Odds and Ends

A bit of a writing block lately. I just don't have much to say. I could open my mouth bang away on the keyboard, but making words appear does not automatically bestow value. I've already said too much.

-

I freaking love this blog: The Adaptive Curmudgeon's Blog. Absolutely outstanding.

-

If you happen to figure out who I am and perhaps work with me, you'll notice some familiarity in some some tales but that you don't remember it the way I do, nor some details the way I relate them. Fact is, brother, this is a blog, not a work of historical biographical nonfiction. I blend elements of different events into single tales, sometimes I can generate multiple tales from a single event without drawing a relationship between them. What it boils down to is that I would like to keep my anonymity as long as I can, and obfuscating some unimportant facts helps maintain that. The spirit of the event, the emotion, the essential outcomes, and the people involved, is all intact.

-

In looking over old posts, I realized that I have dropped the ball on the Tutorial series. Those were kind of fun. I don't know why they slipped my mind. If you're a relatively new reader and have no idea what I am talking about, you should go read this post: Tutorial 9: System Protection, Part II. If there is a specific subject in that series you want more of, let me know.

-

There have been many noteworthy/newsworthy events around me lately. Some I have been involved in, and some I have merely observed. Some involving the power company, others the fire department, and a handful where both were tangled up in it. It is kind of a drag, because I have a lot I would like to say about some of these things, but bringing them up would blow my cover. Lame.

-

I was deeply flattered to make this list: You Are What You Read - Fire Engineering Training Community. I have no business being in the same auditorium with those other authors, let alone singled out on stage with them. I am entirely unworthy. Putting me in that group drags the entire group's cumulative value down about 34%. Rescue them. Kick me off the stage, quick!

-

As Firegeezer pointed out this morning, today is the 4th anniversary of the Charleston sofa store fire that claimed nine firefighters, the single largest loss of firefighters at a single incident since September 11, 2001. He also pointed out something lost in the noise of relatively current events, which was yesterday's anniversary of the loss of another nine firefighters at the 1972 Hotel Vendome fire in Boston.

They all went to work that day just like you did today, with various marital struggles, unfinished hobby projects, financial planning doubts, vacation plans, teenager management problems, and put-off doctor's visits, just like you, and more or less expected to make it home the next day just like you do tomorrow.

They were us. We are them.

Stay safe, think of your families first, take care of the children. Do today what you'll wish tomorrow had been done before you lost the chance. All that.