INDEPENDENCE DAY 2008

Ah, the 4th of July.  That means speeches, picnics, parades and fireworks.  It’s a shame that our Founding Fathers couldn’t get the Declaration of Independence wrapped up in May when the weather is so much nicer.  But July was a lot tougher on them than it is on us.  Not only was there no air conditioning (or even electric fans), but social convention required them to be a lot more heavily clothed than today’s custom allows.

It will be “holiday routine” today, so we’ll just take care of the basics and hope that the citizens behave themselves.  If any of you are taking the pumper or ambulance to the parade today, send us some pics when you get back, will you?  And have a wonderful 4th.

Schuylerville, NY, photo by Mikecny

Now lets get the equipment checked out.  I’ll start the coffee and see what’s going on around the fire/rescue world.

This is the Get-Ready-For-The-Long-Weekend day here in the U. S.  The 4th of July, Independence Day, is one of the major holidays with lots of community parades, picnics and large fireworks shows.

Hundreds of fire departments will dusting off their antique pumpers and other parade pieces to lead their group of marchers through the town and wave at the folks.  I wonder if that place in Long Island ever got their Silly String problem (HERE) worked out?  If any of you get some pictures of your fire or ambulance units in tomorrow’s parade, send them along to us and we’ll post them next week.  Make sure you’re waving at the camera, now.

Here at Firegeezer, we’re going to do our part to help make your Independence Day cookout a success.  Actually, it will make every cookout or picnic that you have this summer a big success.  So get ready to write this down.

Whenever you are cooking up some hot dogs on the grill, one of the secrets to making a good dog become a terrific dog is how you dress it up in the bun.  And there’s no better way to serve up a hot dog than with a good river of Firegeezer Mustard alongside it.  We’re going to give you the recipe right here.  You won’t find this anyplace else because it is an original blend that was created and refined in the Firegeezer test kitchens.  It was especially created for hot dogs, so make sure you have it ready for yours.  This recipe is based on an 8 ounce jar, so naturally if you are using a 16-oz. jar, you would double the ingredients.  OK, you lucky people, here it is:

FIREGEEZER MUSTARD

8 ounces of French’s yellow mustard.  Empty the jar into a mixing bowl  and add:

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
½ teaspoon onion powder

Blend it all thoroughly with a whisk and then spoon it into your squeeze bottle dispenser.

Note:  Avoid the temptation to “add a little extra” of any ingredients.  That will not improve it at all.  This time-tested blend is perfect just like it is.

No doubt all of your friends will be bugging you for this recipe, so feel free to pass it along.  Just make sure that they call it by its true name, the Firegeezer Mustard.

Now before we start getting the old pumper ready for the parade tomorrow, let’s get this equipment checked out.  I’m going to start the coffee pot.

Allow me to take a couple of minutes to explain something about internet “spam” and website Comments boards.  By now, everybody is familiar with those billions of unwanted messages and ads that are spewed out constantly by the cretins known as spammers.  Some of it is really vile stuff, too.  Most of these spam generators are located in places like China, Russia and Thailand because they are out of the reach of the law enforcement agencies of the free world.

While you have probably seen some of this stuff that sneaks through into your emails, a large segment of it is targeted for website Comments pages.  And I mean a lot of it.  I have two spam filters set up in front of my Comments board and they grab and discard more than 10 thousand spams per month.  Naturally, the dirty-word filter catches the bulk of them, but sometimes one will sneak through.  The people who send these things out are always trying to construct the message in a way that escapes the filter so that they can plant their ad in the website.

When one of those is-it-or-isn’t-it ads comes along, the filter will sometimes move it into a moderation queue instead of just tossing it.  When they end up there, I have to go in and visually check them out and either toss them or allow them on through.  I do that about four times a day.  And that’s where you come into this scenario.

Normally when you leave a Comment it will just zip right on up there and be posted immediately.  But once in a while there will be something in there that triggers the filter and your comment will be held until I release it.  The most common content that catches these is when you add in several links to other web pages.  Many of the hard-core ads will have a half dozen links to porn sites on them, so the filter is constructed to be triggered if there are two or more page links in the message.  And that’s what happens to some of your comments when you are only trying to be informative about something that we posted.  But I just about always catch those within a few hours and your comment will eventually be posted.  Sometimes the filter will grab one for no apparent reason.  At least I can’t spot why.  But when I see it in the moderation stack I release it.  I’m sorry when that happens, but it’s the price we have to pay in this ugly world we’re in.

