Me

Where I piss and moan

If you don’t want to hear me bitch about my job and my lack of time off, you can skip this post.

On our second date nearly eight years ago, my wife and I discussed what we wanted out of a relationship. We both agreed that we wanted to travel and were looking for someone who would be a travel partner and playmate. I think we both found that. I was semi-retired at the time and living off my pension and a small income from my business.

After a couple of months of dating, we decided to consolidate households and moved in together. Once that happened, she told me that she didn’t want to go off to work every morning knowing that I was going to be having fun all day, and made a proposal.

The proposal was that I would get a job, and the income from that job could be used for us to travel. Since she was a teacher, I got a job teaching so that our days off would match and we could spend that time with each other.

It was a great idea. We enjoy each other’s company, and there is no one that I would rather spend my time with. I know that it is a cliché, but my wife honestly is my best friend. We once did a 54 day road trip together where we drove from Florida to Seattle, took a cruise to Alaska, then drove back. Two months of driving and travelling most of the USA, and not one argument or fight. In six and a half years, we saw 14 foreign countries and 48 states. We took long weekends to places like Savannah and Niagra Falls. We took 3 or 4 cruises a year, went on longer vacations and road trips, plus a trip to Europe and one year, we spent Christmas in Hawaii.

From the time we moved in together up until this year, we have only slept apart five times: Two nights when I went to a teaching conference in South Florida that was required by my employer, and three nights when my wife had to go help her brother in NY move after his live in girlfriend left him.

Until COVID it was a great idea, that is. The new stuff happening with COVID and all of the other nonsense centered around the election made me want to leave teaching, so I did.

The job I took was supposed to be 3 days a week, and since I was to be the supervisor, I was the one who was going to write the schedule. That sounded sweet. I could work a lot when the wife was working, then work less during school breaks and we could travel.

Two weeks after I was hired, a mass exodus happened. Mostly because employees were angry that an outsider (me) was hired to be in charge. They each felt that THEY should be the one in charge. Within two months, a 14 person department saw three resignations and four transfers. Now there are only seven people left. They tried to hire more people, but one of the ones they wanted to hire wasn’t qualified, yet they wanted to pay him more than I was making. I threw a royal fit and went to HR. They withdrew the offer to employ him, but that royally pissed off my boss. So now I am no longer the one writing the schedule. They took that from me and now have a nurse from another unit writing the schedule.

Now I am working five and six days a week, 12 hours a day. My average is now more than 60 hours a week. It seems like I am always either at work or getting ready to go to work. Since the last week of April.

Back in the first week of June, I managed to get them to schedule me for four 12 hour days for two weeks in a row, with six days off in the middle. I used that to go to Las Vegas. When it was time to come back, my wife said that she didn’t want to cut her time there short because I had to go back to work, so her mother took my place and they spent another week in Vegas. While I was working.

My wife was home for a week, and then left again. This time, she went with her parents, her brother, and some of their friends to Maine, where we have a fishing cabin and a boat. (We used to go there every year to go fishing. Until last year. We didn’t go.) She has been there for a week. I had today off, but I spent it working around the house and getting my laundry done. I was OK until my brother in law’s best friend sent me pictures of my wife winning everyone’s money at the poker table in the cabin.

In two weeks, I have 6 days off in a row coming, because I went to the scheduling nurse and told her that I wanted as many days off in a row as she could give me, essentially begging for the days off that I was promised when I was hired. All in all, I got a week in Vegas and a week in Maine this summer , and spent the rest of it at work. My wife got all but a week travelling and having fun.

So to sum it up, my wife and I had a relationship built on travel and fun for seven years. I got a job so we would have extra money to facilitate that and all was well. Then I changed jobs, so now her life is still about travel and fun, and mine is about work.

This doesn’t mean that I am unhappy with the marriage, just the opposite. I still love and want to be with my wife and I miss being able to spend time with her and do the things we used to do. I don’t blame her for going places- if she were here, all she would be doing is sitting around the house while I was at work. I know she isn’t cheating on me- she is with her family. I just don’t like being here working every day while I could be out having fun with my favorite person.

I know that something has to change. I cannot keep up the number of hours that they want me to work. I can’t spend all of my time at work while my wife gets to have all of the fun. Life is too short for that shit.

This summer is shot and over, so going back to teaching right now will not put that spilt milk back in the bottle. I am not doing this for another summer, though.

