Divemedic

Adventures of Divemedic

I told you I was in business when I first got out of the Navy. The Navy trained me to be an electrician. Navy power systems are, by the nature of being on ships, industrial in nature. Many of you will be passingly familiar with the Army’s MOS system. The Navy has something similar called Navy Enlisted Classification (NEC). While your rate may be something like Electrician’s Mate, you can attend specialty schools within that rate to add specialization to it. The NEC code from attending a particular school gets added to your personnel file, so it can be used to fill the needs of future command assignments.

I earned three of them while I served:

  • 4632 (Auxiliaries Electrical System Technician)
  • 4615 (Electric Motor Rewinder)
  • 4613 (IMA Outside Electrical Journeyman)

Because of that, I was uniquely qualified to work on electric motors, generators, and motor controls. It’s also why I ran my own business for a couple of years. I’m not sure how good I would be at this point, it’s been a number of years (OK, 30-something) since I have rewound an electric motor. While I was in business, I had a guy working for me that would pickup and deliver repair jobs for me. I had one of those small pickup trucks that I let him use to do the job for me.

One day, he just didn’t return from making deliveries. A couple of days later, I got a letter from the state, telling me that, as the registered owner of the vehicle, someone had declared the vehicle abandoned on his property, and they would be issuing a new title in that person’s name in 14 days.

I went looking for him and my truck. When I arrived at his house, he told me I couldn’t have the truck back, and chased me from his property with a 2 foot length of metal pipe in his hand, telling me if he saw me on his property again, he would knock my teeth out. I went to the Sheriff’s office to make a complaint.

The Sheriff himself explained to me that, because I had given him the keys, it was a civil matter and I would have to take him to court. Since the truck was over the limit in value for small claims, it would require a lawyer and a bit of money and time. I asked him what he would do if one of his deputies quit and refused to return his patrol cruiser. The Sheriff replied: “That’s different.” Then I was told the police wouldn’t get involved, so I would have to deal with it myself.

So that’s what I did. A friend of his told me that he had gotten a new job at a company making roofing trusses. I went to that workplace, and there was my truck. So I tried to start the truck with my keys, but it wouldn’t start. I popped the hood, and the wire from the distributor to the spark plug was missing. That’s fine, I had my wife drive the vehicle we arrived in, hooked a tow rope to both vehicles, and was about ready to drive off.

That’s when my former employee came out with a bunch of his coworkers in tow, saying: “I told you what would happen if you came near my property again,” and began advancing towards me with a hammer in his hand. I pepper sprayed the living shit out of him.

As he was rolling on the ground, I was about to get in the truck to be towed off, when his coworkers began yelling and advancing towards me. So I did the most direct thing- I pulled a Remington 870 from my vehicle and pumped the slide. “Who wants to be a fucking hero?”

No one did. So I drove away as they yelled about calling the cops.

An hour later, I got a call from the Sheriff, who said he wanted to talk to me. I met him at his office.

  • Sheriff: “That boy you attacked had to go to the hospital. He might be blind.”
  • Me: “It’s pepper spray, he will be fine.”
  • Sheriff: “I could arrest you for armed robbery.”
  • Me: “It’s my truck, registered in my name and it was self defense. Besides, you told me to deal with it myself. I dealt with it.”
  • Sheriff: “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I should arrest you.”
  • Me: “We both know it won’t stick. Look, no one was permanently injured, no laws were broken. I got my truck back.”
  • Sheriff: “I don’t approve of your actions, but you’re right. No laws were broken.”
  • Me: “OK, I guess we’re done here.”

I sold the truck. The sheriff retired more than a decade ago. I don’t know what happened to the ex employee. Haven’t seen him since.

By Divemedic, ago

The Botched Execution

I’ve made no secret of my opposition to the death penalty, but I remain opposed to it only for practical reasons: that is, we can’t trust agents of the government to fuck it up somehow. Perhaps they fake DNA evidence like the FBI crime lab did, or maybe they try to kill someone and can’t manage to do it without botching it.

By Divemedic, ago

Stolen Cars

The person who stole that car isn’t a car thief. No, they are an undocumented car owner. It’s unfair to take a car from the person who needs it, as this is their only transportation, their only way to get to their job and earn money to feed their families.

That’s why I am proposing a path to car ownership. Once a person has been in possession of a car for 24 months, there should be an automatic title issued on that vehicle to the person that’s in possession of it. They’ve been working, paying taxes, and using that car to contribute to the economy. That’s only fair.

