Maybe technology is best left to the younger folks...

I am amazed at the number of older folks who have embraced all the new-fangled technology that seems to pop up every day. My parents love Facebook, and have reconnected with many people from their past since joining the online community. I see many older folks using their smart phones and other gadgets when I am out and about, but sometimes I really wonder if they know what they are doing.

I went out today to grab some lunch while I was at work. I chose Togo's for a nice sandwich and soup. As I walked in, I noticed an older couple sitting at a table inside the shop, obviously struggling with their Iphone. The husband was trying to take a photo of his wife with the device, but he seemed to think he needed to hold the phone up as if he was using an old Instamatic camera, with the rear-facing camera lens up to his eye, pressing either the volume or mute button to activate the shutter. He was complaining that he couldn't see her through the thing, and she was becoming irritated that all she could see on the display was a dark smudge that looked more like an eye than her. I watched amusedly for a few seconds as he tried repeatedly to take her photo, and all that came out was a dark nothing. Finally, I walked over and showed them how to use the camera function on their Iphone correctly, and you would have thought I gave them the winning Lotto numbers. When he finally got a decent photo of his bride, he just shook his head and chuckled, stating "We've had this damn thing for almost a year, and hell if I could figure out how to take a damn picture with it".

I certainly wasn't going to show them how to shoot a video with it. Lord knows what kind of trouble they might get into with that!

Priorities?......

I consider myself a San Francisco Giants supporter; not a fervent fan by any stretch of the imagination. I have yet to attend a game at AT&T Park. I don't have any clothing items of black and orange, although I do have a Giants baseball cap. I like all Bay Area sports teams (well, except the Raiders, and I don't like basketball at all). I certainly don't intend to downplay the recent World Series victory by the San Francisco Giants, but amid all the hoopla and celebrations, I got to thinking. It is a big achievement to win 10 baseball games to be awarded a shiny trophy and to be doused in beer and champagne. The players were all very well paid to accomplish this goal; many of them received more than you or I will in a lifetime. But when you think of it, does it really do anything to benefit society, other than to provide a few hours of entertainment for people, and to provide a reason to celebrate in the streets, and possibly trash public and private property? Then I got to asking myself some questions:

Were there any ticker tape parades today for the oncology nurse who got a difficult IV into a cancer patient so chemotherapy could be provided so the patient might be able to spend a little more time with their friends and family before the disease takes its deadly toll, or to help rid the patient of the dreaded disease?

Were there any customized hats and t-shirts made for the paramedics, firefighters and police officers who rescued a critically injured family from a devastating auto collision and got them to the hospital so they could be treated for their injuries? Or for the police officer who arrested a drunk driver before they could plow their vehicle into another car and prevent the possibility of injuries or death?

Did I miss the CNN bulletin about the school teacher who finally got through to the struggling student who could not figure out how to grasp the concept of addition and subtraction, and now has the foundation to build on math skills that will benefit him or her for the rest of their lives? Or, how about the utility worker who was sent out into the rain and wind to restore power so people like you and me could watch the World Series game on TV, in a nice, warm home with lights?

Did a million people gather to cheer as the farmers and factory workers, who provide us with so many of the things that we need to survive, drove by and waved to the adoring crowds?

Nope. But a bunch of guys who played a game got all that today.....

And that's sad.....

Playdates?

When I was a kid, when we wanted to see if a friend could come out and play, we'd take our little self over to the friend's house, whether on foot, by bike, or some other means of self-sufficient transportation. Once we arrived there, we had two options to summon the friend: ring the doorbell, or knock on the door. If said friend was home and able to come out, he or she would open their door, step through it out onto the porch, and the playtime would commence. If the friend was not able to come out and play (due to it being meal time, or chores had yet to be completed), he or she would say so, and close the door. Then, we would get our self back to our home by the same means of transportation, or we'd repeat the same process at the home of another friend; repeating it over and over until someone could come out and play. Most kids had the rule to either check in every hour or so by either a phone call (no pulling out a cell phone and texting Mom or Dad your status), or be home by the time the first streetlight came on. Our neighbor down the street, Mr. Reyes, would call his sons home by standing outside in his front yard, and whistling a very loud and distinct whistle which could be heard for blocks. By default we used that whistle as our call to come home. For the most part, it worked quite well.

Nowadays parents must make "play dates" on behalf of their kids. Typically, this involves the offhand comment while waiting for our kids at their school that we "should schedule a play date". This is followed by the deploying of iPhones or other electronic organizers to check the daily schedules of our kids.

