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So, you want to be a hero? Part III

A place to meet

Batman has his Batcave. Superman has his Fortress of Solitude. Do you and your family have a place to meet should there be a natural or man-made catastrophe and you are all in different places?

If you don’t, then you need to decide on at least one place where everybody would meet.

Assume that telephone communication is out, including cell phone. Where would you meet? Where would be your Fortress away from your home?

Unlike Batman or Superman, this will not be a place where you will stay (though I guess it could be), but a designated place you all know to go to should there be a calamity large enough to keep you from returning to your home.

You might also want to have a backup for this meeting place, in case this rendezvous point is also destroyed.

After all, the calamity might just happen when you are at work or school.

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Filed under CERT, certificate, hero, Random Access Thoughts, rendezvous, training

So, you want to be a hero? Part II

Or, does this happen to Batman?

Here I was, last Thursday, March 18th, having viewed over an hour of

Superhero

To fight crime and fires, a superhero needs a working belt

PowerPoint, grasping the subtleties of P.A.S.S. (Pull the pin, Aim the extinguisher at the base of the fire, Squeeze the trigger, Sweep the extinguisher from side to side). I knew the fire triangle: Oxygen, Fuel, Heat, and that if you break one side of this triangle, the fire goes out. I learned that you should never fight a fire alone, always have an escape route, make sure there is no falling debris, and make sure the fire extinguisher is rated to handle the fire and that the fire is not a large one. I even learn about overhauling a fire, that is, making sure it is out, many times by stirring the ashes.

We then took a bathroom break before assembling outside at a site where we would take turns putting out a small fire. I walked into the bathroom my head full of newly minted knowledge. I did my business, which did not involve loosening my belt, and then I exited, ready to tackle this last portion of the evening’s training, to take the next step in my CERT training. And then my pants started to sag. The more steps I took, the further it dragged down. I reached down to feel what was the matter and discovered my belt had broken. Snapped off at the buckle, the belt buckle gizmo dangled from one end of the belt and the frayed end of the belt dangled from the other.

Now, it’s definitely hard to fight a fire, even one contained in a small galvanized tub—and even with a partner, 5 firefighters, and the rest of the CERT class hanging around—when you’re trying to hold the extinguisher in one hand and a handful of the waist of your pants in the other.

I had to wonder if this happens to Batman. Does his utility belt ever break? Do his caped crusader pants ever droop?

Will there be CERT training on what to do in case of this emergency?

Inquiring minds want to know.

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Filed under CERT, certificate, hero, humor, Random Access Thoughts, training

So, you want to be a hero?

If you want to be a hero, maybe the first step is to take CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training. I am.

Okay, for those of you who know me, you can stop laughing now. The idea of me being a hero is a bit laughable, and in reality, CERT training will not make you a hero, even though if you complete the seven week/one-night-a-week/2.5-hours-each-night course you do get a certificate suitable for framing. Hey, even Superman never seemed to have a certificate. Of course, in his league, a certificate might not mean much.

All humor aside, CERT training will help you be prepared in case of an emergency. It is not meant to make you part of a volunteer civilian core that will get called out in the event of a natural disaster, technological met down, terrorist attack, or even a three-car pileup on the Interstate.

It is meant to help you be prepared, and with that, help your family be prepared (if you have a family nearby), and even help out your neighbors should it be necessary. In short, the training is to help you be a little more self-reliant in the event of an emergency. That emergency could be the power going out in the middle of the coldest snap in winter. That emergency could be needing to leave your house in five minutes due to a tanker truck overturning nearby and the truck is carrying a chemical that reacts with water or air to create a poisonous gas. The emergency doesn’t have to be a tornado pulling up houses in your neighborhood as if they were petunias or flood waters rising high enough to whisk your car slip-sliding away.

I hope to post some information on what I learn in the coming weeks, but by no means take what I write as the be-all end-all of information. I would think a better place to start finding out the be-all end-all of information is a place like http://knoxtnlepc.com/getready or http://www.citizencorps.gov/cert/.

The idea started in Los Angeles, CA in 1984, after people in that city government visited Japan to see how a similar program they had worked. Those officials proposed a program much like the one today to the LA city council, which turned it down, saying good idea but it costs too much. Then the 1987 earthquakes in California happened, and they decided maybe it didn’t cost too much to invest in such a program. Not as much as earthquake damage, anyway.

Since then, the idea has moved across the U.S. CERT training was adopted by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) in 1994, and was given more importance after 9/11. It has been in Knoxville/Knox County since 2004, spearheaded initially by the Knoxville Police Department. Now, almost all emergency response agencies in Knoxville/Knox County participate in some way to provide training. The most notable exception is the Knox County Sheriff’s Department.

