When half of your jurisdiction is mountains, you need the right equipment!
Used in parades and other events, it’s also used in actual responses in the mountains, for search and rescue.
It’s not all Adam-12
November 27, 2011
9-1-1, commentary, Pictures Rubicon Jeep, Search and Rescue, TCSO 4 Wheeler, Tulare County Sheriff's Department 1 Comment
Albert Didn’t Visit Us Last Night
November 22, 2011
9-1-1, commentary, Humor, Personal dispatcher stories, life in dispatch, literal answers Leave a comment
The Duty Officer has many responsibilities to tend to during his or her shift in dispatch. One of those duties is answering the intercoms posted at various doors to the building. Several times a night, the buzzer at one or the other of the doors will sound, with someone needing help. Almost without fail, they are looking for the jail. Posting signs at either intercom, indicating that each particular door is NOT the jail, and pointing out where one needs to go to find the jail, rarely produces the desired result. They still buzz, and are still looking for the jail. Last night, we had one that had me laughing harder than I have for a long time.
“BUUUZZZZZZ” (they love to hold down that call button)
Duty officer: “Can I help you?”
Gentlemen at the intercom: “Yes”.
…
…
Weekly Roundup @ 9-1-1
November 12, 2011
9-1-1, commentary, News crazy 9-1-1 calls, dispatcher stories, the week at 9-1-1 Leave a comment
Some of this weeks more memorable calls:
#1. A woman found her horse, and wants a Deputy to help her pick it up. Trouble is, is it really her horse? You see, it’s been missing for a while, and she’s just located it at a rental stable. She goes into a long story that basically boils down to – her daughter took the horse that she (the daughter) considered hers, after Mom and Dad went through a nasty divorce. Daughter took the horse to a boarding stable, and didn’t tell Mom where it was. Mom finally found out, and went to claim “her” horse (she “paid for it, fed it, has the papers”) and is upset the stable owners won’t let her take it, even going so far as to change the lock on the gate! (How dare they?!?!) Of course, the stable owners only have her word on it, as far as they know, the person paying the stable rental fees is the actual owner. Woman wants the Deputy to help her take “her” horse.
Not going to happen. Settle it in court. Woman not happy, will call back later.
#2. Drunk woman sobbing on the phone. She’s been abandoned by her kids somewhere in California! She doesn’t know where she is! Help her! She tells me she’s on Highway 198. OK, Highway 198 is close to a hundred miles from end to end! Where on Highway 198?? She doesn’t know! She’s near a Chevron station. (We see from the cell tower address that she’s got to be close to Three Rivers, but that still leaves a lot of area to cover)
After about an hour of trying to get her to figure out where she is, and multiple calls of her sobbing and hanging up on us, we track it down. She’s drunk. Very drunk. She wandered away from a local bar, her ‘significant other’ got tired of her and left her there and returned to his hotel room. We finally got her back to the room with ‘hubby’ (or whoever) and tucked in for the night. Oh.. the wonders of alcohol!
#3. Gangster wanna-be (and stupid with a capital S) teenager tries to shoot at someone, but misses. Three targets, in close proximity, and he’s got a shotgun. Lucky for the intended targets, this dip is a lousy shot, and misses all of them! That’s one reason our gang related shootings only sometimes result in serious injury or death – the shooters are all really bad shots!
#4. Better shot in front of the ‘stop and rob’ along the freeway. A call that we originally thought was an armed robbery with shots fired turned out to be a fight in the parking lot that escalated into someone grabbing their shotgun and blasting away. Everyone was gone before we got units on the scene, including the victim, but he showed up at a local hospital fairly quickly. Detectives still tracking down this one, but they’ve got some good intel, so it’s probably only a matter of time.
It was a slow week, maybe the weather kept them in. More later.
Better late than never! The Visalia Times Delta publishes my letter
November 12, 2011
commentary, Gay, Personal coming out, letter to the editor, national coming out day, NCOD, Visalia Times Delta 1 Comment
October 11 was National Coming Out Day. I wrote and submitted a Letter To The Editor about it, hoping my local paper, The Visalia Times Delta, would publish it on NCOD. They didn’t, and I dismissed the hope of seeing it in the printed edition. A few days after the 11th, I went ahead and posted it in the blog section of the paper’s online site, and to QueerVisalia.com. Imagine my surprise to see it in yesterdays paper! It appeared on the 11th, but the 11th of Novemeber! Better late than never, I suppose. The comments are filling up with a lot of religious bigotry and hatred, and a couple of positive remarks. There are a lot of remarks from a few different screen names, posting multiple times, and endlessly going on about how I’m going to hell, and need to repent. Some of us who post regularly to the online forums of the VTD suspect the multiple screen names belong to one individual, but you never know. In this area, there are plenty of homophobes ready and willing to rant their anonymous diatribes. It could be more than one person, but regardless, they continue to spout lies, hatred, bigotry, and endlessly go on about how “God” hates this that and the other. But, it did get printed. Already got some nice comments at work and at my Facebook page about it.