By Divemedic, ago

FEMA isn’t magic

This post began as a comment over at Miguel’s place and quickly grew large enough to be a post on its own.

Many people see FEMA as some sort of large Federal organization that responds to emergencies. They aren’t. What FEMA is, is a guy with a Rolodex (Remember those? If you don’t, ask your parents, snowflake.) and a checkbook. There isn’t some magical team of Federal Employees sitting around, waiting for “the big one” so they can swoop in and save everyone. That isn’t how it works.

No, this FEMA guy’s phonebook is filled with the contact information of local and state resources that can be called in an emergency. Those resources respond, tracking expenses and man hours used, and the FEMA guy then breaks out the checkbook to reimburse the states involved. The Governor doesn’t call out FEMA for shit. If you want to get technical, FEMA can’t do a thing unless the President tells them to. (Didn’t Trump catch hell for that recently?) FEMA’s largest contribution is writing the check to pay for it all.

After 9/11, the US government came up with the concept of Urban Search and Rescue Teams. They follow a set of guidelines in equipment and training, so that all of them nationwide operate on a similar set of procedures. This makes them interoperable across state lines: a person qualified for one could easily fit into any of the others. A USAR is equipped with everything from power generators to food trailers and rescue equipment. They have medical supplies, fuel, and all other equipment needed to fulfill their mission. Each USAR maintains over 5,000 pieces of equipment and has 140 or so assigned personnel. They can operate independently for 2 weeks, longer with resupply of fuel, food, and other consumables.

While there are some variations in the mission for each team (a team in Florida doesn’t need to be equipped for blizzards, for example) the teams are remarkably similar in training and equipment.

Florida doesn’t need FEMA resources for a building collapse. The state has eight Urban Search and Rescue Teams, all of whom are trained and equipped for that. Each one is centered on a large city, and draws its personnel from surrounding first responders. These first responders volunteer for the team, are sent to special training, and then become qualified for the team. Specialists are trained in HAZMAT, trench rescue, building collapse, confined space, water rescue, dive rescue, high angle, and vehicle and machinery rescue. Every member is certified as an EMT or Paramedic. It takes 2 to 3 years of training to fully qualify for a USAR team, on top of the extra training that they do on a constant basis. Most USAR members are the best of what their employing agencies have to offer. They are the most motivated and able of emergency responders.

Miami Dade is home to Florida’s TF1 (task force 1)
Miami has TF 2.
Tampa has TF 3.
Orlando is the center for TF 4.
Jacksonville has TF 5.
Fort Meyers has TF 6.
Tallahassee has TF 7, and
TF 8 is from Ocala and Gainesville.

Those eight task forces are comprised of about 2,000 of the state’s emergency services personnel. Before I retired, I deployed more than a couple of times with one of those teams. The most notable was to Mississippi for Hurricane Katrina.

Elements from six different USAR teams are in Surfside right now, along with a team from Mexico and another from Israel. They have more people and equipment than they can use right now- last I heard there were over 500 USAR team members there.

The issue is that a building collapse isn’t the type of disaster that is solved by throwing people at it. Even though miracles can happen and the occasional survivor is found days later, a building collapse is likely fatal for nearly everyone. Most of the survivors are found nearly immediately, survivors days later are miracles no matter how many rescuers are present.

The people in that building, with a few exceptions, were dead as soon as that building began to fall. No amount of handwringing is or could have changed that.

To be honest, I loved deployments. Not because deployments meant people were suffering. No, mostly it was because they were a test of all that you had learned. That, and a FEMA deployment usually pays pretty well. I was deployed to Katrina for 12 days and was paid more than $5,000. You want people who bring years of expertise and thousands of hours of training to come save you? You want people willing to live on 3 hours’ sleep a night without bathing while shitting in a bucket and eating old MRE’s for two weeks? It’s gonna cost ya. That kind of expertise and dedication isn’t cheap.

By Divemedic, ago

Plumber bill

The plumber came out while I was at work on Sunday. Big Ruckus D called it– my snake wasn’t big enough (stop laughing). My wife met with him when he came over, he was here less than 30 minutes.

It turns out that the professionals use a larger snake, and cleaned out the pipes quickly with his larger tool.

As I type this, I realize that there are many, many jokes that can be made out of the plumber using his larger snake to clean out my wife’s pipes while I was at work. At any rate, the bill was $165 and I can again use my toilet. The best part? My in laws and wife spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, so when I got home everything was already cleaned up.