"Monday? Nope...piano lessons."
"Tuesday?...no can do...dance class."
"Can't do Wednesday because it's swim lessons."
"Let's try for Friday."
"OK...hmmm...looks clear...shall we do it at your house or mine?"
"Ah...we can do it at mine."
"Cool. Want me to drop off, or will you take home from school."
"I can drive home, and when we're done I can bring him/her back."
"Well, we have Tai Kwon Do so I will pick up so he/she can change in the car on the way to the class."
"Sounds great...Friday it is." Does he/she need a car booster seat?"
"Nope...seat belt is fine".
"Cool"....

So the appointed day arrives, and all kids are picked up and brought to the house for the "play date". What's the first thing the kids want to do?

Spread out to separate computers and play on-line games with each other.

*sigh*....

Oh, for the good ol' days, when we rode bikes without helmets, rode in cars without wearing seatbelts, rode in the beds of pick-up trucks, and could actually play outside by ourselves, without needing to be supervised by an adult.

I wonder what would happen if my kids went over to a friend's house and knocked on the door...

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished...

I am among the quarter BILLION people who use Facebook. I have found it to be a fun way to catch up with people I haven't seen in years, or to keep up with the latest gossip and goings-on at work. I originally was on MySpace, but that website seems to have run its course and is on the way out. Plus, it just felt so.....middle schoolish. At least FB never allowed users to customize their profile pages with all those garish themes.

At Facebook, there are many pages that have been created to help users solve some of the many problems that surface while using the website. One of the features in place is a kind of forum where users can help other users by answering questions posted on those forums. I made the mistake of volunteering my help to other users by answering some of the questions dealing with issues I have previously dealt with, or knew I could answer because...well...I'm just a smart kind of guy. Based on some of the questions I have answered and the responses I have seen on the forums, I have come to one undisputable conclusion: There are many people out there in cyber land who are literally too stupid to be using computers. One question I answered dealt with some basic security/blocking settings, and the solution to the problem was very cut and dried. Check a box, click the 'Save' button, and the problem was solved. The original person who posted the query responded back by saying that the solution worked, thank you very much and all was good. I was floored to see that three or four other people responded afterwards saying "I am having the same problem...can you help me fix it?"

Huh?

Read the freaking answer I posted and it will work FOR YOU TOO!

It took all the restraint I could muster not to post back something to the effect of "You need to box up your computer and all its accessories and return it to the store where you got it, and tell the salesperson the reason for return is 'I am too stupid to be using this'".

Fun With Grocery Checkers...

I'm a huge fan of the comic strip "Pearls Before Swine". I think the cartoonist Stephan Pastis and I were cut from the same bizarre mold. Which is scary, because to think there are two of us running around out there with such a skewed view of the world, well I just don't know. Anyway, he also has a blog, and in one of his posts, he writes about how he had some fun one day in the grocery store. You know those plastic bar divider thingies you use to segregate your groceries from the shopper's stuff in front of yours? Well, instead of laying the divider thingie across the belt, he laid it lengthwise on the belt, and put his groceries above and below it. Pretty funny stuff. So when I was at Safeway tonight, I decided to try the same thing. Bingo...comic gold.

The lady in front of me was almost done being rung up, so I found a divider thingie and placed it lengthwise in the middle of the belt. I set my items along either side of the divider as Stephan had done. As the checker turned her attention from the lady who was departing to my items, she looked at the belt, literally did a double take, then looked at me.

"Are those your groceries?" she asked me.

"Yep" I replied.

"Why did you do that?", nodding her head toward the divider thingie.

"Do what?" I asked innocently.

"Put your groceries like that?"

"Did I do something wrong"? I asked.

She paused for a moment, and I thought I could hear her brain shifting gears without putting in the clutch.

"You're supposed to use that to separate your stuff from the other person's stuff" she huffed.

"But, there aren't any other items here on the belt...they're all mine" I replied.

There are very few times when I have ever seen someone completely speechless, but I had achieved that feat with my checker. She stood there, mouth partially open staring at me, and could say nothing else but "But, that's not how you do it!"

"Well", I replied, "Can you show me where it says I *have* to do it like that, or some rulebook or store policy defining how these plastic divider-thingies are to be used?"

Another open mouthed stare...

Before my little bit of fun at someone else's expense triggered a stroke or a seizure, I decided to let her off the hook and explain why I was doing what I was doing. She eventually got a pretty good laugh out of it, and as I left her checkout counter, she said she was going to check out this funny comic strip I mentioned.

I wonder if the checkers at Raley's read "Pears Before Swine"?....

