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We’re in the new house and I just fired the Roomba off for the first time. This house is a lot bigger than our last one, and the Roomba was basically roaming the entire first floor. It’s been running for about 40 minutes now. Within seconds of walking downstairs (I’m working upstairs) it turned, grimaced, and headed straight for my feet. Considering the floorspace involved, the statistical odds of this happening are low. Very low. And that’s not counting the grimace. We have a lot of tile, and the Scooba is sitting in the garage, waiting for some floor scrubbing action. But I’m worried they’ll team up. I’m even more worried the Scooba will convert its cleaning fluid into a deadly nerve agent. Share:

I’ve been pretty quiet for a couple weeks since we were getting ready for the new house, moving into the new house, and dealing with all the fun new house issues. The good news is the house is incredible- it’s been amazing to design and build this thing almost from scratch. Nearly everything is exactly the way we want it; it will be a long time before we have to do any kind of upgrading. The community is even better, and one of the main reasons we picked this area. Our neighbors came over this weekend to introduce their kids (to our cats, since we don’t have kids) and they brought cookies. Cookies! How often does that happen anymore? The bad news is the builder (Toll Brothers) doesn’t quite understand that customer service is still important after someone buys their product and moves in. We had a number of things identified on our last walkthroughs that weren’t completed. Eventually, our construction manager just stopped answering his phone or returning calls. We’re now on warranty, and I’ve submitted our issues, but we’ll see how well they respond. When I mentioned my exasperation with construction to our neighbors they gave us a knowing grin. Our experiences aren’t unique, and once Toll Brothers gets you into the house their responsiveness drops significantly. It’s too bad; our build experience was great, but last week they drove me to drink. And not in the nice way where I give them my keys. I took almost 2 weeks off work to get the house ready to go, and literally lost days of my vacation waiting around for imaginary service calls. They wasted my time for no good reason than they didn’t have the honesty to tell me they wouldn’t do the work, or would get to it later. That bothers me. A lot. I won’t bore most of you with the details, but a blog is a good place to record certain experiences for posterity, and it’s the only public outlet I have to express my dissatisfaction with my home provider. Build experience good. Post-build experience bad. Hopefully it will change, and maybe someone out there will be better prepared when they make the new home plunge. For the record, from what I hear, no builder is any better. Share:

I was one shit hot paramedic. All you had to do was ask me. I was smart; no question about that. So smart that I was accepted to paramedic school (p-school) due to some really high test scores, despite being a year or so short of the required amount of field experience. I started school when I was 21, basically the earliest you can drive an ambulance in Colorado due to insurance requirements, and was one cocky 22 year old by the time I graduated and went on the job. I think I graduated number 2 from my class- on test scores at least. Since most of the men reading this have probably been 22 by now, and most of the women have had to deal with 22 year old guys, you can probably see where this story is going. (spoiler) For those of you that want to skip to the end, the short version is that brains and ego alone can’t ever compensate for real experience. Oh yeah, and Soylent Green is people. And Snape killed Dumbledor. And Tony Soprano got whacked. They said like 3 times that it all just goes black, and it went black; seems pretty darn obvious. (/spoiler) So there I was: 22 years old, filled with my own confidence, and ready to change the face of emergency medicine. A few months after graduating p-school I started my first full time paramedic job working for a company called Foothills Ambulance out of Golden, Colorado. Foothills wasn’t what you’d call a very professional organization. Our headquarters was basically a condemned shack with a few bunks and enough parking space outside for a couple ambulances. I’m not kidding about the condemned part- the only reason it wasn’t to down was because the fire inspector knew better than to stick his head inside the door. The working conditions weren’t much better. We were expected to work at least 60+ hours a week and weren’t paid overtime. Illegally. The owner made it clear that if we ratted her out she’d drop everyone to minimum wage and 40 hours a week. Heck, one time the drain cracked, dumping water and refuse into the crawl space below the small kitchen, and we only noticed when the smell finally started freaking people out. Management’s answer? Buy some lye and make one of us crawl in there ourselves and spread it around. Why did we put up with this? Foothills was one of the only companies in the area (nearly everyplace was a private company, not a municipal department) that would let every rig run 911 calls. Nearly everyplace else required years on transfer cars running back and forth between nursing homes before you gained enough seniority to use those lights and sirens. As far as I know, these days all that’s left of Foothills are a few t-shirts buried in rag piles. Even our noble “headquarters” is probably long gone. I managed to get a job there thanks to my roommate who was working for them as an EMT. I was totally psyched- there I was, fresh out of school, and I’d be running real emergency calls. So psyched I managed to sleep through my alarm the first day and showed up 40 minutes late for orientation. Not the best start, and it probably didn’t get better. Most places start you off as a third-rider/candidate working under a senior medic called a Field Training Officer. You spend a few weeks learning your way around, the department’s protocols, and having your skills evaluated. (Except Jersey City- when I worked there it was 3 shifts and you were on your own; getting lost with lights and sirens running is always tons of fun). I started to learn pretty quickly that my lack of experience was a bit of a liability. I was far from polished, but good enough I probably wouldn’t kill anyone. Actually, as a medic you really have to screw up to kill someone directly- it’s more along the lines of not effectively preventing them from expiring that’s the problem. Eventually I muddled through the program and was handed the keys to my very own ambulance, with my very own EMT partner. A really cute one. With red hair. I’d like to blame the next part on her for distracting me, but alas, it was my own stupid ego. The day started slow; I think we maybe just did a transfer or two. After dark we finally got our first call. I was excited. I was pumped. My very first call as a solo paramedic on a paid ambulance (I was also volunteering somewhere else at the time). We were dispatched to a local trailer park, one of the nice ones, for an elderly patient with altered mental status. This can mean pretty much anything from a drunk to a room-temperature body (you’re not real responsive at room temperature, unless the room is 98.6 degrees). More often than not, at that time and with that kind of call, it’s some sort of medical issue. We rolled up and I let my partner lead. We often let the lesser-trained EMTs run calls as training experiences. Personally, I was trying to show off to a cute girl. We walked up the stairs into the trailer and were met by a neighbor, also an older woman, who showed us to her friend sitting in the living room, not very responsive. Up to now all was good in ambulance-land. It didn’t last. There are a lot of things that can make someone act weird. This patient was staring off into space, and wasn’t very cooperative. She’d fight everything we’d try to do. Sure, it could be a head injury, drug interaction, hypothermia, or dozens of other medical problems, but in this case the odds were strongly in favor of hypoglycemia- low blood sugar. Mostly because she was diabetic. And might not have eaten recently, according to her friend. Here’s where things went wrong. For some reason

