Remember when I told you that the US military was going to use immigrants in the military, so they could be sure that the troops would follow orders to fire on American citizens?
Me
Traditions as a Gift
I posted this a few years ago. It’s time to repeat it.
Growing up, my father insisted on a family tradition. Every year, my siblings and I were forced to watch “Miracle on 34th Street” on Christmas day. Not just any version, the old black and white version with Natalie Wood. Every Christmas. By the time I was 18 years old, my brother and I would roll our eyes and make a face every time we were forced to watch it.
Then, I had children of my own. The tradition lived on with my own kids.
The day eventually came when dad passed away. My kids are grown and have lives and families of their own. I still watch that movie every Christmas, and it brings back memories of childhood days spent with my family: the one I had as a child, and the one I had as a young parent.
Suddenly, that tradition didn’t seem so senseless. Dad would have been 82 years old this week had he not passed away 19 years ago. I still miss him, but he still gives me a Christmas gift every year when I watch that movie.
Cherish the senseless traditions. They become some of the best memories you will ever have.
Uncategorized
Scheduling
The one thing that sucks about working for a hospital is scheduling. Every hospital that I have ever worked at sucks at writing work schedules. The schedule that comes out is either every 4 or every 6 weeks. The schedule begins on a Sunday. What would make the most sense is for the new schedule to come out a week or two before it begins.
That isn’t how it happens, though. The new schedule sometimes doesn’t come out until the day before it takes effect. You find out on Saturday what your work schedule is going to be on Sunday. That makes it difficult to plan vacations, trips, or even doctor’s appointments, when you don’t even know more than 3 or 4 weeks what days you are available
Crime
Defense
Many people don’t understand the ins and outs of self defense. My wife, who has attended classes in self defense and actually has a CWP even has problems with the concept.
A couple in Sanford were checking out at WaWa when they noticed that a bottle of wine had been added to their order. They told the clerk that it wasn’t theirs, and the clerk took it off the bill. The woman behind them in line told the couple that it was her wine, then demanded that they pay for it. When they refused, she began beating them with the bottle, and knocked the male unconscious. The woman with the wine bottle was subsequently arrested for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
I was reading that story to my wife, and I made the comment that, should someone do something like that to me, her ass would be shot long before she was able to hit me with the bottle and knock me out. My wife’s reply was, “I don’t think a jury would agree that shooting an unarmed woman is self defense.”
I pointed out to her that the wine bottle was definitely a weapon, and not only was there a risk of serious bodily injury, the man actually DID suffer serious bodily injury, as any blow to the head that results in unconsciousness is at least a concussion, and has a fair chance of resulting in death.
My wife is from New York State. The attitude that is fostered there when it comes to guns in pretty well known to those of us in the gun community. When we were first dating, she questioned why I felt the need to carry a gun and said that she had never needed one. She was open to listening, so I took her to the range. She eventually took some classes and got her CWP.
Still, she is a pacifist at heart. When we were first dating, we were at a baseball game (the Rays v the Yankees- she is a Yankees fan) and a fight broke out in the crowd. One of the trouble makers was being escorted out by a cop, and he decided to punch the cop in the face. The cop took the guy down hard with a leg sweep. The assailant landed on his face hard enough that I heard his face hit the concrete from 30 feet away. After it was over, she was visibly shaken, and told me that she doesn’t like violence, and it makes her sick to her stomach.
The terrorist attacks in Paris were a turning point. We were on vacation in France when the attacks took place. When we saw the news of the shooting, she turned to me and said, “When we get home, I want to take the concealed weapons safety course, so I can apply for a concealed weapons permit.”
Still, even though she has the CWP, she isn’t thrilled about using force.
I get it- she is a girl, and I am not married to the Sara Conner from Terminator 2. The reason I relate this story is that you will be tried by a jury of soccer moms who are likely less gun friendly than my wife is. Remember that when you are in a situation that may require you to use force. You also need to have a lawyer who is good enough to explain your shooting in a way that will get the jury to understand why you felt the need to use force.
Crime
Not Murder in my Book
So someone steals your car at gunpoint. You report it to the cops, who take a report and otherwise do nothing.
You and your friends then find your car. You attempt to retrieve it, but knowing that the thieves are armed, you make sure that you are, too. The thieves then produce weapons in furtherance of their crime. You shoot them in self defense.
The cops THEN decide to do something and arrest you for murder because you did the job that they are being paid to do, but don’t.
Now you are in court, and I somehow have made it on to the jury. I will vote not guilty, and if it were in my power, I would vote to have the government take the cost of your defense out of the pension fund of the local cops.
Glory Days
Firefighting Hose Lays and Accidents
A recent article about a Lake County, Florida fire truck accidentally laying 1200 feet of firehose down the middle of the Florida Turnpike and causing damage to a number of cars made me want to post about the old days when I still did that sort of thing.
The hose that runs from the fire hydrant to the fire truck is called supply line. Most supply line is 3 inches or more in diameter, and in Central Florida, it’s usually 5 inches. (Orlando uses 4 inch, but that is because they typically have fire hydrants that are close together).
First, a bit of engineering.
The reason for this is hydrodynamics and friction loss. The average water main pressure is about 65 psi. At 1,000 gallons per minute, a 3 inch hose loses 80 pounds of pressure every 100 feet of hose length due to friction between the moving water and the hose itself, while a 4 inch diameter hose loses 20 pounds of pressure, and a 5 inch hose loses only 8 pounds. That means, if you want longer hose lays with high flow, the larger the diameter of your supply line, the better.
