Well, we easily went over the 200-Followers mark on our Twitter account yesterday.  The number jumped up seven slots to 203, and that’s not counting one spam site that I blocked.  If you have a Twitter account you have to be aware of the spammers there, too.  When you get the email saying that so-and-so is now following you, take a moment to click on the link in the email to see just who it is.  If their bio says they’re a hip-hop record producer and they’re following 3,792 Tweeters, but only 42 are following them, you might want to consider ushering them out the door.  When you’re on their bio page, just go over to the right column and click on the “block” link.

For a while early on, I would occasionally get a new follower whose picture was a neck-to-waist shot of a Hooters girl and all the entries were “check out my website” stuff and valley girl talk.  But Twitter’s own spam filters seem to have gotten a grip on those.  (A “grip?”  Shame on you FG….ed.)

We’re still getting some of the fallout from that ridiculous stunt that the city manager of Minneola, Florida, pulled last week when he shut down the FD for 48 hours because two FF’s had an argument. (Click HERE and follow the links back for the prior articles.)  Now the city council has hired an outside attorney to investigate the situation that pits the city manager and his patron the mayor against the rest of the council and, apparently, the entire citizenry.

During Tuesday’s council meeting the mayor continued his tirade against the firefighters saying that they’re “dysfunctional” and they have “a lot of issues.”  The council chambers were populated with not only citizens, but the members of the FD along with FF’s from neighboring departments that were there for support and even some sheriff’s deputies.  All of them felt embarrassed and insulted by the mayor’s condescending tone throughout the meeting.

Self-serving politicians show up everywhere, don’t they?

One more item that I want to point out this morning is another headache arising for the Washington, D. C., Fire Chief  who’s just been hit with a breaking news story about some serious shortcomings in the EMS department regarding cheating on tests and inadequate perfomance standards.  STATter911 has good coverage of it this morning and it’s worth checking out.  This one has the possibility of mushrooming.  Read about it HERE.

We’d better get this equipment checked out now.  I’ll got start the next batch of coffee.  We’ll meet back in the day room.

It looks like things are rolling at the FDIC.  We’re enjoying FossilMedic’s daily updates.  But when he writes something at 4 am, I get to wondering, is he still awake or is he just waking up?  Or is he doing a Statter and only sleeping on the weekends?

WISH-TV has this early video report on the FDIC from the stadium:

I’m jealous that I can’t be at the Friday night party Firefighter Nation is hosting at the Alcatraz Brewing Co. brewpub.  I hope somebody sends us some pix of that one.

This is the first FDIC that is being pulled into the Twitterverse (the universe of Tweeters, for you newbies) and I see that several attendees are already Tweeting their activities.  I expect it to pick up today when the exhibit hall opens and some live-blogging begins.  If you have a Twitter account, you can go to the search engine and enter the hash tags #FDIC and/or #FDIC09.  Folks are showing up on both, most of them on the former so far.

Speaking of Twitter, I’m closing in on 200 followers – up to 197 this morning.  So maybe I’ll hit #200 today.  Who will it be?  Will it be YOU?  I hope so.

No Tweeting until after we get this equipment checked out, though.  I need to get some coffee going, pronto.  (A little Spanish lingo for you folks in the Southwest.)

It looks like Mike “FossilMedic” is really in his element now (scroll down to see his posting earlier this morning).  All camped out at the FDIC in Indianapolis with prime housing right across the street from the convention center.  And he seems to be particularly happy to be within a few strides of a Steak ‘n’ Shake.  I can’t blame him there.  As we mentioned yesterday, he’ll be spending time at The College Network booth #106 on the exhibit floor, so be sure to stop by and let him know that you’re a Firegeezer follower.

And speaking of exhibit booths, a “must stop” is the Firefighter Nation display at booth #3731.  They’re giving away free T-shirts to the first 1,000 collectors who show up on Thursday beginning at 2 pm.  Their really biggg shew will be on Friday evening when they host a blow-out at a pub around the corner called The Alcatraz Brewing Company from 5:30 to 8:30 (that’s PM, guys…PM).  Did you know that FFN has over 37,000 members now?  Wow.  You can meet up with a lot of them Friday night so click HERE for the details of the party.

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What do you think about that latest move by American LaFrance?  Just a year after their much-publicized relocation from North Charleston to their established plants in New York and Pennsyvania, they’re pulling everything back down to South Carolina again.  Workers at the Ephrata plant were saying that partly-finished trucks on the line were just sitting there and not being worked on because ALF wasn’t getting the parts they need to make the trucks.

This video report from WIVB-TV in Buffalo comes from their Hamburg, N.Y., plant:

When they were in Charleston they had the same situation, but they were blaming it on IBM claiming that a faulty computerized purchasing program was at fault.  I’m speculating that the real fault lies in a failure to generate enough new sales to sustain the operation.  Remember that they are currently owned by a speculative investment firm that doesn’t know diddley about how the firetruck market is sold.

Most fire & rescue people don’t want to see them fail because of nostalgic reasons, ALF being the historic fire engine builder that they are.  But it sure doesn’t look good, does it?

Orders are down, but we have to keep our own apparatus ready to go, so let’s get it checked out now.  I’ll get the coffee going again.