A Place On The . Net

It would seem that someone local....I wonder who...is very upset that this Giuliani video was released.  The video has caught the attention of some local administrators and now they're curious.  They want to know more.  They're wondering what all the fuss is about and why firefighters back east are so extremely upset with both Giuliani and Motorola.

That's exactly the sort of thing that this certain local someone doesn't want to happen.  Asking questions might be bad for his plans.  Questioning the desires of Motorola might be very bad for him, his plans and the plans of the state.  Encouraging any sort of competitive consumerism might be bad for Motorola.  One really starts to get the impression that Motorola is worried that their proposal to the state wouldn't hold up against competition.  One would expect a world class company like Motorola to be confident enough in their quality and ethics to actually encourage competition.

I find it odd that although I had nothing to do with the creation of the video, this someone seems to blame me for it.  I did make a couple of people aware of it.  I forwarded an email that I received and, of course, I put a link to the video on this web site.  But this someone went running right straight to mommy the minute he found out that I was promoting it.  Oh boy did he run to mommy.

Run along sonny, isn't there some police work that needs done around here somewhere?

That wonderful video in my last blog entry has been extremely popular.  I think we all know that the GOP is getting tossed out on its ear (everywhere but Idaho) in the next election so the Giuliani part isn't such a big deal.  Most off the interest seems to be about the FDNY / Motorola deal.  So I'll share some more material here on that very subject.

Radio Silence F.D.N.Y. is a book that explains how the firefighters were betrayed.  One of the authors was a battalion chief with the department.  Good reading.  The website for the book is here.

On that same site is a section here for you to share your own story.  I am not alone in my concern!

There is this discussion from 2004 over on Firehouse.com

The site that provided the excellent video, http://therealrudy.org has this entire page for the radio issues with Motorola alone.

James Careless at EMS Responder has this story about the radio system three years after the WTC incident. 

Wikipedia has this entire page about radio communications on September 11, 2001.  From that page let's note "The Commission report did not cite any technical flaws with the NYPD radio system" and that NYPD does NOT have an exclusive no bid contract with Motorola, they use a variety of manufacturers and lots of Vertex.

I know that a lot of folks are going to get glazed eyes when I talk about anything related to radio.  But you need to consider that this has less to do with radios and more to do with a whole host of other evils.  You all need to know that this is serious, very serious.

Take a look at this video.  I'll admit that the firefighters union is grinding a political axe against the former mayor of NYC with this video, but they also raise some serious issues.  A lot of these issues are strangely similar here in Idaho.  You'll note how they purchased a radio system that did nothing to address their proven needs.  It's the same here.  You'll notice how FDNY purchased Motorola radios without a competitive bid or even testing other manufacturers offerings.  That's the same thing that's happening here.

Most of you know that things have been pretty tense for me at work recently.  There have been differences in political or philosophical opinions and those differences, while they do cause some stress, are certainly things I can put up with and work around.  That has never been a problem for me.

And most of you will remember, about this time last year, when someone published certain details about my family situation to the Bonner County Daily Bee website.  That certainly put me on edge as the safety of my children was put at risk because of someones overzealous political activism.  Again though, I brushed myself off and continued with my family, my career and working in what I thought was the best interest of my community.  Again, I was able to put up with it and work around it.  No problem.

Lately though, it looks like I'm done here.  OK, it doesn't just look like it, I really am.

The first whacking with the clue stick came when I expressed my professional opinion as the member of a committee I was required to participate in.  Notice I didn't say I was required to sit in the meetings for that committee.  I have been told, my boss had been very clear, that I was expected to participate in that committee.  In the past, I had.  We had a contractor chairing the committee and we made great progress, I thought, in furthering the needs of our local community.  But this resulted in some conflict with the state.  The contractor fought for our local rights.  Suddenly......the contract is up and, despite buckets of cash flowing in from Homeland Security, there was no money to continue to pay the contractor for his services.  So he goes away with a very bitter attitude toward the county and the state.

When I wrote the email, it seemed like a very simple thing. My participation on the committee was professional in nature. Because it was a communications committee and I am a communications technician, it had been explained that my participation on the committee was mandatory and not optional. It all seemed so simple.

Unfortunately for me the truth was more simple than I realized. In insisting on my participation, INGSOC was not expecting me to supply a professional opinion as I had incorrectly assumed. Instead INGSOC had already provided me with an opinion that I need only nod my head at in agreement. It really had been more simple and required far less effort than I had put into it. 

The problem was that although my professional opinion didn't necessarily differ with that of INGSOC, the fact that I even publicly expressed an opinion of my own was dangerously close to being considered thoughtcrime. I hadn't realized this. Because I had completely missed this point, I was also unaware that the expression of an opinion was very likely to cause INGSOC to stop funding the entire community. I had suddenly put the entire community at risk because I missed the simplicity of the situation.

I managed to get the gallery working again and posted photos from our trip to Glacier.  You'll see them in the Gallery blocks on the left or you can go to the gallery itself from the menu.&nbs

Here is a chapter from my new book, Tales of Our Germans, stories of our own branch of Germans between 1850 and 1930. This takes place in Chelan country, the Big Bend.

Oh how I’ve tried to win you.  O how I’ve tried.

I like being a wiener dog.  Just the sound of it thrills me.  I’m a long dog, a gone

You need your face licked today.