We’ll have a quick lineup this morning.  I have to head out early for the 90-minute drive to Baltimore.  GeezerDotter will be piloting her SUV, so I won’t have to do the driving today.  After we get there, we’ll be setting up our display and getting everything put together for the 11 am opening of the exhibit hall.  I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of our readers again this year.

So let’s get this equipment checked out now.  I’ll get the coffee started and then post a couple of articles before we hit the road.

Today’s schedule is already laid out.  We’ll be packing up and getting all set to head out early tomorrow morning to Baltimore.  As you probably know, the Firehouse Expo 2009 began Monday with their training program and early lecture series.  It kicks into high gear today and then on Thursday, Friday and Saturday the exhibit hall will be open.

You don’t have to be registered for the conference to visit the exhibits, but they do charge a fee for the privilege.  I’m pretty sure it’s $15 for a 3-day pass.  But it’s certainly worth it, partly because we’ll be there in booth #2200 looking forward to meeting you.  As you come in the main entrance, we’re just to your left along the front wall.  So be sure and stop by.  I’ll be there along with FossilMedic, GeezerDotter and Dave Statter who will be commanding his STATter911 website from Firegeezer Central.  We’re all looking forward to seeing you.

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One of our readers pointed out an article from Fire Engineering that they published four months ago that may have slipped by you then, but is definitely on the “must read” list.  It has to do with a court decision in New York State having to do with liability of fireground officers to follow the National Incident Management System (NIMS), more commonly known as the Incident Command System.

There has been a judgement against an upstate fire department because they failed to follow, precisely, the NIMS at a fire seven years ago that resulted in the deaths of two firefighters.  The article is written by Bradley Pinsky who is both an attorney and an officer in a fire department, so he is able to explain what happened in a way that we can all understand.  This would make a good informal drill discussion sometime this week, so make a point of reading THIS ARTICLE.

Now we’ll follow the equipment check procedure, precisely, and get ready for today’s activities.  I’ll make sure we’ve got plenty of fresh coffee.  See you in the day room.

You may recall our Morning Lineup back on July 9 (HERE) when we told you about Shaker Heights, Ohio, Fire Chief Donald Barnes and his spat with the city’s mayor.  After having his FD budget and roster cut earlier this year, the mayor came back and demanded another quarter-million dollars to be lopped.  Chief Barnes refused and wrote a letter that he made public stating why.

Now Jamie Thompson, editor of the online publication FireRescue 1 has snagged an exclusive interview with Chief Barnes.  When you get a chance, take a couple of minutes and read it HERE.  Let’s hope that this starts a new trend among dedicated chiefs.  A lot of cities are like Shaker Heights where the visible public safety agencies are being decimated in order to preserve some politically popular programs.  In Shaker Heights case, it was a way to pad the salaries of some of the mayor’s staff and cronies in city hall.

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It looks like we’re going to be dragged into the world of e-books this week.  Yesterday we talked during Lineup (HERE) about Amazon sending out digital instructions that wiped out two books from customer’s Kindles that they had paid for and downloaded.  Are they buying books, or just a revokable permission to read them?

Now the bricks-and-mortar bookstore giant Barnes & Noble has joined in the e-book rush, opening up an online download service that already has several hundreds of thousands of titles available.  And like some of the other download services, you don’t need an exclusive Kindle-like device to receive them.  You can download them to iPods, iPhone, BlackBerrys, etc.

But yesterday (Monday) B & N announced that beginning next year they will also be the exclusive provider to a new ebook gadget being built by a firm called Plastic Logic.  This device is extremely thin and as easy to read as the Kindle.  But it has no keyboard, instead it will be a touch-screen device.  You can read a little bit about it HERE.  It also has Wi-Fi capability in it.

Plastic Logic’s new reader

It’s no secret that Barnes & Noble has been hurting financially the past few years.  Not only are the physical bookstores nationwide suffering from online competition, but B & N has been slammed heavily by Amazon.com especially.  B & N’s stock has lost over half of its value in the last three years and they are searching for that magic formula that will get them healthy again.  Business Week magazine talks about their e-book plans HERE.

