Where I work there is frequently a breakdown of communication that often results in frustration and frequently results in a failure to accomplish the desired goal.  Read that again, several times.  Please be absolutely sure you understand what I am saying.

I work for a 911 answering point.  When you call 911, my co-workers are supposed to communicate with you to get you the life saving help that you need.  Therefore is is reasonable for you to assume that all of the people I work with are experts in communication.  If not expert, they should at least be pretty darn good at it.

Sadly this is just not the case.  We screw up communication around here all the time.  I am a horrible example.  My failures in communication have cost time and money, ended friendships and ignited or fueled wars.  At least, so far, I don't believe that my failure to communicate well has cost any lives.

Example:  A user (dispatcher) was recently attempting to do something for which they did not have the necessary tools.  Specifically they were attempting to send a document to someone that some recipients couldn't read due to a lack of compatible software and other recipients found confusing to read because document formatting was not maintained.  This was the third such instance of this I had seen in as many weeks.  So I submitted the following to the help desk:

The following article is one that I wrote for several publications and it seems reasonable to share it with you. After all, you are the folks who can give the best critiques of ideas and also are the best ones to find ways to share these things.

Here goes:

It's in the news. Print journalists are having to write the obituaries of their own newspapers.

I am weepy eyed. I was once a journalist, too. Things do change and humanity will just have to live with whatever replaces print journalism.

Plenty happened on the road to and from stellar reporting. It began with Newspapers controlled by the wealthy. If you weren't wealthy, you called it, “Yellow Journalism” and considered it vaguely dishonest. The rich used print as means to state their own views to the exclusion of all else. The theory back then was that if you worked hard to own something, then you had the right to use it in your own way.

Yesterday Yahoo carried this story: 

SC sheriff: No pot charge for Phelps after photo

I'm not quite sure if this was all a publicity stunt designed to ruin Mr. Phelps endorcement career or if Sheriff Lott is just an idiot.  As always I'm sure you're now scratching your head and wondering what I'm on about.

Once again, I think I'm the only one in the nation who sees the flaw here.  Unless the sheriff backed down because his prosecutor took the time to explain things to him, I guess I can hope for that.

But suppose Sheriff Lott had decided to pursue this to the end.  Just how would that work?  What we have here is a photo, just a photo, of Phelps doing something with a bong.  Anything beyond that is just an assumption.

Leave North Carolina for a moment and head for California.  Imagine yourself in law enforcement there.  Now imagine that, off duty, you go to see a movie with your family.  That one event is likely to keep you busy for quite some time if you're like Sheriff Lott.  He would go nuts!  I've seen movies where they kill people, I think they call these murder mysteries.  There are movies with bank robberies, adultery, assult and even illegal parking. As a cop in the Hollywood area you might actually see some of these people in the course of your work.  Imagine Sheriff Lott hooking up George Clooney for robbing those casinos.  Oh happy day!

I am oft known as a right wing pundit who spouts nothing more than party line rhetoric and stands behind a set of principles that is no longer viable in today's society.  I know I am a stalwart against a tide of short sighted and often disengenuious ideals.  I wake every morning believing that I live in one of the greatest nations on our current planet.  I teach my children to be proud of their nation, their ancestry, and the beliefs they have been brought up with.  I have to come to realize, however, that my family does not, nor has it ever, represent the true American dream.

I have failed in the sense that I am the first person in three generations to fail out of High School.  I am learning from people I know and love, that because I do not sweat at my job or strain my back in an effort to build this nation, I am less and deserve less.  I look at my employer, who struggles daily to stay afloat and keep serving as well as they do...and to serve more with less.  Upon seeing the struggle of the one who gives my family food and shelter, I find it difficult to ask for more from them.  In America today, that makes me a failure.

I cannot willfully abandon my debts or duty to pay them.  I cannot, with any pride, ask for something from my government which I do not need or would not be willing to return.  Yet my government will spend on things that help none but a select few.