Why? I don’t know. Maybe one of the Knox County mayoral candidates who is was sheriff at the time can answer that question.

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Filed under CERT, certificate, hero, Random Access Thoughts, training

While out for dinner this evening…

A social observation occurred to me when a young boy, probably four or five, returned to his dinner table and made an announcement.

My observation, based on the young man’s announcement is this: up until the age of eight it is socially acceptable to come out of a public rest room and announce to family, friends, and bystanders alike that you just went pee or poop. It is also socially acceptable to make the same pronouncement in the same social situation when you are above 80 years old. Any age in between it is not de rigueur to speak or your derriere in a public place like a restaurant.

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Filed under announcement, observation, Random Access Thoughts

Puns for the Educated

Books and Glasses

Books and Glasses

A pun or two in honor of … puns. Or, some days the lowest form of humor is as high as I go. Okay, most days it is as high as I go. But hey, my birthday is coming up, so you may just have to indulge me.

And as a writer, I enjoy a little play on words.

1. King Ozymandias of Assyria was running low on cash after years of war with the Hittites. His last great possession was the Star of the Euphrates , the most valuable diamond in the ancient world. Desperate, he went to Croesus, the pawnbroker, to ask for a loan. Croesus said, “I’ll give you 100,000 dinars for it.”
“But I paid a million dinars for it,” the King protested.”Don’t you know who I am? I am the king!”
Croesus replied, “When you wish to pawn a Star, makes no difference who you are.”

2. Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid bowlers. Unfortunately, all the Swiss league records were destroyed in a fire …. and so we’ll never know for whom the Tells bowled.

3. A man rushed into a busy doctor’s office and shouted, “Doctor! I think I’m shrinking!” The doctor calmly responded, “Now, settle down. You’ll just have to be a little patient.”

4. A marine biologist developed a race of genetically engineered dolphins that could live forever if they were fed a steady diet of seagulls. One day, his supply of the birds ran out so he had to go out and trap some more. On the way back, he spied two lions asleep on the road. Afraid to wake them, he gingerly stepped over them. Immediately, he was arrested and charged with… transporting gulls across sedate lions for immortal porpoises.

5. Back in the 1800’s the Tate’s Watch Company of Massachusetts wanted to produce other products, and since they already made the cases for watches, they used them to produce compasses. The new compasses were so bad that people often ended up in Canada or Mexico rather than California . This, of course, is the origin of the expression … “He who has a Tate’s is lost!”

6. A thief broke into the local police station and stole all the toilets and urinals, leaving no clues. A spokesperson was quoted as saying, “We have absolutely nothing to go on.”

7. An Indian chief was feeling very sick, so he summoned the medicine man. After a brief examination, the medicine man took out a long, thin strip of elk rawhide and gave it to the chief, telling him to bite off, chew, and swallow one inch of the leather every day. After a month, the medicine man returned to see how the chief was feeling. The chief shrugged and said, “The thong is ended, but the malady lingers on.”

8. A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to the local civic official who apologized profusely saying, “I must have taken Leif off my census.”

9. There were three Indian squaws. One slept on a deer skin, one slept on an elk skin, and the third slept on a hippopotamus skin. All three became pregnant. The first two each had a baby boy. The one who slept on the hippopotamus skin had twin boys. This just goes to prove that … the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.

10. A skeptical anthropologist was cataloging South American folk remedies with the assistance of a tribal Brujo who indicated that the leaves of a particular fern were a sure cure for any case of constipation. When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the Brujo looked him in the eye and said, “Let me tell you, with fronds like these, you don’t need enemas.”

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Filed under educated, humor, puns, words, writing

When to redo your resume

Newspaper want ads

Newspaper want ads

Last Saturday, I heard a ratta-tat-tat outside my window. And though a gray, cold day, it was not yet one filled with midnight gloom, so I had no reason to expect a raven.

I stepped out onto the back deck, and what should I find by a red-headed woodpecker drilling, or rather resting between drills. He was perched on the gutter and appeared to be drilling against the inside or edge of the gutter. As there is a dead tree nearby, the top half with the branches ripped off by a storm a few years back, I had to wonder what lived in aluminum that was so tasty that a woodpecker would pass up a tree that was certainly host to more interesting and edible things, if duller looking.

Now, you might ask, what has that to do with the idea of when to redo your resume. Probably nothing directly. I don’t expect that the woodpecker is carrying around a resume, but it does raise the question of when, while searching for a job or a meal, do you need to change your tactics, if only moderately.

