February 2014

Redundancy

During the winter in Florida, the ocean becomes unpredictable. One weekend, the waves are 1-2 feet, and two days later, they are 15 feet. Every time a cold front comes through, the ocean gets a bit bumpy. For that reason, I usually use winter as a time for getting maintenance done on my SCUBA gear, and for making upgrades.

One of this year’s upgrades is that I am becoming redundant. 

SCUBA gear is life support equipment. When you are 100 feet underwater and your life support fails, life can get interesting. This is one of the reasons why divers are supposed to use the buddy system. Your buddy is your emergency backup life support. A SCUBA regulator is what reduces the (usually air) pressure from whatever is in your tank, to a pressure that is the same as the surrounding water pressure, so that you can breathe. The first stage, mounted on the tank, lowers the pressure to about 100 psi, and sends it through a hose to the second stage, located in the diver’s mouth. Many divers carry two second stage regulators, so that their buddy can use it in an emergency. This alternate is called an “octopus.”

If a regulator has a one in a thousand chance of failing, then two regulators have a one in a million chance of failing, as long as they are completely independent of each other. So I have mounted a second (smaller) tank (called a pony bottle) and regulator to my system for emergency use. That enables me to have a completely redundant life support system: The air, tanks, and regulators in my primary and backup system are completely independent of each other. That way, I don’t have to worry about contaminated air, a malfunctioning regulator, or a dive buddy that swims too far away for me to reach him in an emergency. I am my own backup. Self reliance is a good thing.

Since I am working as an underwater tour guide, I mounted the system on a quick release bracket, which enables me to hand my backup to another diver. All I have to do is pull the pins, and the tank comes free of the bracket.

My pony bottle holds 30 cubic feet of gas. Gas consumption, due to Boyle’s law, varies with depth, but this is enough for me to breathe for about seven minutes at 100 feet of depth. In comparison, the full sized tanks I normally use hold between 80 and 120 cubic feet of gas. (I say gas, because many times, divers do not use air. I do not use air, but that is a post for another day.)

By Divemedic, ago

Sing it Harry

Being from New Orleans, I have always loved Harry Connick Jr. Here is a song that I have liked for a long time. Given my current circumstances, I feel a personal connection to it. Nothing connects with us better than song:

If your whole life somehow
Wasn’t much till now
And you’ve almost lost
Your will to live
No matter what you’ve been through
Long as there’s breath in you
There is always one more time
If your dreams go bad
Every one that you had
Don’t you think that your dreams
Will no, not ever come true, who you
Because it’s funny about dreams
Just as strange, just strange as it seems
Because there is always one more time
Turnin’ corners
Turnin’ corners
Is only a state of mind
Only a state of mind
Keepin’ your eyes closed
Keepin’ your eyes closed
Is worse than being blind
Worse as being blind
So if there’s a heart out there
If there’s a heart out there
Lookin’ for someone to share
Lookin’ for someone to share
I don’t care
I don’t care
If it’s been turned down time and again
Time again
And if we meet some day
Yeah, and if we meet some day
Please don’t walk away
No, no don’t walk away
‘Cause there is always one more time
One more time
Cause there is always one more time
By Divemedic, ago

Missing the point

An anonymous commenter stopped by to express this opinion:

If homelessness is a problem that requires any degree of government
intervention (care under EMTALA, for example, or EBT cards, or
‘workforce skills’ classes), then it behooves the government to address
the problem with as much efficiency as possible. If giving people an
apartment keeps them out of the hospital for a hundred nights, that’s a
net win for the system. Where’s the beef? 

 Of course, he misses the entire point: Who says that someone’s problems require a government solution? Why is it my responsibility to pay for your EBT cards, your workforce training, or require a doctor to treat you under EMTALA?

The point of the post that you were commenting on is this:
If you are worried about homelessness, how much of your own money have you given to the homeless? If you work in the health field, how many hours per week do you work for free, so that the poor can be treated without cost?

If you don’t donate your own time and money, how can you have the right to demand that I donate my own? Again, that is the liberal answer to every problem: solve it by stealing someone else’s money and giving it to someone else.

By Divemedic, ago

EMS worker attacks

Back on Halloween, I reported on the epidemic of violence against this nation’s EMS workers. It came as no surprise to me when I saw this article about the nurse that was beaten unconscious by her patient.

This ties in with comments I recently made on a local story about the ‘popcorn’ theater shooting. There were commenters on the local version of the story that were blaming the NRA, saying that if all weapons were removed from society, that things like the shooting would not happen. Setting aside for the moment the obvious fact that there is no way to remove firearms from public when anyone can make one with hand tools and supplies bought at a local hardware store, or that the shooter in that case was a retired police officer and would be exempt from such a law, I pointed out that people would still be armed with hands or feet, and that a 45 year old man could easily have killed a 71 year old opponent.

When I pointed this out, I was told that I was wrong, but no facts were cited to back up the claim. This article is proof that a person can kill with only hands and feet. What firearms do is place the 70 year old elderly nurse on an equal footing with the 40 year old deranged attacker. It is a well known fact that predators in nature only attack the weak. If a predator knows that its intended victim is capable of defending itself, the attack never occurs. So I ask you, would a person attack an elderly woman if they knew that the potential victim was capable of killing them? I would say that the odds of such an attack would be decreased dramatically.