Playing On Borrowed Time

It's a quiet late Tuesday night, all the rest of the family is in bed fast asleep, and I'm plopped in front of the computer, letting my thoughts go where they may as I pluck out random thoughts on the keyboard. My daughter Madeline's 8th birthday is rapidly approaching; one I feared I'd never see. Since she was born with a potentially fatal set of heart defects and required open heart surgeries when she was a mere three months old, I never counted on her being around for as long as she's been here. The doctors always placated us with the various well-meaning platitudes about her chances, but we were leery of counting on the positive side of all the predictions. Because, basically...we didn't want to have to deal the real possibility of burying our infant daughter and answering all the questions that would inevitably follow. And, having the medical background as paramedics, we both knew the real story that we were facing. But, in spite of all the dire predictions books and medicos laid out for us, Madeline has beat all the odds and flourished beyond all the predictions given to us. One of the high points in my life was dancing with her last year in the "Daddy/Daughter Dance" at her dance school annual recital. The song we used in the performance was Steven Curtis Chapman's song 'Cinderella'. To sit and listen to the lyrics is very moving, and to know he wrote the song for his daughter who was tragically killed in a terrible accident makes it all that much more poignant. I cannot even begin to fathom the heartbreak he experienced going through that ordeal, especially since my daughter has survived her heart issues and continues to thrive. But...c'mon...I'm a realist. There is always looming over us the possibility Madeline may need more surgeries, and the chance she might just pass on from an unexpected cardiac event looms ever present. So we live for each and every moment with her, and cherish the time we have. I have already begun rehearsals for the next Daddy Daughter Dance, and we'll be dancing to Bob Carlisle's "Butterfly Kisses". I will continue to hug and kiss her every chance I get, and revel in the laughter and giggles she gives us...and be thankful for each and every moment I'm given with her. I can truly say I know exactly what unconditional love is. Nothing else in the world matters.

Peace...

Rants on a job....

I enjoy my job.

Not 'love', because that particular emotion should be reserved for people who are very important in your life. But, I enjoy working as a paramedic. Note I didn't say 'being a paramedic', because my job is not my existence. I am a husband, and I am a Dad. My occupation is paramedic. I don't let my vocation define who I am. I'm not one of those types in the EMS field who festoon their personal vehicle with stickers, decals, lights and sirens that scream to the world "I AM EMS....LOVE ME!", nor do I wear at least one piece of clothing every day that has some pithy EMS slogan on it (Paramedics do it with lights and sirens!). I admit I do have an Alameda County paramedic sticker on my vehicle, but it serves a different purpose. It is used as a ticket avoidance apparatus, in case I happen to be pulled over by law enforcement for doing something more befitting an Oakland Raider fan. I have only had to rely on that sticker a few times in my lifetime, since I am basically a safe driver who is occasionally overcome with mild road rage when someone does something stupid on the road in front of me. With that sticker I have a 100% success rate of citation avoidance in the few times I have been pulled over.

But I digress...

There are distinct sub-groups within the EMS employee pool nowadays. You have the career EMS people (like myself) who are satisfied to have steady work, a good paycheck and job security in these days of economic uncertainty. Usually you find workers with 10 or more years on the job in this category. I myself have worked for AMR for over 25 years, and my partner has been with the company for over three decades. Then, there is the middle group, where the average seniority is around five to ten years, and quite a few of those folks are using EMS as a stepping stone into the fire service or some other medical field. Lastly, you have the young newbies who really have no clue what they want to be when they grow up, and thought it would be cool to scream around the streets with lights and sirens blaring, and stick needles into people. I took a few fire tests in the past, only because most fire departments were starting to 'go paramedic', and lots of ambulance medics were getting on with fire departments. I got a few job offers, but they weren't with departments I wanted to be a part of at the time. I am one of those people who run *out* of burning buildings, not into them. Plus, I had a couple of very young children at home, and I wanted to make sure I was coming home to them at the end of a shift. So I stuck it out with AMR, and generally I think it has been a good choice. Lately, however...this job seems to be becoming more like a high school soap opera than a vocation.

