Jodag.NET

I seem to have had an odd effect on my last two employers.  You may remember in April of ‘04 as Interplay was seemingly in the final throes of a long, drawn out death I quit.  Mainly because I had my current job lined up and finally ready to start, but also because they were bankrupt and bouncing checks.  So, I received my final paycheck and the very day I received it, I tried to go cash it at my company’s bank.

After some snickering and muffled laughter the teller gives me my check back with this neat little NSF (Non-Sufficient Funds) stamp on it.  Eventually I did get it paid sucsessfully, but it was just a delightful way to end four or five years of employment with them.

You can read a bit more about that here.

Now, seemingly happily ensconced in my current job there’s economic turmoil coming to find me here as well.  The good Governor has seen fit to cut everyone’s paychecks by 10% starting next month and all sorts of other fun ideas.  Whether or not that’s necessary isn’t anywhere near my scope of practice or knowledge so I’m not going to get into that.  I will say that I personally believe that unions can be a huge portion of the problem.  Unions protect the jobs of those who don’t perform their work adequately and demand equality in pay for the entire range of competence in job performance, instead of being based on merit.  Honestly, I respect Arnold for what he’s trying to do here.  I think the unions are too strong though, and stay strong by feeding off of California’s carcass.

We’ll see what happens there, but again like in April of ‘04 I’m beginning the job hunt process again.  I can stick it out here just fine, but my job has recently lost most of its appeal, nothing to do with the budget.

Speaking of money though, in other worrisome news I am either getting audited or have a fan at the IRS recently.  The last five days of visits to jodag.net include some visits from everyone’s favorite federal agency.

Hopefully it’s a fan.

I met up with a very old friend of mine, Vu Bui who I haven’t seen in about 4 years.  He asked me, “So no more APM’s?”  I had to explain to him how it has been more of a posting malaise, since I have been keeping active these last few months, just not writing or documenting much (any).  I’ve also had a few things that I’ve wanted to write about but I’ve just been reluctant to.

Blank.

I’ve heard it said that all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.  If there’s a need and you have the capacity to fill the need and do nothing, you bear the responsibility for that failure.

Blank.

I respect Hugh’s spirit of adventure and hope to be half that spry when I reach his age.  Thank you Vu for forcing me to write again.  It feels good, though I may take this down if I even put it up.

I worked harder yesterday than I have since the last time I wore cammies. Which coincidentally, I wore again yesterday and amazingly enough fit into after 10 years. I’m going to be purposefully vague in my wording and descriptions as I’d rather not have this page be easily googled.

It all started at 3:40am (a familiar time to anyone who has worn cammies) when my alarm went off. I got dressed and went to meet my team for the day. I got paired with 7 SWAT guys from the local county and was going to be the safest man on the planet for today, since I had a full team of over armed and over armored bodyguards. Sure they weren’t supposed to be my personal bodyguards but I was safe either way. So, we loaded into a helicopter and went to our ’site’. We disembarked and the helo left to handle more teams and sites. SWAT cleared the scene and then we got to work.

This was the hard part, my god I haven’t worked this kind of purely physical job in 10 years. We had to cut (I personally cut almost 600) plants, then hike them over to the pickup point and stack them. Then the bird would come over and lift them when we had a full load. We worked up about 7 full loads I think, so each one of those loads involved the helo hovering above us for a few minutes as the load was secured and lifted. If you’ve never been under a hovering helo; its loud, its windy and its dirty. Not to mention painful, with all the dirt being propelled at bb gun speed impacting every bit of bare skin on your body. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome feeling, but you need a shower after just one helo lift, let alone 7.

Without court today I could relax and appreciate the finer things in life.  With that in mind, here are some pictures of my job as a Ranger, so you can enjoy them too.

I promise to take better pictures of my job this year.

Talk about high blood pressure, nothing does it quite like a jury trial.  I have one tomorrow morning and I couldn’t sleep last night because of it, I’m sure tonight will be just as good.  Courts can be fun or nerve wracking and there’s just no way to tell which way a trial is going to go until you see how good the defense’s lawyer is.  One thing is certain, you get what you pay for when it comes to lawyers.  I’ve been torn apart by one lawyer (I got his card, just in case.  He was that good.) and I’ve held my own against others.