There is a lot of math involved in being the driver of a fire engine. You need to be able to calculate your friction losses in your head, rapidly, and remember that the lives of the guys in the burning building depend on you getting it correct. When you are flowing 2,000 gallons per minute through half a dozen different hose lines a 2 in the morning at a burning strip mall isn’t the time to realize that you are math deficient.
5 inch supply line has what is called a “sexless coupling” meaning that there is no male or female end, the couplings are interchangeable. This allows you to start laying from either the fire to the hydrant, called a reverse lay, or from the hydrant to the fire, called a forward lay. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but we won’t talk about that in this post.
My fire truck carried 1200 feet of 5 inch diameter supply line. That means with standard hydrant pressure, I could get a bit more than 800 gallons per minute into my engine without having to put another fire engine at the hydrant to boost pressure.
The problem with this is twofold:
- 5 inch hose is heavy. Each 100 foot section weighs a bit more than 100 pounds without water in it. Filled with water, that increases to over 1,000 pounds.
- 5 inch hose is bulky. The hose itself lays flat, but the couplings are a pain. The hose has to be loaded on the truck in a specific way, or it won’t come out of the truck correctly.
In Practice:
Both of these issues mean that 5 inch is a pain in the ass. It’s worth it, but that is not much consolation when you have to lay and reload 1200 feet of it. Anyhow, if loaded correctly, that hose comes out of the truck like a scalded dog. Like so:
I sympathize with the guys that this happened to. I once laid all 1200 feet of my supply line without meaning to when I was on the way to a large multi alarm fire. We hit a bump, the hose began laying out, and I dumped all 1200 feet in the middle of the road.
There was another time that the water department had removed a hydrant without telling the fire department. I arrived at a fire at 2 o’clock in the morning with the assignment of “secure the water supply.” I decided to do what is called a reverse lay.
So I began laying my supply hose at the fire, and headed to where I thought the closest hydrant was. 1,000 feet later, I arrived at where the hydrant was (or so I thought) and it was no longer there. After the fire was out, the other guys on the engine were not happy with me at all as we loaded all thousand pounds of hose back onto the truck.
The reason for that, is the hose is loaded by the driver backing over the hose as firefighters standing on the back of the truck lift it and load it back on the truck. The driver doesn’t do a thing but drive, the firefighters load the hose. I wasn’t a popular guy that night…
For those who are interested, the amount of hose and other equipment carried on the engine I was assigned to for the last six years of my career as a firefighter was pretty impressive. We had:
- 1200 feet of 5 inch supply line
- 300 feet of 3 inch supply line
- a single 30 foot piece of 5 inch supply line in the side running board
- a 250 foot length of 2 1/2 inch line preconnected to a smooth bore nozzle (cross lay)
- a 300 foot piece of 2 1/2 inch line preconnected to a gated wye
- a pair of 1 3/4 inch line that were 200 feet each, with nozzles connected to them (cross lays)
- a 100 foot long 1 3/4 inch “trash line” on the front bumper
- another 200 feet of 2 1/2 inch line, and 300 feet of 1 3/4 inch line in the storage compartments.
- a “high rise pack” with another 200 feet of 1 3/4 inch hose in it.
That comes to 4,000 feet of hose. Plus all of the connectors, hose tools, breathing apparatus, spare air bottles, medical equipment, thermal cameras, 100 gallons of various types of foam, a set of hydraulic rescue tools, air tools, hand tools, flashlights, a gasoline powered fan, a power saw, extension cords, 2 chain saws, 6 axes, a set of pneumatic lift bags, 2 cases of Gatoraide, 2 boxes of energy bars, and a dozen other tools. The truck itself has a 1500 gallon per minute pump, a 10 kw generator, and 1,000 gallons of firefighting water onboard. In all, there were more than 10,000 pounds of equipment and supplies on that truck.
I loved driving and working off of that engine. I did everything on that truck- I rode as firefighter, paramedic, driver, and even as the officer in charge. There are times that I miss doing it. Life was easier and less complicated then. All I had to do was put the wet stuff on the red stuff.
Crime
Is There Any Event that the FBI isn’t Involved In?
An hour ago, I posted that Derek Chauvin was shanked in prison. It turns out that the guy who did the stabbing is an FBI informant.
Is there any crime or event that happens that the FBI doesn’t have a hand in?
Crime
Chauvin Shanked
An inmate stabbed Derek Chauvin 22 times in the law library of a Federal Prison on Black Friday.
Government
C’Connor
Former SCOTUS Chief Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has died. My feelings on her decisions are mixed.
- She allowed race to be considered in college admissions, thereby giving the SCOTUS stamp of approval on affirmative action in education. Grutter v. Bollinger
- Still, I am a nurse thanks to her swing vote in Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, where she ruled that nursing schools had to permit men to apply.
- In Lawrence v. Texas, she said that laws against sodomy were an unconstitutional intrusion into people’s bedrooms, but that marriage should be limited to heterosexual couples “to preserve the traditional institution of marriage.”
- She cast decisions approving partial birth abortion, which is nothing but murder in my opinion. Stenberg v. Carhart
- She cast the deciding vote on the Bush v. Gore case in 2000. She later admitted to regretting it.
As I said, mixed.