I threw this together while listening to the world's saviour, no NOT J.C. but the purveyor of change, whether necessary or not.  I  also sent this to Sen. Voinovich, Congressman Tiberi and Bill O'reilly. Would have sent to Sen. Brown but couldn't navigate his P.O.S. website.  The term "Sir" is used out of respect for position, not the person.

Playing around in the kitchen again.  It's as if I had a clue as to what I was doing, once again I've come up with a winner.  This was inspired by Alton Brown but I modified heavily.  And I'm cooking like my mother-in-law, not measuring much of anything.

Take four to six pounds of onions, skin them and quarter them.  You can do a mix of different types or you can do all sweet onions.  If you mix, lean toward the sweet.  For example, this time more than half of the onions were sweet yellow onions and the rest were mostly white and then one large red.

Put one stick of butter in a large dutch oven or stock pot.  Set the heat for medium high and watch the butter melt. The moment it is all melted, cover the bottom of the pot with a layer of onion.  Then sprinkle a pinch of kosher salt.  Add another layer of onion and sprinkle with salt...and so on, and so on until you have all the onion in the pot.

Leave the heat where it's at and DON'T stir. Don't even touch it for 15 to 20 minutes. Then you can stir it up a bit. Let it do it's thing for 5 to 10 minutes or so and stir again. Don't worry about burning it, the whole object of this is to caramelize the onions. Keep at this until it's all reduced to about 2 1/2 cups or so of dark mahogany heaven.

A word of caution here. That's caramelized onion in that pot. Of course it smells good. Obviously it's going to taste good too. But if you taste it, two things will happen. The first is that you will burn yourself, and that's not good. The second is that you won't be able to stop eating it and you won't be able to make soup. So just resist and your patience will be rewarded.

Bill Gates Unleashes Swarm of Mosquitoes on Crowd

This has nothing to do with my disagreement with him on software, this is about life.  Bill Gates makes his point to the rich and famous.  I just wanna give him a big hug.

He's right though, anyone can get malaria.   Being rich or making movies doesn't impress the mosquito.  Being poor isn't the cause of malaria and doesn't make it ok to die.

Shocking for sure.  Let's please give Mr. Gates 100 points for proper use of showmanship.

“The experts” tell us to save first, to pay yourself first. They tend to recommend 10% or so. Then they offer advice about retirement, college funds, emergency funds, etc. Until I entered my 40's I never thought I could actually do it. Oh sure, I knew it made sense but when you're in you're 20's you want it all, now, and nothing else will do. So you know you should save, but it doesn't happen.

So I was no different than the rest of America. I spent. I spent all of my money. Then I arranged with some friendly banks to spend some of their money and promised to pay them back someday.

Of course I had paid some attention in high school and college and I knew that the stock market crash of 1929 had a lot to do with margin, buying stock on credit. But that was stock. And I wasn't ready to play in those big kid games yet. So my use of credit, like most Americans, was obviously different in the 80's and 90's than what had whacked everyone in the 30's. Obviously.

So I wasn't buying stock. Want to know what I did buy with all my money and all that credit? Must have been something good because here it is 2009 and I'm still paying off my last credit account. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. Want to know what I bought?

Me too. Not frakin much, that's the harsh reality. Oh sure, I've got color TV's, a car, an SUV and a nice suit. My kids have some cool video game systems. But when you look at what I've spent, there isn't anything impressive in the list. And the list is fairly random, you can tell it's without purpose or goal. I really am like most of America.

EAA517 Perks

One of the best things that happen when you join the Experimental Aircraft Association is learning. EAA is not your grandma's tired old schooling. It is lively, fast-paced, fun and often stuff that saves lives. It was like that Monday, January 19, 2009 when the Missoula chapter met for tutoring by Harry LaForge.

Harry is President of Hoffman Pilot Center, Inc and a world class flight instructor. His session dealt with the compass as used by pilots. (But you had better know this material even if you don't fly because the north and south are not what Grandma said they were.)

The following links will get you to first base:

http://www.hoffmanpilotcenter.com/