Check it out here.
White House: No aliens (that we know of)
November 7, 2011
commentary, geek, Humor, News alien contact, Area 51, coverup, ET, UFO, white house 1 Comment
In response to online petitions at the White House website, the Obama Administration has formally responded to demands that the government “formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.”
Not surprisingly, the official response is:
The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.
Of course, that’s what they want you to believe! I mean, after all, what are they going to say? “Yeah, you got us! We admit it, Rosewell was a alien spaceship, and we’ve got the bodies in a morgue at Area 51.”
Next up, a petition to make them admit this petition was disinformation and a lie, too.
The Truth Is Out There.
Mulder! Run!
Cracking Jokes At Work – The Value of being out and proud
October 23, 2011
commentary, Gay, Humor, Personal butt buddies, gay humor Leave a comment
Thursday night a couple of the ladies at work are chatting, alternating between being silly and serious, when the conversation turned to the relative size of their tushes. One, a rather slim one, was joking that she was going to have implants done to her bottom side. The other, a bit on the heavy side, said she’d like to have some removed. Then she offered hers to the first, saying she could spare some, and that then they’d be “butt buddies”.
I spoke up and said “you know, in my world, ‘butt buddies’ has a whole different meaning!”
It’s a good thing the radio traffic was dead right then, because neither one would have been able to transmit anything but laughter.
That humorous interlude would have been impossible if I were still in the closet. Just another reason to be out and proud. You don’t have to pass on fun word play!
Keith Tells It Like It Is
October 20, 2011
commentary, geek Current TV, fun at work, Keith Olbermann Leave a comment
One thing I have to give to Keith Olbermann, he sure enjoys his job. He looks like someone who really has a blast working. On top of that, he gets most of it right.
Keep on trucking, Keith! We’ll be watching.
October 19, 2011
9-1-1, commentary, Personal, Pictures 911 stories, dispatching Leave a comment
Last few minutes at work, first day back after a short vacation. Not a very busy night, thank goodness. One crazy call late, guy calling a small Texas Police Department and making obscene comments to the dispatcher. They called us after they tracked down the cell phone’s location and asked us to see if we could find him. He’s apparently made dozens of calls to them tonight, saying he “wanted pussy”, in both english and spanish. I left before he was located, so I don’t know if we solved that problem or not. You just never know what will pop up.
Going Postal
October 17, 2011
commentary, Personal Kaweah Colony, Kaweah Post Office, Three Rivers Leave a comment
Kaweah Colony Post Office, Kaweah, California. 3 miles up North Fork Drive from Three Rivers. Possibly the smallest U.S. Postal Service Office in the US. The heart of Kaweah, California. I took a drive up there recently, just to see.
JimmieJoe / KC6YRU 
A Train, Two Old Queers, and the Token Straight Boy
November 28, 2011
Jim Reeves commentary, Gay, geek amtrak, Fresno, QueerFresno, queerlandia, QueerVisalia Leave a comment
At the Fresno AMTRAK Station Sunday evening, seeing off Mike (L) and Nathan (R).
Mike and Nathan live in the Bay Area, and came to Fresno to see relatives for the Thanksgiving holiday. After a ‘business meeting’ to discuss various sundry website details and discuss future plans for Queerlandia.com and it’s associated Queer websites, I saw them off at Fresno’s downtown AMTRAK station. Mike is our glorious leader (AKA Mr. President), and Nathan is our secretary. Between Mike keeping things on an even keel, and Nathan doing a lot of the grunt work, all I have to do as Vice President is sit around and look pretty.
Don’t I do that well?
(oh, I do add a blog or three, now and then. Go check them out, if you like. You’ll find them at QueerLandia.com, QueerFresno.com, and QueerVisalia.com, to name a few)
Mike is the driving force behind the Queer sites, starting off with QueerFresno.com about mumble mumble years ago.
I came on board a few years ago, after Mike, for reasons known only to him, invited me to blog with them. I turned him down twice before deciding ‘what the hell’, and jumping in. He hasn’t run me off, yet, so I must be doing something right.
Nathan is our cute, hot, funny, intelligent, young voice on the Queer sites. He’s also our token straight boy. Sorry guys.
We have a staff of other bloggers who add to the mix, and it’s working pretty well. Go check it out, at Queerlandia.com.
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