Court is just a game, there’s offense and defense.  There are plays, players and referees.  Some players are good, some are great and some are just absorbing oxygen.  All I can do is study my case as much as possible and hope not to choke in front of the jury when the defense unveils his big play.

The biggest thing that strikes me every time that is substantially different than court TV is when someone says, “Objection!”  The two lawyers approach the bench and they all chat it up like old friends.  Then they return to their seats and carry on.  In court TV shows you get to hear the objections, the points they raise and what the judge thinks about it all.  In real life court when they are at the judge’s bench they are all so far away from everyone else that you have no idea what they are talking about and you likely never will.

I hate the unkown.  The defender always has the advantage of knowing when they want to spring their ambush and how to get you to that point.  Sometimes you can see it coming based on their lines of questioning and sometimes they walk you around in circles until you don’t know who you arrested, let alone why you did.  Not knowing if it’s a good, great or just an average lawyer before hand really sucks.

The unknown is not easy on my soul.

Update!

The trial has been continued to September.  Defenses love to continue trials, as the longer they wait the more memories fade and the more chance it is that their client will walk away scott free.  Either way, I’m free today!

This isn’t the first time someone’s run from me at work.  It’s not even the first time someone has just completely gotten away from me, but it was fun enough to want to write about.

To set the scene, my partner and I had a juvenile driver with alcohol in his system detained and waiting for his parents.  While we were waiting, the juvenile’s younger brother walks up to us out of nowhere.  By out of nowhere, I mean there are no pedestrians around here, ever.  There are no cities within 10 miles and nobody just walks around out here.  So, he walks up, eyes red and puffy and a little disoriented, he may have had the munchies as well.  We detain him and take his driver’s license for identification. 

My partner cuffs him and places him in a caged vehicle as he’s a mouthy little guy.  He complained of being claustrophobic and unfortunately my partner lowered the windows for him.  So, now I’m way up at the front of this situation, explaining to the juvenile driver that his license is suspended, blah blah.  All of a sudden I look up and my partner is sprinting away yelling, “STOP!”

So, here is this young punk, with a stupid little eyebrow ring who is high as a kite who managed to get one hand out of his handcuffs, opening the door of the truck by reaching out the rolled down window.  He gets out and starts running for the hills (and there are alot of hills around).  He’s waving his one cuffed hand around above his head yelling, “I’m running!”

My partner gives chase for a couple hundred yards until the suspect jumps down a 10 foot cliff into a sandy wash.  I had to stay with the other suspects to make sure they didn’t boogie.  Now, remember that we have his driver’s license and backpack in our possesion still and you’ll see the big picture problem with him actually getting away.

I read a great book recently called, “The Last Lecture” which I highly reccomend.  There’s one line in there this is very apt, “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted”.  That’s true.  Based on this one here, I’m sure my partner will not ever roll down the windows of a caged prisoner.  One of the other times that I had people boogie on me I learned how to better position my dirtbike when I make stops with it.  That was a good long term experience gainer for me.  This one was just funnier to watch.

Yes, the young man does now have a warrant out for his arrest, so good for him.

I have a unique job, there’s no doubt. The things I do and the way they get done are not commonplace in the world. The things I see and the people that are dealt with in various ways are (thankfully) not the norm.

I think I want to start writing about my job, because it entertains me and it is quite different from what you do for a living.  It may entertain or enlighten you. This might give you a perspective on me, maybe good or maybe bad, who knows. I’m not really sure how I’m going to go about this though, as some of the stuff I deal with is confidential until the courtroom proceedings are done, some deal with patient privacy laws and some are just not my cup of tea.

For instance last Saturday at work I was bouncing a big boy’s face off the hardball when he tried to fight. Then this Saturday I saw the worst femur fracture that I’ve seen yet. I get a wide variety of things to deal with at work and at any time I am expected to be able to deal with anything from breaking up a domestic violence in progress when I was just trying to get a snack at the local gas station to stopping bleeding coming from both femoral arteries.