I had to make such a decision recently when I redid my resume. Resumes have never been the best arrow in my writing quiver. But I thought I had a good one. Turns out somebody at a company I had applied for didn’t think so. This information was relayed to me by a recruiter at an agency I was using to apply for the position. There was nothing specific said, other than there were some errors.

After being a bit startled, I went over it, and I enlisted some help in going over it. There were a few things, some of them more a matter of preference, such as for many of my positions further in the past, I had simply listed the year I started and the year I left, with no month on either end. And in a couple of places, I had listed a couple of bullet points in the present tense, while everything else was in past tense. My defense for that was when I put the resume together, those things listed were underway, but not year completed. I was seeing them to their completions. And there were a couple of syntax errors.

I decided to redo the entire resume. I adopted a different style of resume from the one I had been using. I’m not sure I like it as well, but I have been assured by more experienced heads than mine that it is a style more anticipated by those on the receiving end of resumes. And after all, that is who the resume is for.

Now maybe the woodpecker was attracted to the shiny metal of the gutter and missed the tastier, dull-looking thing nearby. Birds are often attracted to shiny things. And maybe I was too attracted by my shiny resume and putting it in the new format allowed me to see some things that might make it a better product. Only time tell. Or it may never tell. I am now using the updated resume, and those receiving it won’t have any chance to compare it to the old one.

Since the information in both versions is the same, maybe the new version will make some of the information easier to see, and I’ll look “tastier” to a potential employer, if not quite as shiny.

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Filed under bird, redo, resume, woodpecker

What to do if your brakes quit working

This blog entry (Link below.) is by Dr. Bryce Anderson, PhD in Engineering. He makes his living, at least in part, by doing accident site reconstruction. He has testified in several cases, and is one of the smartest people I know. The information at his blog site can be used by almost anybody on almost any make of car. There is an old saying that goes it is sometimes better to be lucky than good. It is also good and lucky, if you know people smarter than you who are willing to share their knowledge. http://tinyurl.com/yjwwxbe.

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Filed under brakes, control, options, Toyota

Two bits of two-bit application advice

One, don’t eat spicy food the evening before an interview. I generally like spicy food and ate some good, very spicy Thai food with a friend the evening before an interview with a placement firm. Normally it is no problem, but I guess nerves being what they are, I kept feeling a “fire down below” during the interview process, and this was on a very cold winter morning. The office I was in was floor to ceiling glass windows on one side with some degree of condensation on it, so you would think the extra “heat” I was packing would have been welcomed by me. Not really. But don’t worry, I did not make unwanted noises or odors. But I was relieved when the interview was over and the “fire down below” began subsiding.

Two, make copies of the answers to the written questions you are asked. I have made several applications online, and the information used on one online application can generally be used in other applications. At least for me, it saves having to completely re-engineer an answer. It also gives you a chance to review what you wrote and possibly improve on it the next time around.

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Filed under interview, Job Hunting, writing

A pat on the back

I meant to post this early, but time and the holidays got away from me. But now I am. In the overall scheme of things, it is a small item, but an appreciated one. This is a certificate of appreciation from the company I worked for for seven months in 2009, doing contract work, C.J. Enterprises. It says, “In appreciation for outstanding commitment, contribution and most of all for being a team player. December, 2009.” It was a pleasant surprise when it arrived in the mail. I had no idea it was coming.

Certification of Appreciation

Certificate of Appreciation

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Filed under certificate, Documentation, technical writing, writing

The Slush Pile

This article in the Wall Street Journal has shown up in a couple of places, so I thought I would put it up here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703414504575001271351446274.html

From the article, it looks like book publishers, at least in the U.S. are no longer reading their slush piles and pushing that responsibility off on agents. While this article focuses on U.S. publishing, any more U.S. publisher are simply parts of larger international conglomerates, so I don’t see why this wouldn’t take place in other countries, too.

Unfortunately, it will only create further bottlenecks and a further push to find the next blockbuster. After all, agents only make money on commissions, and if they have to spend more time doing what publishing house used to do at least some of, it only means the agents are going to focus on making up for lost time/money by taking on those things they think are “sure bets” with an emphasis to be blockbusters, otherwise the publishers won’t bite on the manuscripts and the agents will have lost even more time/money. Much of this comes from too much vertical integration, i.e. one conglomerate buying another conglomerate buying another conglomerate buying another, and so on. It’s the larger cow syndrome, whereby a cow twice the mass of its ancestor needs a neck three times the size just to hold its head up.

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Filed under agents, publishers, writing