By Divemedic, ago

Data Security Breach

I have a major problem. All of my data that is in the cloud has been compromised. When the ex and I broke up, I changed the passwords on my social media accounts, financial accounts, and on my email accounts. She had access to them and the passwords for them while she was in my house, so I wanted to make sure I was secure. That, as it turns out, is probably not good enough. I have had a massive data breach.

It all started on Monday, when I noticed that there was a ‘recognized device’ that was logged into my Facebook account from Atlanta since January 28. The way that Facebook mobile works, is that once the device recognized, it is allowed to log into Facebook, even if the password is changed by the user.

The ex that just broke up with me and was cheating on me is from Georgia. So, I deauthorized the device, and checked to see who had been logged into my email accounts. According to Gmail, there were no logins that were not from my IP. I felt safer, until this morning, that is.

I was looking at the IMAP settings for my Gmail account, when I noticed that someone had set up automatic forwarding, so that every email was being forwarded to a yahoo address, and was also being left as unread in the Gmail inbox. The only way that this could have happened, is if someone with the password set it up. There is only one person that had access to my Gmail password other than me, and I will give you two guesses as to who that was.

That means that she has had the ability to read every email I have gotten up to this morning, and was reading my Facebook until Monday.

She has been trying to contact me by telephone, text message, and email for weeks. She has been contacting my friends and asking them to pass messages on to me. I finally had to pay my cell carrier $5 a month to block phone calls and texts from her number, and from numbers that do not provide their caller ID. I am running out of options, but I don’t know what else to do. What she is doing is illegal, but I cannot prove it was her.

By Divemedic, ago

Infrastructure vulnerability

Peter posts about the vulnerabilities that the infrastructure of our nation faces from terror attacks. It is much, much worse than he fears. 

When I was in college earning one of my college degrees, I had to take a class titled “Contemporary Issues in Public Safety.” One of the assignments for the class was a paper on infrastructure vulnerability. I chose the Memphis area. I found a couple of soft targets whose loss would severely disrupt the economy of the entire nation, and could be destroyed relatively easily, by either a natural disaster or a small group of terrorists.

 The first was the I-40 bridge (the Hernando de Soto Bridge) and I 55 bridges in Memphis. Any event that would drop these bridges into the river would render the Mississippi river impassable to traffic for weeks or months. This means that no supplies would go north, and no finished goods would go south. The Mississippi River carries 60% of U.S grain shipments, 22% of oil and gas shipments, and 20% of coal. The loss of the Mississippi would mean that this cargo would all have to go by road transportation. That would be magnified by the fact that the next river crossing is the Caruthersville Bridge, 75 miles to the North, or the Greenville Bridge, 140 miles to the South.

There are nine natural gas pipelines that stretch from the Texas/Louisiana gas
fields to the industrial areas of Chicago and the Ohio valley. Five of these major pipelines carrying natural gas, and two carrying crude oil,  cross the river in Memphis, four of them within ten miles of each other. These pipelines supply nearly half of Illinois’ natural gas, and a third of its gasoline.  The loss of them would be devastating to the entire Ohio valley.

Without killing anyone, and only using six truck bombs of the McVeigh variety, a small terror cell could bring down both bridges, and also simultaneously  blow up the four pipelines. This operation would be significantly smaller and less complex than was 9/11, but would have much more devastating effects. The gas line explosions themselves would be large enough that NASA estimates the fireball would cause a visible reflection off the moon. 

Economically, it would be the worst disaster the US has ever faced. It would bring the US economy to its knees. There would be no river traffic between the upper and lower Mississippi river. Road traffic in Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Upper Louisiana, and Upper Mississippi would come to a standstill, and nearly 25% of the nation’s economy would cease to exist, due to a lack of transportation, fuel, or both. The standstill would last weeks, and the effects would be felt for months.

This is the sort of attack that will keep you up at night with worry, if you are an emergency manager.

By Divemedic, ago

Learning to be single again

My next task is to learn to be single again. Even though my last relationship was only a year and half long, I was not interested in dating or anything when I met her, as I was busy with school and career at the time. Before that, I was married and in a long term relationship for about eight years, so I haven’t had to do this in about ten years, meaning that I am a bit rusty as far as the dating game goes.

To get myself back out there, I went to a singles event at an upscale bar in Orlando. (The kind of place that serves $25 Martinis. To you people in New York that are used to the $50 variety, a twenty five dollar Martini is pretty pricey for Orlando.) Things went well, and there were games and things to break the ice and give the singles there a chance to mingle and get to know each other a bit. I think

I caught the signals that this woman was throwing my way, but I have never been very good at this sort of thing, and after ten years, I am probably not any better.

We talked a bit, she was friendly, leaning into me while touching me on the arm as we were speaking. She was exhibiting all the signs, she touched her hair, made frequent eye contact, and we exchanged numbers.

After the party, some female friends approached her, and I excused myself to leave. That was when she grabbed my arm and asked me not to go just yet. We talked for another 45 minutes. I joked about her possibly giving me a fake number, and she texted me with “See? Real number”

We have texted three conversations since, one of them initiated by her.

The only thing I can’t seem to do is close the deal to get that first date. She is busy this weekend with work, and next weekend is planning to go with her best friend to visit the best friend’s mother in Miami. Still, now I remember why I hate being single.

By Divemedic, ago