I don’t think that this was related to the mystery that is the pipes not working when the wind blows out of the north. I think that this was a different problem.

By Divemedic, ago

Weekends and holidays

So my wife and I were getting ready to attend an awards banquet, where my Father in Law is receiving an award for his volunteer work in assisting veterans. First, the toilet quit working. Then the shower backed up. So did the guest bathroom. We can’t do without plumbing, so I told my wife to go to the banquet without me.

I opened the cleanout and ran a 25 foot snake into it. Nothing. So I went into the master shower and removed the grate on the drain, which was under an inch or so of shower water. That turns out to have been a mistake. I realized that once copious amounts of shit, toilet paper, and water gushed out of the drain, flooded the bathroom, and got the carpet in the master bedroom wet.

So now I build a cofferdam of old towels and break out the shopvac to suck up the water. Then I bring a bucket to sit on into the shower, and run the snake down that drain. Nothing. Just as I go to get up, the bucket collapses, dropping me into the shit filled water. So now I am covered in shit. I can’t even wash up, because no showers or drains. I wind up hosing off in the yard using dish soap and a garden hose.

I then decided that the clog was between the guest bathroom and the sewage connection, so I remove the guest toilet and run the snake down there. Again, nothing.

At this point, I decide that I have done all that I can do and raise the white flag. I have to work in the morning, so the wife and Father in Law will have to meet with the plumber when he arrives at 11am.

I don’t know if this is related to the ongoing problems that I have had with the plumbing, but this stuff always seems to happen on weekends and holidays.

April of 2021, we had a lightning strike. Christmas of 2020, our heat pump failed and required a compressor replacement. On Christmas day. In May 2020, we had an electrical fire. July 2019, we had a lightning strike. July 2018, Lightning strike. Then there was Hurricane Irma in 2017.

Home ownership.

By Divemedic, ago

Threats

One of my employees had a bit of an anger management problem. He has frequent bouts of ranting and yelling when things don’t go his way. He will even throw things on occasion. He once broke a computer monitor when he threw a stapler during one of his fits. Everyone knows about his temper, and frequently jokes about it when he isn’t around.

This week’s rant is a scheduling dispute. Short version is that he doesn’t like his schedule and is taking it as a personal attack. He made the statement “I’m tired of getting screwed. Everyone responsible needs to die a painful death.” I had enough and went to the supervisor. She replied: “I didn’t hear the death threats. The other stuff is just how he is. He’s been saying that stuff for years and hasn’t done anything.”

So I am carrying a handgun to work, in violation of policy. Hard to do in scrubs. I have a S&W Bodyguard .380 in a Graystone holster tank top underneath my scrubs. It is the only gun I own that is small enough not to show under the thin material of hospital scrubs.

By Divemedic, ago

Humidity Warning

Here it is only June, and we are already seeing July and August like dewpoints. The dewpoint here in Sector Ocho is 79.2 degrees F, as recorded by my weather station and substantiated by another online personal weather station less than a mile away. Dewpoints above 80 degrees F can be fatal for people with breathing problems like Asthma or COPD. I was just outside, filling my truck with fuel, and it was so humid that it was difficult to breathe. With a dewpoint of 79.2 and an actual temperature of 92 degrees, the Relative Humidity is 66.4%, and the Heat Index is 109 degF. This is the part of the year that Florida residents like to refer to as “fuckin’ hot,” except it has arrived a month early. It’s 80 degrees at sunrise, for crying out loud.

The dew point temperature is the temperature at which the air can no longer hold all of its water vapor, and some of the water vapor must condense into liquid water. At 100% relative humidity, the dew point temperature and the air temperature are the same, and clouds or fog can begin to form. While relative humidity is a relative measure of how humid it is, the dew point temperature is an absolute measure of how much water vapor is in the air (how humid it is). In very warm, humid conditions, the dew point temperature can reach 75 to 77 degrees F, but rarely exceeds 80 degrees. The highest Dewpoint ever recorded was 95 degF in Saudi Arabia. The highest ever recorded in the USA was 88 degF in Moorehead, MN. There was once a dewpoint in Melbourne, Florida of 91 degF, but the station that recorded it was not an official one, so it didn’t count.

Dew point is the best indicator of comfort in a hot climate. Once the dew point of the air exceeds 66 degrees Fahrenheit or so, the air begins to feel hot and uncomfortably stuffy. The reason for this, is that your perspiration can not evaporate to cool you off.