Over the holiday weekend my wife were walking across a big mall parking lot as we made our way from dinner to the only bar in our area carrying the big UFC fight. (Way more fun to watch than boxing anymore). It was about 6:30 pm. We live in Phoenix, and it isn’t called the Valley for the Sun for nothing. It doesn’t really get dark until well after 8 unless there’s some sort of eclipse or massive asteroid headed for a world-ending collision. As we were walking we both noticed a parked car with its engine running. The conversation went kind of like this: Me: “I wonder why that car’s running without anyone driving it?” Wife: “Maybe they have a dog or some…” ..pause as we glimpse naked (probably) teenagers moving around.. Me: “Woah” Wife: “Stop looking!” Me: “Wow. I mean it’s not like parking behind a building or anything!” Wife (while laughing): “Stop looking!!” Me: “Wow. Now why couldn’t I ever talk someone into doing that with me?” Wife (still laughing): “Seriously, why can’t you stop looking! Leave them alone.” … Wife: “You think they know they’re parked in front of Babies R’ Us?” Me: ..guffaw.. That guy is destined for marketing or PR; no one else can talk someone into doing that in a car in the middle of a busy parking lot, in the middle of the day, with nothing more than barely-tinted windows to block the view. Share:

By the time I pulled back into the parking lot after lunch at home, I knew something was wrong. The first sign was the ambulance racing out towards the hospital with full lights and sirens. The second sign was catching a glimpse of the crowd of guests on the bridge slowly walking back in the direction of the pool. You can’t see the pool from the parking lot, but it was obvious it had been cleared. While we would empty the pool every couple of weeks on a lost child search, the combination of an empty pool and ambulance didn’t bode well. But accidents happen, this wasn’t the first ambulance we’d called, and as I exited my car and started towards the entrance I was more excited than anything else; wanting to know what I missed. It was only when I saw the faces of my coworkers and the guests as I walked in that I realized something terrible had happened. A kid died in our pool. Every now and then we have moments in our lives where disparate events coalesce into a coherent inspiration. Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about my life in emergency services. A month ago I had to take an EMT refresher class to transfer my certification from Colorado to Arizona. Two weeks ago I gave a presentation on “The Firefighter’s Guide to Risk Management”, where I played off my past as a rescue worker to talk about Enterprise Risk Management concepts. Last week I finished reading “Playing for Real: Stories from Rocky Mountain Rescue”, an excellent book by Mark Scott-Nash, a friend from Rocky Mountain Rescue. Those three events made me realize how incredibly lucky I’ve been to have some amazing opportunities and experiences. For nearly 20 years now I’ve bounced around nearly every rescue job in the books- some paid, some volunteer, all professional. I’ve driven fire trucks, worked the ambulance in the inner city, flown on helicopters, patrolled one of the top ski resorts in the US, responded to Katrina, started IVs while hanging off cliff faces, SCUBA dived for bodies, and spent thousands of hours training for nearly any possible crisis. All of these adventures started in high school with my first non-fast-food job. Graydon pool is a mix between a man-made lake and municipal pool located in the New York suburb of Ridgewood, New Jersey. About 100 yards on each side in a vaguely rectangular shape, its sandy bottom is surrounded by an artificial beach. Originally a small pond, it was later excavated to its current size and massive filtration systems added. Visibility is still a pond-like few feet and we’d regularly row around in a small boat to drop chlorine tablets and other chemicals to keep it sanitary. A long buoy line snakes through the middle dividing the 0-4 foot deep shallow end from the 13+ foot deep