That’s the argument being made here:

By Divemedic, ago

Feeding the World

The Orlando Sentinel did a story this week about several families who can’t afford to eat because those mean people won’t give them food stamps.

For starters, no one in that picture is missing meals. Every one of them is overweight. Next, let’s talk about the facts involved here. The woman, Keaidy Bennett, is a so-called “freelance writer” which to me means “unemployed writer who occasionally sells a story.”

So I looked her up. She has an Amazon page. It turns out that she is a liar or a grifter. Here is the bio from that page:

Keaidy Bennett is a poet, publisher, ghostwriter, and advocate whose work sits at the intersection of storytelling and strategy. For more than thirteen years, she has run LexxiKhan Presents Publishing, a hybrid publishing house that has produced over 150 bestselling titles and partnered with clients ranging from first-time authors to Fortune 500 executives and professional athletes.

Her debut, Charge It to the Game, follows protagonist Tamia Santiago through an Afro-Latina coming-of-age story that traditional publishers passed on, so Keaidy published it herself. That decision became the foundation of everything she has built since, including her managed imprints, Moxey’s Way Publishing and 2 Crowns Publishing, along with her media ventures.

A former debate student, Keaidy brings the same discipline and clarity to her advocacy work as she does to her writing, with a long history of involvement in domestic violence advocacy and memoir work centered on transformation and reclaiming narrative. She writes under her own name because every story she tells, and every author she serves, deserves to be met with that same honesty.

She lives and works in Central Florida, where she continues to write, publish, and build platforms for authors who refuse to let a “no” be the end of their story.

There is more to the story. She was married and living in Fort Worth until she filed for divorce from her husband in 2020. She talks about how she wishes her and her husband had kept their home and lived in it together after the divorce.

I pay $1,598 for my townhome, and with extras like internet and the in-unit washer and dryer, it comes to almost $2,000 a month. It’s more than our previous mortgage of $1,738.

The number of stories written by and about this woman tells you her real career- she is a story teller for the media. She makes up sob stories. In this story, it wasn’t a marriage that just fell apart, but one in which she fled the marriage because he was abusing her.

In fact, her company (a publishing company) claims over $250,000 a year in sales.

But she needs your tax dollars to feed her and her fat kids.

By Divemedic, ago

Annual Physical

Back in February, I had my semi-annual checkup. The doctor ordered some bloodwork. The lab that did it charged my insurance $2400 for the lab work, then the doctor hit them up for $499. The insurance company paid the lab $990, and the Dr $200, leaving me with $1410 for routine labs, and another $299 for the doctor. I paid the doctor, and I told the lab they could sue me, but I’m not paying that much for routine lab work.

I have a new doctor now. I am not paying $6000 a year for routine visits. This new one sent me to a different lab. What do you know, they lab work was completely covered by my insurance.

This is why I believe prices should be disclosed. Look, I get why you can’t say ahead of time what a visit will cost- there is no way to know ahead of time what will be needed. It’s like calling an auto mechanic, telling them your car is making an odd noise, and wanting to know what it will cost.

However, if I call that same mechanic and ask what it costs for a brake job or an oil change, they should know. Likewise, if I call a lab and say, “What’s the cost for a CBC, CMP, A1C and TSH panel?” You should be able to tell me. If you can’t, it’s because you are planning on scamming me depending on how deep you think my insurance company and my pockets are.

By Divemedic, ago

Pumps

I have a story about the guy in the below Twitter story.

Of course this all happened nearly 35 years ago.

Just after I got out of the Navy, my (soon to be ex-) wife and I moved to Arkansas. More specifically to the small town of Harrison, AR. I made some money there by repairing pumps and motors. Not enough money to continue living there, but enough. One of the ways I would make some cash was I would sell you a rebuilt pump for $80, as long as you gave me your old broken one. I would rebuild that motor and put it on the shelf for the next person. The rebuilt motor I sold you was warranteed for 12 months: if it broke, I would trade it for another, free of charge. It was a decent deal. Most pumps broke because the bearings, seal, capacitor, or start switch were bad. Occasionally, the electric motor would be bad and I would rewind it.

Anyhow, I was in the shop one day and this guy came in to trade in a pump. We talked for a bit while he explained how he moved to the area to escape the high crime of the big cities. After he left, he came back in and handed me a newspaper that said: The White Patriot: Voice of the Klu Klux Klan in America, Thomas Robb, National Director.

To the other guy in the shop, I said, “Why does that name sound familiar?”

“Look at the check he just gave you,” was his reply.

The check said Thomas Robb.