Last week I was in Las Vegas. The temperature there was 115 degrees, but the humidity was only 6 percent, which calculates to a 108 degree heat index. I agree. It felt warm in Vegas, like standing in front of an open oven. It doesn’t feel as warm here, but it does feel more oppressive. The air feels thick and sticky.

I hope we get a bit of relief soon, or else I won’t be able to do anything outside until October.

By Divemedic, ago

Flying sucks

I hate flying. Not because of a fear of flying or crashing. I hate flying because it is a truly horrid experience. Let me tell all of you why:

I arrived at the McCarron airport in Las Vegas yesterday at 4 pm, Pacific time. I have TSA Pre-check, which supposedly means that I have passed a background check that allows me to fly without removing my shoes or belt, among other things. Except the TSA has their metal detector turned to its most sensitive setting, which requires me to remove my wedding ring, watch, and belt EVERY. STINKING. TIME. This REALLY pisses me off. Do you want to know why?

Because on more than one occasion I have had 2- TWO- pepper spray dispensers and a push dagger in my carry on. Once, it was an industrial sized can of bear mace that I had forgotten was in my bag when I flew home from Alaska. The TSA is a bunch of incompetent asshats.

With that out of the way, my flight boarded at 5:30 for a 6:05 departure. With a flight time of four and a half hours, plus a triple time zone change, we were scheduled to arrive in Orlando at 1:40 in the morning.

We were initially delayed because a suitcase had been checked on board by a passenger who was not onboard the flight. Big no-no. So we had to delay while they located the asshole in one of the airport bars. By the time that was sorted out, Southwest airlines had a computer failure that grounded all of the company’s aircraft. We sat at the gate with no air conditioning for over two hours.

The guy in my row, a black man, decided to take off his shirt and socks. He began rubbing his feet and fanning himself with the plane brochure. The smell was horrific. As time marched on, some people left the plane. The guy finally went to a row with open seats.

We finally left the gate at 8:15. There were crying babies in the rows behind me, so I put on my noise cancelling headset. The WiFi in the plane was broken, so no in flight movies, music, or entertainment of any kind. Southwest doesn’t sell or allow any alcohol on their aircraft, so I decided to try for some sleep. You know how that goes.

We landed in Orlando at 3:30, and by the time I collected my bags from the carousel and my car from long term parking, it was 4:30. I finally got home at 5:45, to collapse in my bed until 10 o’clock.

Southwest had another ground stop caused by another computer issue less than 18 hours later. In all, the two delays cancelled or delayed over 2,800 flights.

Have I mentioned how much I hate the entire experience of flying? I will say that, other than flying, it was a very relaxing and much needed week of R&R. Back to work in the morning.

By Divemedic, ago

In practice

So to sum up my strategy for gambling, the way to maximize my time at the table for the amount I am losing is to put a limit on daily losses. As an example, I will use my just completed trip to Las Vegas as an example. My limit for this trip was $300 a day.

So day one, I played for 2 hours and lost $40 before getting tired and going to bed.

Day two, we went to watch a hockey game at a sports bar before hitting the casino. At the casino, I lost $300 in a total of four hours of play. My total loss for the trip is $340.

Day three, we played Craps for 2 hours after breakfast. I won $300 in that morning session before losing $400 in the afternoon. That means I am down a total of $440.

Day four was Saturday. I wound up losing my full $300, meaning I was down $740 for the trip.

On Sunday, I needed to play slots to earn some comps. I wound up winning $182 on slots before we had to go pickup my mother in law at the airport, and her flight was delayed by 4 and a half hours due to storms in Orlando. I found a Craps table at NYNY and won nearly $1,500.

On day six, I played for just a little bit before heading to the airport and won another $100 and change.

So I began the trip with $1,500 in gambling funds and got back on the plane home with just under $2,400. Not bad for a 6 day trip.

We flew from Orlando to Las Vegas for $400 each, round trip. We checked into the Park MGM. The first four nights were free because of comps.

In total, we spent about $750 in food and alcohol, mostly because we had some comps.

One thing that I want to mention is comps. Those are the free perks that you get for gambling. We stick with the one that gives us the best offers. In our case, that is MGM Resorts.

In this case, we stayed in the hotel for 5 nights at a total cost of $223. I had gotten comped 4 nights for just the cost of resort fees. We also got $200 in free slot play and $100 in free food and drink. I get offers for comped stays 4 or 5 times a year. Sometimes with comped resort fees, sometimes not.

