For some reason, and I’m not sure why, this picture reminded me of my father.
Search engine ups and downs
May 10, 2012
commentary, Personal Bing, blogging, Google, search engines Leave a comment
Checking the stats for the site is part of the fun of having one’s own blog. Recently, something in the mystical world of Internet algorithms had conspired to make search engines put a particular picture from my site, and hence it’s related blog post, near the top of the returns when the term “vacation” was entered. That drove a lot of hits here, and my counters were getting a bit of a workout.
Well, it appears that conspiracy has ended. As of a few days ago, the traffic directed here dropped suddenly, and the search term “vacation” hasn’t been showing up in the stats page with anywhere near the frequency of the past few months. It looks like we’re back to the only visitors being those who are actually interested in my blogging!
Of course, this means I’ll have to work on my postings, both in frequency and content, to see if I can bring the numbers back up to the levels to which I had become accustomed!
Two of my Queerlandia posts re-blogged at national LGBTQ site
May 6, 2012
commentary, Personal Dan Savage, LGBTQ Nation, queerlandia, reblogging, Ricardo Olguin Leave a comment
It must be my lucky week! I’ve had two Queerlandia blogs re-posted to a major national gay blogsite this week.
First, on Thursday, my post about a former Merced County Deputy Sheriff suing the department for sexual harassment was posted to their “Around the Nation – California” page.
In that article, I wrote of the harassment Ricardo Olguin endured at the Merced Sheriff’s Department. It was posted to Queerlandia early May 3, and was reposted at LGBTQ Nation later that day.
On Saturday, May 5, I posted a blog as rebuttal to one that appeared earlier in the week at Queerlandia, in which the author calls Dan Savage a bully and a hypocrite.
I’m about to do something I really, really don’t care for…
April 28, 2012
commentary, Personal Jimmie Joe, lawn care, lazy Saturday 1 Comment
Mow the lawn.
At least afterwards I get to go to Fresno for dinner and a movie!
56 episodes of Star Trek. All at once!
April 26, 2012
geek 56 episodes, multiple videos, Star Trek episodes Leave a comment
This is cool!
OK, Scotty, NOW you can beam me up!
A palm tree + a sloped driveway + manual transmission + a brand new Toyota + a 12 year old boy = prescription for disaster
April 20, 2012
commentary, Personal JimmieJoe crashes a car, Toyota Corona, Toyota of Visalia, Woodlake 1 Comment
1969. Man was about to walk on the Moon. Vietnam was in full gear. Richard Nixon was President. Before the terms “I am not a crook”, and “Watergate” entered the language.
I was a skinny, awkward, shy 6th grader. I had one friend in the new school I was attending now that we had moved to Woodlake, and I wasn’t really making many more. (that one friend is still someone I count in a very small number of “best friends”)
Dad had recently started working for a newcomer in the automobile market, Toyota, at the new Toyota of Visalia dealership on Main Street in Visalia. Back in those days, salesmen could take one of the new cars home with them, and my Dad, although he loved driving things like Land Cruisers, brought home a brand new 1969 Toyota Corona. It was very much like this one:
I promptly crashed it into a palm tree.
A Volvo, a 12 year old, and appendicitis
April 17, 2012
commentary, Personal my first car, teenage drivers, Volvo 1 Comment
Last Sunday, as I was walking into the Express to attend the weekly Sunday Funday BBQ, this neat old car was in the parking lot. Boy, did it bring back some memories!
Well, it didn’t bring back actual memories as much as it brought back the dreams of a 12 year old boy. Dreams shattered by my father’s near fatal bout with appendicitis.
And so it ends…
April 15, 2012
9-1-1, commentary, Personal staycation, vacation Leave a comment
And so it ends… another vacation in the history file.
Very little accomplished, few places visited, and no dents in the credit card.
All in all, a quiet, inexpensive “staycation”.
Next up, vacation! In June. Three more weeks, with San Francisco, Los Angeles, and maybe more in store.
Stay tuned.
I hope I remember how to do a “calling all cars… calling all cars” broadcast!
National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week April 8-14, 2012
April 13, 2012
9-1-1, commentary, Personal 9-1-1, 911, dispatcher, dispatcher stories, emergency services, National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week Leave a comment
By Chief Thomas Wagoner
Loveland (Colo.) Police Department
Someone once asked me if I thought that answering telephones for a living was a profession. I said, “I thought it was a calling.”
And so is dispatching. I have found in my law enforcement career that dispatchers are the unsung heroes of public safety. They miss the excitement of riding in a speeding car with lights flashing and sirens wailing. They can only hear of the bright orange flames leaping from a burning building. They do not get to see the joy on the face of worried parents as they see their child begin breathing on its own, after it has been given CPR.
Dispatchers sit in darkened rooms looking at computer screens and talking to voices from faces they never see. It’s like reading a lot of books, but only half of each one.
Dispatchers connect the anxious conversations of terrified victims, angry informants, suicidal citizens and grouchy officers. They are the calming influence of all of them-the quiet, competent voices in the night that provide the pillars for the bridges of sanity and safety. They are expected to gather information from highly agitated people who can’t remember where they live, what their name is, or what they just saw. And then, they are to calmly provide all that information to the officers, firefighters, or paramedics without error the first time and every time.
JimmieJoe / KC6YRU 
What’s it like at 9-1-1? It’s like this…
May 18, 2012
Jim Reeves 9-1-1, commentary, Personal 9-1-1, 9-1-1 center, 9-1-1 dispatching, 911, emergency dispatching, Prince George's County Dispatch Leave a comment
Our center is not as roomy or well lit (too many of my co-workers want to work in the dark!), but this video gives a great overview of most modern 9-1-1 centers. We don’t have to do the medical pre-arrival aspect in our center, that’s handled by the Tulare County Consolidated Ambulance Dispatch staff, and the Tulare County Fire Department has their own dispatch center, but everything else is pretty spot-on. Whatever the type of call, we deal with it first, directing it to TCCAD or TCFD if required, or taking information and dispatching Tulare County Sheriff Deputies, or police officers from Farmersville, Exeter, Woodlake, and Lindsay Police Departments. Prince George’s County, Maryland, has a state-of-the-art 9-1-1 center, and is an example to which other centers can aspire. Every type of incident here, except the medical instructions, is something I’ve dealt with in the past, and just when you think you’ve heard it all, the Universe will toss something at you, as if to say “oh, no you haven’t!”.
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