On very rare occasions I have to edit out a particularly uncouth wording, but I think I’ve only done that once (or maybe twice).  We’ve got a good group of readers here and I don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff coming from you.  One thing that I never do is delete any of your comments.  That section is there to provide a platform for your opinions or ideas.  I’ve already given mine.  I don’t care if you disagree with me, we both have a right to be wrong about something, eh?

What all this boils down to is this:  If you leave a comment and it doesn’t show up right away, it’s because the filter was triggered by something (or in some cases, nothing) and there will be a delay before it shows up.  But it will get there.  And thanks for joining in and taking the time to Comment.

Now let’s get the equipment checked out.  I need to get some coffee.

JUNE 30 MARKED THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF THE LARGEST EXPLOSION that has been recorded in modern history.  It was on that morning in 1908 that something celestial entered the earth’s atmosphere over Tunguska, Siberia and exploded approx. 3-5 miles above the ground.

The force of the explosion leveled every tree for 30 miles around and knocked people who were miles away off their feet or out of their chairs.  One man described how he was knocked across the room in his house and his shirt was so hot that he thought it was on fire.  And he was 40 miles away.  The light given off from the blast was seen thousands of miles away in London where it was still nighttime.  For several weeks afterward, there was so much dust in the atmosphere refracting the sunlight over Asia and all of Europe that the nighttime was so light that people could read outside.

The most recent scientific deduction is that the explosion was equal in strength to 1,000 atomic bombs of the size that dropped over Hiroshima.  But because of the remoteness of the location and the brutal weather of Siberia, it wasn’t until 1927 that a team of Russian scientists led by Leonid Kulik were able to explore the site.  Even after 30 years the region was still stripped as it was in 1908.  In subsequent visits, Kulik was able to interview some people who were there and lived through the experience.

Leonid Kulik photo taken in 1927

In the decades since, there have been many theories put forth about just what happened.  Of course there are the UFO theories, but none of them have offered any evidence that it was something like an errant space ship that blew up.  The scientific community is certain that it was either a comet, an asteroid or a meteor that came into the atmosphere with such speed that the heat and compression triggered a nuclear-style blast without the radiation.

1928 photo

One of the things that has particularly puzzled the scientists is the lack of an impact crater.  While it’s possible that the whole thing destroyed itself in the blast, they haven’t found the meteorite rocks that you would expect.

A group of Italian scientists from the University of Bologna have a new theory and they will be traveling to Tunguska, the crash site, next month to look for more evidence.  One of them noticed on a prior trip that Lake Cheko, about 5 miles from the hypocenter of the blast, has the physical characteristics of an impact crater.  Sonar soundings of the 165-ft.-deep lake have shown a conical depression in the center that is consistent with meteor impacts.

Lake Cheko (Univ. of Bologna photo)

Univ. of Bologna sonar image of possible
crater site in Lake Cheko.

This video report gives some good background of the event and explains the Italians’ theory about Lake Cheko:

For a good, concise history of the Tunguska event, read the Wikipedia entry HERE.  This article includes a few of Kulik’s interviews and describes the telling blast patterns of the fallen trees.

This photo was taken in 1998, a full 90 years
after the blast, showing one of the original trees
still  there, twisted and just as it has aways been since.

*  *  *  *  *

Ok, let’s get back to business and get this equipment checked out.  I’m going to start the coffee pot.  Then we can meet in the day room and you can tell what you learned about the Tunguska explosion.

Yesterday was the Big Event that I look forward to every year:  The season’s first BLT’s!  I’m talking about the genuine sandwich that has fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes on it.  Ahhhh, nothing says “Summer” any better than that.

Lettuce is still a little expensive right now, but sometimes you gotta bite the bullet and pay the price.  If anybody’s wondering, I only use the Oscar Mayer Thick Cut bacon.  That’s the same brand that Cracker Barrel uses and people wait in line to eat there.

*  *  *  *  *

A lot of our readers are IAFF members, and many non-members like to watch what’s going on with the labor front as well.  One of our readers, Dave S., passed along a good suggestion for you folks who like to follow this activity.  He thought it would be helpful to make you aware of a reference website that Firegeezer uses on occasions when I need to check up on one of the Locals.

There is a very good, comprehensive website that lists all the IAFF locals in a quick-reference format.  It’s called, surprisingly enough, IAFF Locals Online and they can be found at:  http://www.iafflocals.net/ 

The webpage is sorted out into two columns, one of them lists all the Locals in numerical order and the other lists them alphabetically by state.  All of the locals that have a website are underlined and linked so that you can click right over to their site.  There is a separate page for the Canadian Locals that is laid out the same way.

