game we had to go back to the field house for the post game dinner. As Pete Bar and Grill was cleaning everything up they gave us a meal. That was very nice to get. It was good. Meat and potatoes.

I was on call and it was pretty tame over all. There were not really many calls and I got some pretty decent sleep.

Release day

Today I got the final touches finished off. We had a company lunch with pizza and beer. I did not have a beer, but I did have a few slices of pizza. Chris said I could take off whenever I wanted because there was not a lot for me to do today. I left around one in the afternoon.

I got to my house in Colfax and unpacked my truck. Then I went to the fire station. When I got there Jenny asked what I was doing. I told her nothing. So she asked if I could go to the Colfax football game and help out with EMS down there. There was only one person there. I told her I could.

I drove to the field with my stuff and watched the game. Colfax beat out Freeman and just as the game was coming to a close we got a call for someone who was unconscious at the corner Chevron. We went out there and the person had gotten in a car and was heading out twenty-six. A Colfax cop stopped the car and we did checked the person out. Transport was refused to the hospital.

After the call I headed home to go to sleep. I am on call for the Pullman Fire plus there is a WSU football game I have to work tomorrow.

Fast and Furious

Today was a day of working fast and furious on the remaining problems still out there. I was trying to resolve why some problems still existed in some of the fixes I had done. It was a busy day. It was not stressful, but I wanted to get my stuff done so I could have everything I worked on in this release.

I went home and had dinner and watched some TV. I also packed my stuff because I was heading to Colfax tomorrow for about three weeks.

Critical Mass being hit

Today we are getting to the ultimate crunch time with our release. I am getting some bugs assigned to me that I don’t know anything about. Luckily they are not real bugs in some cases. Just a bad deployment. I got most of my stuff finished off however and life should be good going into the end of the week.

Roger and I played some more ping pong. He had to go early so we only got one game in. I beat him in twenty-three to twenty-one. It was a close game.

I headed home in time for dinner to be served. It was meatloaf. I like my mom’s meatloaf. I chowed on that. I burnt a CD with my bit for the Michael Savage show. I also worked on making a music CD that would include Piano Man. I want to listen to it from time to time and I do not have it in my truck. But that will not be the case much longer.

I also watched some TV shows. Between burning my CD’s. Finally I finished off my night with CSI-NY.

Four days an counting

Today is T-Minus-Four-days for our release. I did some more final touches on Dexma and looked at a few other bugs that were coming my way. It seemed like people were pushing things my way that were not bugs or were not my bugs. I was getting upset about that because it seemed like I was the go-to-man on the bugs.

I stayed late at work trying to get things completed. Before I left however, Roger and I played some Ping Pong. He wanted to play around a little bit. We always spend about ten minutes just hitting the ball back and forth before we actually play a game.

Once I got home it was dinner time for me. I ate and played with Amber, who was happy to see me. The remainder of the evening was watching TV and surfing the web.

Radio Guests

On the radio show I had Ed Swan who is a non-traditional student at WSU who is in the College of Education. He is being threatened with being terminated of his program because he is too conservative. His teachers feel that he would not be able to understand students with diverse backgrounds. Also on was David French who is from a group called FIRE. The came to Ed’s defense and WSU backed down from putting Ed on contract.

They were on the air for about an hour talking about the whole deal. It was interesting to talk to Ed. I was also stoked that the phone system worked this time for me. I left the show early because there was a small fire to put out at work. There was a problem with the submissions to Dexma and how they were being done. It was actually a small problem but it cause people to be like chickens with their heads cut off.

Following my work on that I went to Colfax and relaxed for the night. I stopped at Colfax Fire and spoke with Ken for a little while. I was in no hurry to go to sleep because it was still pretty early. I did have plans on getting up early enough to get to work in Bellevue before one in the afternoon.

Got a birdie!

Got up nice and early and went golfing with Travis and Josh. It was fun to get out there. Travis and I are about the same on the level of abilities. We hacked and hacked on the ball all morning. When I got to the ninth hole I hit a deep shot. I had a nine-iron shot over two bunkers on to the green. I got a shot that was about twenty-some feet from the cup. I sank the putt for a birdie. I was so stoked. When I hit it, I thought I went too light on it and I was mad, but it kept going until it dropped.

I went back to my office and working on stuff for my radio show tomorrow. I needed to get interview questions ready and be prepared as I would have two guests on the show. I spent several hours working on that. I decided when I was done to take a nap before going to the lip sync show for the Homecoming Events.

I went up there as a firefighter for Pullman. It was a really good show. Some people were really good. One group had a guy come out dressed in white from head to toe with a long cape that dragged on the ground. The guy was a blonde and was a ten-six-seven. I don’t know what he was lip syncing to, but the people in his group acted out everything very well. The guy did the best job of all the groups doing his lip syncing. It was great. I gave his group a twenty-five, which was the top score.

During some of the songs people pulled out their cell phones and swung them back and forth through the air, like people use to do with lighters. But it was the next-generations version of the lighter.

After the show was done I headed back to Colfax. I did not have a lot going on. I just watched some TV and waited for any calls to come out.

Coug it!

As much as I don’t want to talk about Couging It. That is what is the case. We started the day out at the fire station having a BBQ and a meeting before heading to the stadium for the Cougar Stanford game. We were favored to win. We should have won it, but we ended up Couging it. We threw the interceptions at the end when it really matters costing the game.

I was working in North Section Two. We did not have much in terms of things to do, but it was a bad place to see the game. With the people standing in front of us you could not see from the hash-marks to the sidelines. Then people would stand in front of us a lot and make it impossible to see things. I am going to work the East Endzone from here on out. Or I may do Resuce once or twice as well.

After the game I was on call. I was going to be on the Engine, but I was moved to Rescue. That was cool. I was hoping to have a lot of calls. But we sat around the Deuce waiting for calls and nothing came in. I finally went to get some dinner from a Mexican place. I wanted some nachos. I got them to go. Then I got some gas and pop from the gas station. I was parked at my office and I was getting out of my truck when the pager went off for a fire alarm. So my food was getting cold as I went to an apartment where someone’s fog machine set off the alarm.

After that we had several other calls through out the night. One of them came while we were en route from another call. We were pretty close to it. We got on scene first. The call was for someone who was drunk and needed detox. I did patient care and went to the hospital with the ambulance. By about two-thirty in the morning we had had our last call and I slept until it was time to do some golfing.