Divemedic

I have been a teacher for just over six months. In that time, I have seen three students attack teachers. I have seen or heard of quite a few students who have attacked fellow students. Our school doesn’t even lock its doors. There is one School Resource Officer, but he is rarely on campus, and when he is, he spends his days surfing the internet. I had an incident in my classroom (a medical emergency) that required 911, and EMS beat the officer to my room.

In one attack, a male student was arguing with his girlfriend. He was yelling at her “I am going to kill you for that,” and it so alarmed two staff members that they asked the girl to hide in the teacher’s lounge, and they called for the SRO and the Prinicpal. It took ten minutes for them to arrive. In those intervening minutes, the two small female staff members (one of them disabled) tried to keep the young man away from the girl. He struck them and shoved them both out of the way.

What did the vice principal do about it? He suspended the boy and admonished the staff members, saying that them getting hit was their own fault, because no staff member is ever allowed to use force on a student for any reason. Then we as staff were all given training to that effect, where the administration told us that it is against state law for a teacher to ever use force or violence on a child. Being the new employee, I didn’t argue. 

Because of a bill introduced in Florida that would allow some teachers to be armed,  some coworkers and I recently had a debate on the topic where other teachers expressed opposition to the idea. They claimed that having guns around kids was just asking for trouble. What if a kid took my gun from me, they asked. They also said that nothing would prevent me from snapping one day and killing a student who was getting on my nerves.

I pointed out that I spent six years in the military, 22 years as a firemedic, regularly compete in IDPA matches, worked for several years as a SWAT medic, and have carried a concealed weapon since I was 21 years old. I can carry that weapon everywhere else except school, and in all that time, I have never once had my weapon taken from me, nor have I ever “snapped” and killed anyone. The reply was that the other mass shooters had never snapped before, until they did.

Then one teacher said that she would support the law, as long as it was required by law to keep the safety on, so that the gun would not go off by mistake.

These are supposedly educated people.

If you carry a concealed firearm, you will invariably hear a variation of this: “Why do you need to carry a gun? A Taser is just as good, and you won’t kill anyone.”

Here is a story about a couple who was arrested when they attacked a security guard who had just deployed a Taser against them. After shrugging off the shock, they turned it on him and beat him senseless. The guard was foolish at best. He entered a fight that had at least 4 participants, while carrying a contact weapon (or if it fired darts, a single shot weapon with a range of only 20 feet) and got his ass handed to him.

Tasers are ineffective in a situation like that.

The Marines can”t get women to pass the Combat Officer course. The answer isn’t to say that women can’t do the job- nope, the answer is to lower the standard so women can pass.

We are doomed.

I read Tam’s post on cars, and I instantly laughed to myself. 

Computer controlled cars:
Once cars are computer controlled, the major computer companies will be on board:

Microsoft car: “It has been determined my model number is too old and this model is no longer supported. Therefore, I can only drive to the recycling center after today’s date. If you would like to order the new model, please go to www.windowscar.com.”
The car will be made by many different manufacturers with a large number of options, and usually costs about $40,000.
The car will freeze, hang, and occasionally crash for no apparent reason. When you call Microsoft, they will blame the maker of the transmission and engine. The makers of the engine and transmission will blame the software by Microsoft. Apple owners will laugh and point out that their car “just works.”

Apple car: There will be a new release every year, and the Apple fans will line up at the dealership a week before to get one. The car comes in models that seat 1, 2, or  4 people and will cost $80,000 for the 1 person model, $100,000 for the 2 person model, and the 4 person model will set you back $125,000.  The car can only be driven on roads owned by Apple, Maintenance, and even airing up the tires can only be done at the Genius bar. Refueling requires that you trade in the old car for a new one, as there are no user serviceable features on this car.

Not to be outdone, the tech nerds will open source a Linux version that you can download into one of the Windows cars. The software will be free, but only about ten percent of the people on the road will understand enough about the car in order to start it. The Linux software eliminates the software problems of the Windows automobile operating system, but you also need to download an emulator in order to operate on anything other than residential streets.

The headline at HuffPo reads: “Abusers using spyware to monitor partners,” referring to this article, as if people who monitor what their significant others are doing is automatically abuse. It ignores the fact that there are many cheating spouses out there, and the way that they get caught is through the use of this software. In my mind, it is no different than the spouse who hires a private detective to catch a cheating spouse.

However, that isn’t my point. My point here is this: If using software to monitor a spouse’s activity is abusive, then why are we allowing our government to do it?

A man finds a way to make it through DUI checkpoints without being illegally searched, and then posts a video of it on the internet. The comments sicken me. Here is an example:

I agree but having a drivers license is not a freedom it is a privilege.
To keep that privilege you must obey the law and as somebody that has
seen the effects of DUI first hand as an EMT and emergency room
technician I totally disagree. What should happen is the cops should
remove the Drivers license and the driver must pick it up at the DMV.
If you have nothing to hide then don’t worry. The checkpoint takes 30
seconds if you aren’t drunk.

A mass shooting in France, where guns are more heavily regulated than any country in North America?

Could it be that gun laws don’t work?

and with this, the Republicans prove that they cannot take a hint. There is no way we can vote ourselves out of what is about to come.