The story, as interesting as it is, would have ended there, except Robb called me a few days later and asked if I could come out and install the pump. I agreed, and went out there. The place was guarded by at least two rifle toting guys who cleared me through the gate and watched me the entire time I was working.

He looks like I remember, although quite a bit older. I’m sure I look older as well, but that’s the story of how I met the head of the Klan.

By Divemedic, ago

Summer II: The Humidity Strikes Back

Although we have already had our first cool front to bring Autumn into Florida, summer isn’t ready to give up just yet. The humidity today is brutal. When you go outside and take a breath, the air seems to have a thick consistency:

Look at that dew point! Of course it’s cloudy, and the sweat runs off you with nowhere to go. Cooler weather is supposed to arrive this week, and I for one will be happy to see it return.

By Divemedic, ago

The Need for Speed

I’ve been asked why I don’t just use Cat6 cable in my network upgrade. Here is why:

Thirty years ago, I still had dialup Internet. My first internet was a 9.6 kbps connection around 1992 or so. I remember thinking how fast my 56 kbps connection was when I got that just a few years later. I’m sure you all remember it taking hours to download a single picture. Then Time Warner started offering their “Road Runner” high speed broadband service in 1999, boasting speeds of up to 1.5 Mbps. Now here we are, 26 years later, and I have available Internet speeds of up to 1.2 gbps, nearly 22 THOUSAND times faster than it was just 30 years ago. Now word comes that we are about to get fiber Internet within the next year, and they are offering speeds of up 8 Gbps.

When I was a kid, my Dad, who you may remember was an engineer for Hewlett Packard, told me that no one needed a hard drive larger than 10mb. Why, he told me, 10mb could hold the text of every book within the Library of Congress. The computer (the HP computer he brought home was an early DOS machine built into a suitcase) had all the storage anyone could need, he predicted.

He was wrong. A corollary to Moore’s law, Internet speeds have historically doubled about every 2 years or so. With that in mind, I set out to build a home network that would anticipate these advances. Sure, I have 1GB speed now, but in a year it will likely be 2 GB. Within a decade, I would be looking at 32 or even more Gbps.

The network traffic between devices in a home can be even higher than that. In 2015, 1 Gbps was the usual home switch speed. Today, 1 Gbps remains the mainstream baseline, with 2.5 Gbps becoming a common upgrade. Sure, my computer may only be capable of 1 gbps, but what happens when there are multiple computers, streaming televisions, and IoT devices? All that traffic adds up, and you can soon overload a network.

The maximum speed we will ever get out of Cat 6 is 10gb. A couple of years, and a home wired with CAT6 will be obsolete. I’m not getting any younger, and I wanted to have a system that wouldn’t require a ton of work when I eventually get too old to climb up in the attic.

So with that in mind, I designed my home network. There were some initial observations:

  • Internet enters my home via coaxial RG-6 cable.
  • It travels through the walls and attic to the utility room, where the modem is located
  • The modem has a maximum of 1 gbps
  • from that utility room, there are 5 CAT6 cables that travel to various parts of the house
  • My old system was a WiFi mesh and wasn’t capable of speeds I wanted

I noticed that I was paying for gigabit Internet, but speed testing showed I was only getting 300mbps or so, sometimes less. I plugged my computer directly into the modem, and was getting over 800 mbps. My network was the bottleneck. I was also having Internet connection issues. At first, I was just trying to clean up my WiFi, then I decided to redesign the entire network. I envisioned using CAT6 Ethernet cables to haul up to 2.5 gbps from clients to switches, and 10gbps connections from one switch to another, and to the server I was using. That would allow all of those 2.5 gbps connections to come together and not bottleneck at the switches.

So after over 7 months of work, this project is coming to a completion. The holdup has been the cost of buying the equipment. The server and its hard drives were the most expensive segment at a cost of about $3200, and the rest of the project cost about $4700, but that includes the Home assistant stuff and the cameras. All told, this project came in at just under $8,000 for everything.

I decided to use LC fiber optic cable, because those cables are capable of up to 40 gbps, even if the switches I have aren’t capable of that. Yet.

So my network looks like this:

There are a couple of single gigabit switches, but they supply a television or some Internet speakers, and those don’t need any more bandwidth than that. One of the switches is a 10gbps SFP switch, and the others are 2.5 gbps with 10gbps uplink connections. The only remaining choke point is my ISP, the 1 gigbit modem, and the gigabit router. Once fiber comes in, I can replace the router and connect to the fiber ONT, and I will have a fully capable 2.5gbps network that can easily be reconfigured to 10gbps. The wires will already be there if I want to transition even higher at some point.

By Divemedic, ago