But our equipment check sheets are already downloaded and printed out, so let’s start filling them out and I’ll go make another pot of coffee.

Unless you’ve been here already in the past 12 hours, you’ll be reading next about FossilMedic’s great memories of the first moon walk from 40 years ago.  And you’ll also be able to understand why he never received an invitation to join PETA.  To be honest with you, I can’t begin to remember what I was doing when Armstrong took that first step for everybody.  I don’t think I was working that night because I’m sure I would have been watching the tv if I was. 

I might have fallen asleep instead.  As I recall, they were taking an amazingly long time to deploy the ladder out of the landing “vehicle” and then they just watched out the door for a couple hours more to see if any wild creatures would come bounding out from behind a pile rocks.  I just don’t know.

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Has the bloom started coming off of Kindle’s rose already?  Amazon.com really stirred up the troops late last week when they reached into customers’ Kindles and erased two books that some of them had purchased.  Apparently they had been sold without Amazon having established the rights to sell them.  The New York Times reported:  An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.

This is kind of weird.  If they had sold the paperback versions of the books, they certainly couldn’t sneak into your house while you’re sleeping and take them back.  But they have no hesitation to reach into your machine and taking something that you’ve paid for.  The publicity backlash Amazon has received over the weekend has mightily embarrassed them, however.  They are doing some fancy double-clutching and claiming that it was all a mistake and they shouldn’t have done it and, and, and….

What’s especially ironic is that one of the books they recalled was George Orwell’s 1984.  You’ll remember that it’s the one where Big Brother kept revising history by tearing out the only copy of an event and sending it into the “memory hole” where it was destroyed and never read again.  But you couple this stealthy electronic retrieval with their built-in restriction that won’t allow you to share your e-book with somebody else by “loaning” them your copy, and now people are realizing that they are not buying books after all.  They are merely paying for the privilege of reading them.  A privilege that can be revoked at any time.  They didn’t tell us that, did they?

We’d better get this equipment checked out now, ok?  No special downloading required.  I’ll get the coffee started.  See you back in the day room.

Isn’t it amazing how quiet it is – everywhere – on Sunday mornings?  There are several very obvious reasons for why that is, but still it is remarkable.  Even the lineup is subdued.

I read last night that a roadside spectator was killed in an accident at the Tour de France yesterday.  If you’ve watched any part of the 21-day race, you’ve noticed the police motorcycles that escort the racing packs and monitor the spectator lines along the roadway edges.  About 25 miles into yesterday’s stage, after the first batch of riders passed by, a 61-yr.-old woman dashed out into the roadway apparently wishing to get to the other side before the next group of riders appeared.  As she did, she was struck by one of the motorcycles which then went down and slid into the crowd striking a woman holding a child and another elderly man.  The first woman was killed immediately and the other two adults were only slightly injured.  The child was ok. 

The last time there was a fatal accident on the Tour was in 2002 when a child was struck by a support car.

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It was just a month ago, on June 19, that Henry Allingham, the oldest living man in Great Britain, took over the title of World’s Oldest Man.  Sadly, Henry passed away yesterday at his nursing home residence.  Last month we posted a story about the 113-yr.-old Henry when he moved up to #1.  You can read it and view our videos HERE.  Also, the BBC News has posted a nice obituary of him, including some early photographs, HERE.

Now the World’s Oldest Man is a resident of Great Falls, Montana, Walter Bruening who was born on September 21, 1896.  He’ll turn 113 in two months.

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Now for a spot of trivia that touches on the fire and rescue service.  Do you know where the term “rookie” comes from?  (Do you even care?)  Some cultural historians believe that the slang word dates back to the American Civil War.  The enlisted men started calling the new recruits “reckies” for short.  Over time, the word evolved into “rookie.”  You don’t have to believe that if you don’t want to, but it sounds like as good an explanation as any other.

Now let’s get this equipment checked out.  I’ll see how the Sunday breakfast is coming and start teaching the rookie how to make a proper pot of coffee.