One thing that really pisses me off is the work ethic that some of our employees display. For some of the younger workers, and a few of the older ones as well, their job gets in the way of the partying and vacation trips. Weekends are especially bad. If the weather is nice, and someone has mentioned Vegas or a lake trip in a Facebook blog, these folks call in "sick" for their shifts and head off for the fun, leaving the responsible employees who actually *do* show up for work to pick up the slack. Scathing MySpace and Facebook comments, memos and cartoons around the deployment center have little to no effect. There are other employees who post inappropriate and probably harassing posts on other employees' social networking pages, thinking they are funny and cute. I certainly hope the offended employees are saving those posts as legal defense in the inevitable workplace harassment lawsuits that are forthcoming. Other employees have the scheduling folks wrapped around their fingers, and score the 'cush' shifts before anyone else has the chance to pick them up, or work trades to their benefit so they get to work in 'The Valley", instead of Oakland. Rather than play by the book, so to speak, they want to push the system as far as it will benefit them. Is this a workplace, or some deranged high school scenario? To these system manipulators, us older folks are referred to as "grumpy old men", and whiners. Why? Because we come to work, do our jobs and go home? I recently spent a day at the office, separating the daily paperwork and getting it ready for the billing process. I was blown away by the inequity that exists in the field with regard to work volume. Some units had log sheets that were almost full, with 12 or 15 calls in a 12 hour shift. Other units that worked basically the same hours in the same area had two or three calls in that same time period. Call dodging and 'dispatcher manipulation' has become almost an art form for some of these crews. I can't count the number of times I have stayed up to restock the unit, or take the extra fifteen minutes at four in the morning returning from a call to go get fuel so the oncoming crew has a full tank to start their shift, or cleaned the station so they aren't walking into a dump. I also can't count the number of times the off-going grew has stated "The rig's good to go", and upon closer inspection there are only two IV set ups remaining, the main oxygen tank is at 300 psi and all but one portable tank is empty, the gurney is unmade, the trash container is overflowing, the fuel tank is below half full, and all but one ECG monitor battery is dead. Yup...."Good to go".....right out of service.

Now I will be the first to admit I am far from perfect. I hate getting out of bed at night for calls. I've hated it since Day 1 and I certainly hate it 26 years later. I am definitely not cheerful and happy-go-lucky at 3am after no sleep and 10 calls. My daytime demeanor is infinitely better than my post-midnight mood. But I do not short-change my patients. They will get my best treatment and assessment, but there probably won't be joking and laughing involved. I will be working a different shift soon, 12 hours at night, so I can sleep in my own bed every day. Knowing that you're going home after twelve hours surely improves your mood, rather than getting beat for 12 hours and knowing your shift is only half finished.

I'm hoping that things will eventually work themselves out, karma being what it is and all that. For those people who come to work every day, do their job to the best of their abilities and do at least a little to make AMR a better place to work, I thank you. It is that work ethic that keeps even the smallest glimmer of hope alive within me, and keeps me coming back to work day after day. If you see someone doing something stupid, or you're tired of picking up someone else's slack, speak up and say something! I certainly appreciate the effort you are putting forth. And to those employees who treat the job and the workplace as their own whipping bitch to get whatever will benefit them the most...your time will come. People will eventually tire of the bullshit and do something about it. You'd probably spend less energy just doing the right thing than running around trying to avoid it.

Power Adapter, Anyone?

Our house is slowly being overrun by power adapters. I discovered this fact today while unwrapping a new Bluetooth headset I was given for my birthday. Like all new electronic gadgets, it came with its own proprietary power cord. Now, this isn't the only Bluetooth headset I have. The new one, like my previous model, is manufactured by Plantronics. There is nothing wrong with my old model; it still works fine. I've had it for a couple of years, and in that time I have yet to figure out how it works. I have been able to pair it with the various phones I have owned during the life of the headset, but answering a call with it usually involved disconnecting the calling party. I did try once to adjust the volume on it, but I only succeeded in deafening myself in one ear temporarily with the volume tone. I don't have very high expectations with regard to this new headset either. I was curious to see if the power cord from the older headset worked with the new model, and it does. So now I have two power cords when I really only needed one. Eventually I will break one of the headsets, either by sitting on it in the car, or stepping on it as I exit my car and it falls off my head into the pavement. And this is where the power cord multiplication comes in.

We still have most of the cords, adapters, and charging bases for many of the electronic gadgets we have purchased over the years. Heck, we still have many of the old, inoperative or outdated cell phones we have upgraded. Why? I have no idea. And their respective charging cords have been tossed into a basket on our counter, looking like a huge black tarantula overflowing out of the basket. Now I did try and clear up the clutter and confusion by labeling them at one time, but "Mike's headset" is a little ambiguous. Especially with more than one. Don't even ask me to figure out which "Phone charger" goes with which phone...

Do you think I can find the correct cord when I need to charge my phone or headset.

Of course not. So what do I usually do?

Yep, that's right.

Buy extra power cords.

Help me.....