What this means is that we spent under $1,800 for a 6 day, 5 night vacation. Factor in the money won at the table and it was even cheaper.

We went to street party for the Las Vegas hockey team and ate some pretty good BBQ ribs, saw a couple of shows, and did a bit of sightseeing. I got to see an obviously rich Chinese guy take out a $100,000 loan from the casino to gamble with. Saw a fight, got in a fight, and had a pretty good time.

Now I am getting on the plane to go home back to work while my wife is staying in Vegas with her mother for a few more days of mother/daughter time. Now to get some sleep on the plane. I won’t be home until 4 am.

By Divemedic, ago

Use of Force

I just had the oddest experience that I have ever had in Las Vegas. It ended in a use of force incident.

My wife and I were playing Craps at Harrah’s this morning. My wife was standing to my left. We were at the end of the table and a woman walked up to the table on my right and tried to buy in with $25 cash and a slot machine ticket worth $77. The dealer told the woman that tickets were not accepted at the tables, and directed her to the cashier’s cage that was 20 feet away. The woman left the $25 in chips on the table and headed that way.

She returned 10 minutes later, and I pointed out to her that the chips she had left behind were still there. She said “I don’t care about that, it’s chump change,” then put the chips on the field. I was the shooter and rolled a 6. Her money was taken by the dealer. She asked the dealer to place another bet, the dealer asked for money, the woman again tried to use the slot machine ticket. My wife helpfully told her that she needed to use cash. She left. After she was gone, I made a joke: “That’s what happens when you legalize pot.” The entire table laughed, dealers included.

She came back a third time, about 15 minutes later. She stood so close to me that our shoulders were touching, despite the fact that no one else was at our end of the table. I slid my chips to my left, away from her and closer to my wife. It made me nervous. The woman said, pointing to my wife,”She isn’t helping me. I should just punch her.” I told the woman that this would be a bad idea and that she needed to leave. I asked the dealer to call security. I couldn’t leave, because I had about $200 in play. The woman left, and the dealer said, “She is someone else’s problem now.”

You guessed it- she was back 5 minutes later. The stupid ass tried using the slot ticket again. She said, “I don’t have any circle things (meaning chips?) to play with, so I will just take some of his.” She then reached in and grabbed a handful of my chips with her right hand.

I grabbed the offending hand HARD and twisted towards me as I stepped to my right, into her, planting my foot behind her. At the same time, I lifted her arm and pushed. Off balance, she started to fall and I was just starting to finish the move when my wife yelled “stop.” I eased up and let the woman keep her feet. Security was there pretty quickly. They removed her from the property. As they were doing so, she insisted that security get a supervisor and “fully document” the incident. She will be lucky if they don’t have her arrested.

My wife later said she was worried that I would be the one who got in trouble. She also said that she wasn’t sure that I needed to use force. I explained that the woman had already verbally signaled her willingness to get violent and was in the act of committing robbery. What I did was a clear case of the lawful use of force in self defense.

First time I have ever had to use force in my wife’s presence.

By Divemedic, ago

McAfee

I bought a new laptop last year. It came with McAfee antivirus. Because I was working from home, I got an email virus from a work email. I don’t think I was the target, I think the hackers were trying to target my school district. The payload was the ech0raix malware. McAfee never detected the virus, and didn’t do a thing to clean the computer.

I lost everything. All of my data. The weakness of the virus is that it saves an encrypted version of all of your files using a randomly generated key. No one with the possible exception of the NSA can decrypt it. Then it deletes the original. That was the weakness that my IT friend was able to exploit. We got the files back, but filenames and metadata was lost. So now I have a couple of hundred thousand files without names. The only way to find out what a file is, is to open it and then rename the file. I gave up on that about 11 months ago. Tedious.

Why do I mention this now?

Because McAffee is telling me that my year subscription is up, and is asking me to renew. They have a money back guarantee that, if you get a virus and they cannot retrieve your data, they will refund you the purchase price of their software.

Being a gambler, I can tell you that this is a sucker’s bet. The overwhelming majority of their users won’t get a virus, thus making you the loser of the bet and McAfee the winner. Those who DO get the virus must send the computer in to be ‘cleaned’ and data recovered, if possible. Those who can’t be cleaned, McAfee ‘loses’ the bet, and you ‘win’ your money back- a push.

This virus software is not very good, and their “guarantee” is a sucker’s bet- a gimmick designed to take your money.

By Divemedic, ago