Click around some of the sites and, who knows, maybe you can get some good ideas on how to improve your own Local’s website.

But first let’s click around to the apparatus bay and get this equipment checked out.  I’ll make some more coffee.  How about we have some BLT’s for lunch today?

Yesterday’s dinner was one of those that I look forward to every year:  The season’s first BLT’s.  What a treat!  Naturally, you can only make those with fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes, thus the limited time frame to really enjoy this culinary delight.

You might want to think about that for tonight’s dinner, if it’s as hot where you are as it is here.

We’re on Sunday schedule today, so it’s just inside drills and emergencies.  Let’s get this equipment checked out while I make the coffee and then we’ll start the day with a little photo art.

Dave Statter published an item yesterday on STATter911 (HERE) that caught my attention.  It comes from Burlington, Ontario, where they announced a new response policy that mandates staying within the speed limits while responding on emergency calls.  This new practice is effective immediately.

That’s right, now the fire apparatus goes from a quick response to being the slowest vehicle on the road.  After all, who else keeps it down to 25 mph on the city streets?  (I think they call it 40 Km up there.)  The deputy fire chief who was speaking for the dept. about the change claims that slower fire trucks are unlikely to collide with other vehicles on the road.

Then he goes on the tell of the horrible results when other drivers fail to properly pull over as Big Red comes barreling up onto their rear bumper.  Well, that problem’s solved.  Now, instead of pulling over, the other cars will be pulling away.  The desk jockey who worked this out with his calculator has no doubt come to the conclusion that if you just go slow enough, then you’ll have a clear path all the way to the fire.  Whether it’s still burning when you finally get there is another question altogether.  I can just hear it now:  As the crew is eyeballing that luscious column of black smoke climbing to the clouds, Cap’s telling the driver, ”C’mon…slow it down now…..sloooow you go.  Attaboy.”

The line of cars sitting while waiting for a red light to go green is handily taken care of with the $1 million-worth of new strobe light mechanisms that trigger the traffic signal as they approach.  Now those gadgets are really nice, and they do work fine by stopping the cross traffic at an intersection.  But Burlington is banking on the cars in the FD’s lanes to go tearing off to the next signal and leave this mystical clear path for the safe-driving pumper to cruise on through.

Call me cynical - I usually am, anyway - but I don’t think this scheme is going to pan out quite as nicely on the road as it does on paper.  I mentioned this several months ago, but I’ll repeat it here…. quite a few years ago, maybe 20, my department decided that we would always come to a full stop at red lights before continuing through an intersection.  But when we started doing this, it just confused the other motorists.  As soon as we came to a stop, they would start up again, filing back into the intersection, making things worse that it was before we stopped.

I think they figured that if we had stopped, even though the siren was still wound up, then it was because we had gone as far as we were going to.  After a few days of that, everybody in the field informally changed the procedure to slowing way down under the red light, but not actually stopping unless somebody else was there, of course.

The point that I’m leading up to is this, don’t go puzzling the other drivers like that.  They are not used to sudden changes.  The secret to a safe trip is safe driving.

Now let’s get our safety practices going by checking out this equipment.  I’m going to get the coffee started.

I suppose that this weekend I will begin the chore of moving files and stuff from this computer over to my new one.  Adding to the drudgery will be the slow process of installing all of the other programs that I keep on there.  Most of them have to do with image management and that sort of thing.  But it’s so tedious to get it all done.

After hemming and hawing about, I finally decided to buy an HP.  For a while I was considering buying a Dell and ordering it directly from them.  When you do that, almost every model that they make can be ordered with the Windows XP installed as an option.  That was a strong selling point, but the cost wasn’t worth it.  Those sale prices that you get at the retail chains aren’t matched at the factory online stores, so I grudgingly ruled that out.

This HP is a fairly new line that they’ve been offering for a while called the 3400 series.  It has an extremely small “tower” that is only 4½” wide, 11″ tall and 13″ deep.  That’s getting back to “desktop” classification.  But it still has the CD/DVD burner and plenty of USP plugs.  It also has 3 gigs of RAM and a 500 Gb hard drive.  That’s amazing.

“But wait….there’s more!”  What really clinched the sale for me is that it has a WiFi card installed and ready, just like a laptop does.  I can very easily set this up anywhere in the house and even move it without a great deal of fuss.  Office Depot had the things on sale last week for $450.  Just couldn’t pass it up.

“Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created
this model to illustrate how a “home computer” could
look like in the year 2004.  However, the needed technology
will not be economically feasible for the average home.”