I need to figure out how I’m going to do this and 1) maintain my anonymity 2) maintain all patient privacy and other legalities involving people charged with crimes and 3) find the time to write about work regularly. There’s definitely plenty of content to write about, but time is the scarce commodity.

Seriously though, today the guy’s leg was pointed backwards. I have never seen a spirally fractured femur before this.  Plenty of regular old femurs broken in half here and there, but this one was something else.  I can’t imagine the pain the patient was dealing with.  Thankfully, the airsquad was on scene pretty quick, but there was nothing quick or easy about setting a sager splint on there after straightening the leg.  I’ll remember this one, that’s for sure.

Things like today are why when I ride my dirtbike on patrol I ride slow and steady.  Throughout my 20,000 acre beat I carry all the ghosts of what I’ve seen, who was hurt and who didn’t make it.  Each one of them urges and reminds me to take it easy; slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

I have to go back to work today, after basically six weeks off. I’m not looking forward to it. I haven’t done much in the way of well, anything over these last six weeks and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve been to Disneyland a few times, rebuilt this website, did quite a bit of yard (dirt) work, and not much else.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the work I do. It’s just nice not to have to do any work.

I just read a great book named, “The last season”. It’s a story about a Seki backcountry Ranger named Randy Morgenson. It’s a remarkable story, a very sad story and a very true story. In some ways, I really hate reading a good book because they suck me in so deep and then when it’s done… it’s just kind of a shock to the system. I want to talk to the characters in the book, I want to read more about what happened and why, I just want more. Anyway, pretty good book, great story. Randy was a Ranger for 28 years, a real Ranger, not like me and one day on patrol he just went missing.

One of the neat things about the book in addition to the fact that it describes some of the areas I frequent in the SEKI area, is that one of the backcountry Rangers in the story, Nina Weisman is the one that we met at Bearpaw meadows. Those two little facts, plus the similarities I see in Randy brought the book a bit closer to home for me. Here are two quotes from Randy that I enjoyed.

“All your life, someone is pointing the way, directing you this way and that, determining for you which road is best traveled. Here is your chance to find your own way, Don’t ask me how to get to McGee Canyon or Lake Double Eleven-0. Go, on your own. Be adventuresome. Don’t forever seek the easiest way. Take the way you find. Don’t demand trail signs and sturdy bridges. Don’t demand we show you the mountains. Seek them and find them yourself… This is your birthright as an animal, most commonly denied you. Be free enough from intentions to find goodness wherever you are and in whatever is happening. here for once in your life you needn’t do anything, be anywhere at a determined time, walk in a certain direction. You can now live by whim. Here’s your one chances to get lost, fall in the creek, find a beautiful place.”

One more on his own view of god.

“That a humanoid God willed all this into existence simply to glorify himself (a bit too egotistically human), and/or for us, his greatest creation, and our pleasure, use, misuse, seems not either to fit with the way I perceivethe world… I wish only to be alive and to experience this living to the fullest. To feel deeply about my days, to feel the goodness of life and the beauty of my world, this is my preference.”

I wish I had had the chance to have met Ranger Morgenson.

Well then, it’s about time I get back in the saddle again, the horse being this here jodag.net site of mine. It was down, but not out, it’s slow but not quite dead. I’ve just been busier than I can keep up with, my todo list gets longer instead of shorter every day and it’s getting to the point where it’ll be problematic. Thankfully today was a day off, so I’ve been able to catch up a couple of things, just a couple though, there’s still more on my plate than I can finish off with two weeks off.

Overnight we got over a foot of snow, so at work today we didn’t have alot to do, the park has been closed due to weather for the last week or so, and with the storms rolling in like they are looking like they will, the park will be closed for a while longer. My house lost power and a bunch of branches to the trees, my truck almost got stuck a couple times trying to get out of the driveway and check out the local area and the work trucks were so frozen over that they wouldn’t shift into park. Good times nonetheless, good times.

Christmas was good, work is good and there’s snow on the ground. I don’t have much to complain about, except for the fact that I still have no TV at my house, which isn’t really all that bad of a thing the more I get used to it. I guess life is good for all intents and purposes, and for that, I’ll leave you with a couple of pics.

0105snow-1-of-2.jpg

0105snow-2-of-2.jpg