Moral-Flexibility.Net

So, yesterday I finally manage to get to sleep. I wake up after 2 1/2 hours sleep feeling a little groggy, but nothing that 2 1/2 hours sleep cannot be blamed for. Stumble out of bed, jump in the car and collect Lisa from work, then Jilly from daycare and I notice I’m starting to feel a little loop-da-loop in my stomach.

I tell lisa we’re stopping by the drugstore to get some Pepto, and two minutes later we pull up. As I get out of the car I feel strangely weak, a little light headed and more than a little fuzzy. Never the less I shuffle in and grab the supplies making my way to the counter. As the cashier rings them up a familiar warning begins buzzing in my head.

(As an aside here, I’ve suffered from Migraines since I was a kid, I am almost always sick when I get a full blown migraine. I’ve long had the biological equivelent of a “You have 30 seconds before expulsion” warning, and I’ve learned it’s not screwing around.)

Cashier fumbles with the change (“You have 20 seconds before expulsion”), cashier makes concerned noises and bends to pick up a dropped coin (“You have 15 seconds before expulsion”). Diplomacy is pointless, snatch the change she has and dash for the doors (“…5 seconds…”).

Next I find myself being violently ill while hanging onto the hood of my car. Total time since regaining consciousness 40 minutes.

Things failed to get better, with both ends acting up there was little chance of making it into work, and by the time I had gotten around to actually placing that call, Lisa was showing the same symptoms. What followed was 18 hours of misery, being unable to sleep for longer than 45 minutes at a time, constant trips to the washroom and a diet consisting of water, just water.

Grrr… on the positive side I am feeling almost human again, although Lisa remains a few hours behind me on the recovery side.

First night back to work tonight, I should be asleep right now. I did my part, I got into my comfy bed-time’ish attire, turned off the array of electronic distractions, stuck my head under the pillow and lay there for an hour, then two. Sleep was just gently approaching when a knock came at the door, the friendly neighborhood mail-person delivering a replacement NiCad battery for my rechargeable maglight. Good timing, as I could use it tonight, bad timing as tommorow I’d have slept through the knock and could collect the package at my convenience over the weekend.

-sigh-

Small progress with respect to Linux, problems (all stemming from the installation of ZoneMinder) are being resolved one at a time. Figure the software should be up and running tommorow or so, of course that leaves hardware issues yet to be resolved, but I s’pose I might be pleasantly suprised.

right.

G’night folks.

I’ve a few days off and should probably catch up on some blogging but I’m in the midst of switching my CCTV computer over to Linux. A bit of a learning curve here, and I’m getting better but have hit some hiccups with the installation of the new monitoring/recording package.

I suspect I’m the problem, but hopefully I’ll have it resolved soon.

In the meantime I’m still trying to make the ‘sudo apt-get install medium double-double’ command to work.

I’ve worked security (in various capacities) for the better part of my adult life. A good portion of this job requires me to deal with trespassers, drunks and or teenagers, or even occasionally drunken trespassing teenagers. Removing them is a fairly simple exercise, but like all intertaction with those that have thrown back a little too much happy juice it can go horribly wrong fairly easily.

Now, I have a deep-seated aversion to both paperwork and court time, so I tend to err a little on the diplomatic side, with the view that getting the problem child to leave without damaging the property, my car or myself is a satisfactory conclussion to the event, requiring only a short notation in an otherwise boilerplate written report.

I’ve found over time that I don’t actually talk to the problem children, drunk-ese is my second language, but my comprehension of it is limited severely by my characteristic apathy. Drunks tend to spin tales of woe filled with serpentine logic and non sequiturs that would leave me scratching my head for hours if I was actually listening. I simply nod, make the odd concerned noise and return to the point in the script where we left off before the drunk wandered down fantasy lane.

The trick is to give them the impression that you are, in fact, listening while preventing them from running too far afield with their stories before reigning them back in with a response like “Be that as it may sir, I’m going to need you to…..“, “I understand, that is not going to be resolved tonight however….“, “Ayup, that sounds like a raw deal, but I am going to need you to….“. It’s important that these interjections be used after a mental 30-60 second count. Long enough that the drunk feels he’s scored some valid arguments, but interupting him/her/it before they build up a good head of steam, and work themselves up too much.

I s’pose it’s possible to march in like gangbusters, but that almost always involves paperwork, court time and sitting around waiting for police. I’d rather talk the drunk offsite and spend my time drinking coffee somewhere than manhandling some drunk.

Colt CCO has tagged me (among others) in this post, his list was entertaining and I doubt I’ll top it being in the midst of a comfortable post-nightshift, pre-sleep drowsiness, but I’ll give it a try none the less:

• The longer the movie title, the worse the film is doomed to be. “Zombie Ninja Attack Droids of the 5th Dimension” has no chance of a real commercial success, and will magically appear in the “new releases” section of your local video store, only to quietly disappear shortly thereafter before briefly reappearing in the “previously viewed” uber-sale bin weeks later, where it will languish indefinately until someone like me appears and plunks down $4.17 for it (which is about $4.16 more than it is worth).
• You are not as brilliant as you think – Hiding your key under that rock, floormat or on the top of the door frame is not a new, cunning and unique plan beyond the wiles of the average criminal to figure out. Also included in this list is using your address, last four digits of your phone number and/or the luggage code (1234) for your alarm system. These are not critical items of course, as the bad guy will likely just kick in the door anyway, but lets make it a little harder for them, shall we?
• Slower traffic keep RIGHT ’nuff said.
• Light timers do not actually fool thieves – They’re thieves not infants. Typically they’ll just walk up and ring your doorbell to see if you are home, if the lights continue to turn on and off and there’s no answer at the door, no movement and your mail is piling up, they’re probably going to put two and two together and come up with your television. Finally, store no valuables in your underwear/sock drawer or on the shelf in your closet. Likely the first places the burglar looks when tossing your house.
• Never, ever, no matter how much he begs or pleads, never let the Unicorn drive – Too difficult to explain, but solid advice none the less.

Ok… I’m going to sleep now.

Temperature now below 100, sense of humour returns, run-on sentences flourish, Youtube and Monty Pythons clips while away the hours and bandwidth.

My all time favorite below.

[Hat Tip: My 2 Second Shelf Life]

My memories of Lisas pregnancy and Jillians birth are forever seared into my memory. It was a nerve racking wait, followed by an incredible sense of relief and then wonder as I held this little fragile piece of life in my arms. I’m not normally an emotional person, but I have no problem admitting that after the birth (and attendant activities) I excused myself and went down to the smoking area wiping the tears from my eyes.

While skimming the blogroll I read this post over at A day in the life of an ambulance driver, it brought a tear to my eye and made me thankfull that Jillians birth went so easily by comparison.

Take a minute and give it a read.

As luck would have it Jilly is fully recovered from her bout with the flu. She of course, infected me with it and I spent the last two shifts with Emerald deathly ill. Leaving early both nights as my temperature hit 103 and I was finally forced to admit that perhaps I was not in the best shape to be driving around the city.

Why go in at all you ask? Meh, booking off your last shift sick sends a message I didn’t want to send.

So here for your edification are some of the guys from work. From left to right are Joe, Mike, Me and Marc.

Drive safe guys, and beware the tri-dots.