As a footnote to our discussion the other day about the newspaper industry melting down,  several major newspapers announced Wednesday and Thursday that they are laying off still more people.  The Palm Beach Post will be slashing 40% of its news staff.  (News ….. isn’t that what a NEWSpaper does?…. ed.)  The Hartford Courant, one of the nation’s oldest active newspapers, is lopping off 60 newsroom positions and reducing its news pages by 25%.

The Boston Globe has approached its unions and asked them to take a 10% across-the-board pay cut.  And the Baltimore-Washington Newspaper Guild has lost over 1/3 of its membership in the past five years.  And the beat goes on.

Now let’s beat it on over to the apparatus and get the equipment checked out.  I’ll start the coffee.

One of the themes that we have been encouraging here is the necessity of Fire and EMS departments to get more involved in public relations activities.  Not just the official department PR office, but firefighter/emt-level contacts.

Whether it’s union locals or volunteer squads, nothing beats that personal contact when you make an effort to directly inform your citizenry about what’s going on and what your goals are.  We’ve got two good examples to show you today.

First, there is the just-concluded and successful effort by the entire state-wide fire service in South Carolina to get a law enacted that encourages more businesses to install sprinkler systems.  After their interplanetary governor vetoed the bill about 10 days ago, everybody in the state literally poured out into the streets to not only publicize the effort, but to also direct the public to put pressure on their legislators to override the veto and pass the bill into law.

All through the state you suddenly saw things like this:

Was this sign enough to get it done?  No, of course not.  But when you have everybody splashing the idea all around and the people keep bumping into it every day, then it becomes very effective.  In a remarkable effort with less than 10 days to achieve their goal, the combined project paid off and yesterday the legislators passed it.  Scroll down to see the next article where we cover this great result.

On the other side of the country in Clark County, Washington, another public information movement has been launched by the local firefighters.  In early March we reported HERE on the withdrawal of emergency ambulance service to one portion of the county after the citizens voted to discontinue paying the levy that funded it. 

Believing that the cutoff was the result of a misinformation campaign by the opponents of the levy, the concerned citizens were able to put it back onto a referendum to be voted on in August.  In order to keep the voters informed of the true consequences of failing to pass the levy (namely, cessation of emergency ambulance service), the three Locals in the service area and the fire department organizations have launched a public campaign to explain the situation.

One of their projects is the creation of an informative website that they can direct the voters to where they can take time to study the issues, costs, consequences, etc. of the ambulance coverage.

This is a well-designed and informative website.
Log on to http://www.emsyes.org/ 
and view the complete site.

Just putting up a website alone won’t get it done.  It’s always a combined effort that wins.  The Clark County Fire District members are shouting out and getting heard, but they are using the website as a tool to help.  This is another good example of how to get your message out.

Ok, now let’s get out there and check out the equipment.  It’s time to get the coffee pot started.

When we left off yesterday (HERE), we had pointed out that many, if not most of the print newspapers are terminally ill from hemorrhaging revenues.  While the San Francisco Chronicle is losing $1 million a week, the San Jose Mercury News is actually gaining a larger readership through its online delivery.

So what will the next few years bring in the way of newspaper operations?  Obviously, a lot of them will be going out of business.  The Chronicle is in a death spiral.  The future is clearly to be found in the digital delivery systems, namely the internet and television.

Many newspapers have wisely chosen to embrace this shift and are working on making their websites ultimately become their primary edition.  The Washington Post, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Enquirer/Daily News are good examples of this.

Others that insist on clinging on to the paper-based delivery will start cutting back to 3, 4, or 5 days a week publications.  Small-town papers will be merging or bought out by regional servers who will combine the local news resources of an area into one website tailored to a specific region.  And a lot of them will just plain disappear.

Once the advertising leaves, that’s it.  Los Angeles is the world’s capital of the movie-making industry.  Two years ago the LAT was rocked when the movie-makers themselves cut back on their newspaper advertising by half.  They can post video trailers on the ‘net for next to nothing.

Participants at a conference on the Future of Journalism this past weekend at Harvard Univ. heard one speaker tell them that news organizations should abandon their “all you can eat buffet” offerings of mediocre coverage of all subjects and instead, they should provide higher quality news for smaller audiences.  They were also told that the mainstream media must embrace — not fight — the blogosphere and that serious reporting can survive by catering to niche audiences.

But you already knew that, didn’t you?  That’s why you have all those Blogs sitting in your Favorites folder.

Ok, let’s get this equipment checked out, Trend-setters.  I’m going to start some coffee.