We are on the train to national insolvency and dictatorship. The left
claims that they need to tax the rich to pay for all of their programs
and ensure that everyone gets a fair share of the national economic pie.
They ignore the fact that they are spending us into insolvency. Oh, and they want to ban guns and legalize pot.

The right claims that they want to control the left’s spending, but
never seem to do so. They claim that we need to cut spending and taxes.
Just not defense. We need to go to war with everyone until
they all bow down to us as Americans and outlaw gay marriage.

Neither party wants to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. 

The chief war cry of the right
is: if you don’ t vote for the party hack, it is the same as voting for
the other guy. Except, they forget that it won’t matter which one you
vote for, because other than the D or R behind his name, there is not a
real difference between them.

Lest you forget, our last Republican president brought us a 9 year long
war in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11;
the Patriot Act; the TSA and their intrusive searches; secret prisons;
torturing prisoners for information; and added more than
$4,900,000,000,000 to the national debt in 8 years.

Our current President has expanded the powers left for him by his Republican predecessor and begun executing
assassinating Americans without trial, forced people to buy products
that they don’t want, and has expanded the national debt by
$7,500,000,000,000 in 6 years.

It
doesn’t matter who we vote for, as our course is set. We aren’t voting
our way out of this. It is only a matter of time before we sink our
national ship under the weight of fiscal irresponsibility.

Cell phone contracts last for two years. The problem is that I usually get a new phone every year, because I am pretty hard on cell phones. When it is time to get a new phone, unless you are close to the end of your contract, the phone company wants you to pay full price for the replacement, and with the advent of smart phones, this is usually around $700 or so.

So what I did in the past was that I had two lines sharing the same account. With this method on Verizon, all you do at upgrade time is sign a new two year contract with Verizon. Now you have a year old phone with a year left on the contract, and a new phone with a two year contract. You put the SIM card that you are using in the new phone, and then sell the old one, usually for $200-300. Now you have two phones, for which you must pay the $40 a month “smart phone access fee,” even though you are only using one of them.

You could just pay the early termination fee, but that is $240, if you still have a year on the contract. To solve this, you tell the Verizon people that you are switching that old smart phone out for an old “dumb” phone. Dumb phones only have a $10 per month fee, meaning that this will only cost you $120.

I did this for years, until I dropped my phone and broke it, only six months after I bought it. Now here I was, with no phone, and no upgrade available for at least 4 months. Along comes Verizon, explaining to me that the new “Edge Up” program would allow me to get a new phone now, and since the Edge program was a purchase agreement, I would no longer be contractually obligated for service. So I signed on the dotted line, content that my phone bills would go down by $30 a month, because I would no longer have to maintain two lines. Once my second contract ran out in December, I would cancel it and only maintain a single line.

The salesman assured me that I would be able to do this. I looked over the contract, and sure enough, the contract appeared to say that as well.

December comes, and they tell me that I cannot shut down the second line without paying the entire price of the phone, which was double what the Edge contract was for. I went to the store and argued with the manager and the very same salesman that sold me the phone. They pointed to the arbitration clause, which reads that Verizon, in their sole discretion, gets to define what the terms of the contact mean, and if you disagree with them, you waive your rights to sue, and must settle in arbitration, using their arbitrators. I told the salesman that they were dishonest and were ripping people off. His reply? “you signed it”

In other words, we gotcha. Yes, I signed it. That doesn’t make it any less dishonest to bury a weasel clause in a 17 page contract.

So now, I have to switch my number so I can lower the one I am currently using to “dumb” phone status, and my cell bill for a single phone is now $140 a month. This may be the end of my journey with Verizon. American cell phone companies are a ripoff. $140 a month for phone service? I was just talking with people from other countries, and most countries pay less than $40 a month for unlimited talk, text, and data. Sure, you have to buy your own phone, but there are no early termination fees, no contracts, and you can switch carriers as you please.

These contracts are distorting the market, and there is no real choice or competition in the cell phone market.

So the law against same sex marriage in the state of Florida was recently declared unconstitutional by a US district judge. In response, some clerks of court have declared that they will not issue same sex marriage licenses until they are forced to. Still other clerks have decided that they will no longer allow anyone to get married in the courthouse, in order to avoid accusations of discrimination.

Duval County Clerk of Courts Ronnie Fussell said tells The Florida Times-Union that none of his staff members who currently officiate wedding ceremonies felt comfortable performing same-sex weddings…  “It was decided as a team, as an office, this would be what we do so
that there wouldn’t be any discrimination,” Fussell said. “The easiest
way is to not do them at all.”… Fussell said he believed marriage “is between a man and a woman.” He
added, “Personally it would go against my beliefs to perform a ceremony
that is other than that.”

I have two thoughts on this:
1 You are a government employee. You don’t get to decide not to follow the law because it makes you uncomfortable, any more than this guy did. If performing same sex marriages makes you uncomfortable, get a new job. No one is forcing you to work there, and it isn’t up to you.

2 Tactically, this is stupid. If same sex couples cannot get married in a government building because the government no longer performs ceremonies, then you set the stage for forcing the court to declare that officiants cannot discriminate, and this would force officials who hold ceremonies for churches to provide that service to same sex couples.