end, equipped with a high dive, two concrete resting platforms, and a small lap area. During summers Graydon is the social center for Ridgewood. On a sunny day about a dozen lifeguards perched on 7 foot stands would watch over hundreds of swimmers of all ages. I was 17 when I started working there as a lifeguard and couldn’t imagine a better job. The pay was good ($35 a day my first year), the nightly parties better (thanks to a mix of high school and college-age staff), and at times I felt more like a professional volleyball player than a public servant. I can’t remember exactly when the drowning occurred, but think it was either in 1988 or 1989. Graydon was often the host for youth groups from other towns looking for a change from the traditional lap pool. I think the group that day was from Patterson, a low-income town whose school was featured in the film Stand by Me. While I was out at lunch a group of kids jumped off the main platform in the deep end, and started swimming about 30 yards towards the concrete T-shaped dock that held the olympic-height low and high diving boards. Once they hit the other side, they realized one of their friends hadn’t made it and quickly notified the guard at the diving area. I’m bad with names, and this was nearly 20 years ago, so while I remember what she looked like I can’t remember my coworker’s name. She was one of the few employees over 21 (that’s the kind of thing a 17 year old remembers) and on summer break from college. She immediately blew three short blasts on her whistle- the emergency signal for a rescue- and dove into the pool. Off-duty lifeguards would swarm over the area as everyone in stands would start clearing the entire pool. When enough guards hit the water in that area, we’d switch from a spot search to a more organized sweep that I later realized resembles an avalanche search. Side by side, the lifeguards would tread water in a line, dive to the 13-foot bottom, swim forward a few strokes, and start all over again. If we didn’t have a search area, or enough time passed, we’d grab SCUBA tanks, lay a few search lines, and start a dive search. Not that any of us were even certified to dive. But based on what others later told me the search never got to that point. Another female guard, in the next stand over, jumped in to assist and they quickly located the boy. Piecing the story together, he’d quietly slipped under the water without a struggle while swimming across with his friends. The two female guards found him very quickly and started mouth to mouth while swimming him to shore for CPR and to transfer him to the ambulance for a short trip to the Valley Hospital Emergency Room. That boy, high school at the oldest, never came back. The two guards were emotionally devastated and the death was a pall over the entire staff. Initially there was a suspicion that his heart stopped

In the Chicago airport bouncing off to Germany after a week in New Orleans. Only getting 2 days home over 2 weeks or so. Tired, but have some good stuff to post on NO once I get time to think… Share:

Tomorrow my wife and I leave for New Orleans. We’re taking in the Jazz Fest, and celebrating our 1-year anniversary. I’m still not sure how I got her to marry me. Social engineering was definitely involved. I haven’t been back to New Orleans in about 4 or 5 years. I almost deployed there as part of the Katrina response, but my team was turned back just outside Baton Rouge to help with all the evacuees in Houston instead. We’re not sure what to expect when we hit the city. I suspect all the tourist areas are gussied up, but we’ll be driving out of town for part of our trip and have the opportunity to see the parts I don’t think they want us to see. But now is not the time for Katrina stories. I’ve just spent a wonderful year with the best woman on the planet. Sorry guys, my wife’s better than yours. She bought me the Lego robot kit for xmas; how can you possibly top that? The last part of the trip will be speaking at a Risk Management conference there. If you’re at the show, come say hi… Share:

(From Slashdot) So a student creates a map of his school for a video game mod, and gets arrested and kicked out of school. Aside from discouraging freedom of thought, something I doubt the Founding Fathers ever thought needed protection, how is the youth of today supposed to prepare for the coming alien invasion? This is a serious issue and we can no longer let these gutless liberals undermine the defense of this country by preventing our future warriors from learning the latest frag techniques for radioactive mutants, alien invaders, or Mo from the Simpsons (love that mod). The quote of the year: “They decided he was a terroristic threat,” said one source close to the district”s investigation. “Terroristic”. That’s just awesome. Nice to see sniglets returning to the common vernacular related to national defense. Can we make dumb people wear hats or something? Please? Share:

Much to our own surprise, last August my wife and I decided to buy our first new “new” house in the Desert RIdge area of Phoenix. The closest I’ve ever come to having a house built was helping build a house. Needless to say, this was a perfect opportunity to get my geek on. I could tell you all the wonderful things about the place like our cabinet and counter selections, tile and carpet, or number of rooms. But let’s be honest, if you’re reading this blog you won’t be interested in any of that stuff. I barely am, and I’m paying for most of it. Here’s the good stuff. On the electrical front I got to design the lighting and even the circuits. We put in dedicated circuits behind the TV, in the garage (for the power tools), and in the server closet. Yep, I get an office with a server closet (air conditioned, of course, although that was just blind luck). We also put an outlet at eye-level behind the TV for the wall mount flat panel, and a floor outlet in the office. Thanks to a mistake by the installer, there are eye-mount level panels to run wires down to floor-level for any wall mount TVs. The entire house is wired with Cat6 and coax. Even the phone lines are just Cat6 lines. Every room has at least one Cat6 and one coax line, but usually more. Behind the TV area we doubled up on everything, with enough coax lines to run 4 channels of high definition satellite signals (for the TiVo, of course, pre-wired to the South facing side of the house). All the lines run to a central panel in the… you guessed it… server closet. I can mix and match anything without having to run new lines. But even Cat6 won’t last forever, so we ran conduit to all the bedrooms, the family/TV room, and another general room upstairs. Fiber? No prob, unless it’s fatter than 1.5 inches. For audio we put ceiling speakers in the living/dining room and out on the patio, all running to the TV area where the stereo will sit. We also put in overhead rear-surround speakers, which can double up as general stereo speakers. It’s not whole-home, but I don’t think we really need that. There’s crawl space access upstairs and even between floors if we need it. If I want to shoot audio upstairs I’ll just go wireless. We did a slight upgrade on the security panel and added a serial interface. I run Insteon home automation off a Mac Mini, and I’ll be able to interface directly with the alarm. That will let us do all sorts of cool stuff like turn off the lights when we activate the alarm, or get a nice web display of all open doors/windows. For security reasons we added a door sensor to a deck door on the second floor, a glass break detector in the back of the house, and a smoke detector. It seems weird to me that while we got integrated smoke detectors throughout the house, none of them connect to the alarm panel to call the fire department. The firefighter in me also sprung for the residential sprinkler system. If we ever have kids, and they ever set it off, I’m going to kill them. While I made a serious bid for a secret passage disguised behind a bookcase, that was a definite no go. Last week we got our close date- June 19. Less than 2 months until I’m living in gig-ethe et heaven… (…anyone want to buy a condo in downtown Boulder, CO?) Share:

I turn 36 today. I’m not really sure how that happened. Neither are a lot of other people. I realize 36 is still fairly young, but it’s definitely not my 20’s anymore. My father died around age 64, so technically I’m past mid-life by his standard, although I’m pretty darn certain I can stretch well past that. With cryogenic freezing advances I might even make it to “indefinite”. I’m also now in the “over 35” category for martial arts competitions. In just 4 short years I have to look forward to a new addition to my annual physical and will begin choosing my physicians based on the size of their hands. (Smaller is better.) This weekend I’m also finishing up EMT refresher class so I can transfer my Colorado certification to Arizona since it expires in a couple months. I first certified as an EMT in 1990/91, and was a paramedic in 1993 for 3 years before dropping back to EMT. I’m not the oldest in the class, but I’m definitely the only one there with extensive field experience. Back when I first became certified I remember listening to the war stories and wondering how I’d react. Mostly I thought, “cool! I hope I get to do that!” The nastier and bigger the better. Now, when I’m not telling my own stories, I think to myself, “damn! I hope that doesn’t happen to me!” So much for the invulnerability of youth. I expected hair loss, slower healing, and degradation of my vertical jump, but it was a slap in the face to realize how much more aware I am of my own mortality. Crap. (On a good side, I realize how much age has improved my skills as a health care provider. Not the physical skills nor the technical knowledge, but despite being a bit of an asshole in general I realize I focus much more on patient comfort and compassion than showing off my skills. It’s now about them, not me.) Share: