And you thought the Republicans were dirty….

From the AP News

Daschle recently filed amended tax returns to report $128,203 in back taxes and $11,964 in interest. The amended returns reflect additional income for consulting work, the use of a car service and reduced deductions for charitable contributions.

Daschle, chosen by President Obama to lead the administration’s health initiatives, is the second Cabinet nominee to scramble to pay back taxes. Timothy Geithner’s confirmation as treasury secretary was delayed after it was revealed that he had failed to pay more than $34,000 in taxes.
Obama’s first choice for commerce secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, took his name out of consideration when his confirmation appeared headed toward complications because of a grand jury investigation over how state contracts were issued to political donors.

“President Obama wanted to have a very ethical administration starting out and so on, but I think he’s seeing how hard it is to avoid these kind of problems,” Kyl said. “And I just wonder, if President Bush had nominated these people, what folks would be saying about that.”

Dead Hard Drive

Late last year, my Western Digital mybook hard drive stopped working. I had bought it less than 2 years ago for the purpose of backing up and archiving my data on there. I don’t know what the deal is with Western Digital. They used to be the best hard drive company for a while, but I won’t ever buy another one from them. I’ve had a couple of their internal hard drives die on me before this one, and this is the last straw. I read up on the Internet about this and found that are issues with this external hard drive. Apparently, the average use people were getting out of these drives was 2 years. The majority of the people were having problems with the hard drive enclosure not getting power. Ironically, these drives were advertised as being big relaible drives that you could store all of your important stuff on for a long time. Guess you can’t trust anything made in China. There was nothing earth shattering that I had on my drive. Come to think of it, I doubt there’s much of anything earth shattering about my life anyway. In fact, I can’t remember much about what was on there. The only thing I could really remember that I wanted back was about 4 years of email that I had archived on there. This is another reason why I stopped using email clients and have gone to email in the cloud with gmail.

So I figured I would try to recover my data. I bought a new enclosure for the drive, as it is just a regular 3.5″ WD drive that can operate in your desktop, but has a fancy box that goes around it. It uses a SATA interface, and my old desktop only does IDE. The new enclosure was about $30 from newegg. I plugged the new drive in, and still it didn’t work. The problem I was having is that it wasn’t being recognized by the computer. When I turned it on, I heard the drive spin up, then click, pause, click,  pause, click, pause, click, then the drive stops spinning. Obviously, something physically wrong with the drive. I don’t know if the heads were sticking or what, but it was looking like a paperweight at this point. I did some more research on the topic and found where some people who have had physical hard drive issues have been able to resolve them by putting the drive in the freezer. I figured, the next step in this drive’s life was the trash anyway, so I gave it a try.

Last night I put it in the freezer. This morning, I got up to try it. I plugged it in, and the same thing. Clicks with nothing. I tried turning it off and on several times, still nothing. I even resorted to the Irish screw driver (hitting it really hard) and still nothing. Well, its officially trash. I found another site that talked about opening the drive. I figured I had never seen the inside, I might as well try. The torq screws were odd, I couldn’t get a driver that I have here at the house to work with it. I have some torq screw drivers, but they weren’t the right size. So, I resorted to another simple machine. The lever Enter my hammer, flat headed screw driver, and a pry bar. I got the top off of it, and manged to put some good scratches on the platters. I also got the magnets out of there. Those were some damn expensive magnets, but that is all that is left of it. So, no more Western Digital drives. Now I’ll have to save up for another drive to use for backing up my data. In the meantime, my web host Dreamhost offers 50 gig of space to backup your data. That should be enough for now for my important stuff.

Home for the holidays

This is kinda late getting written, but I have a great excuse. On the day I left Denver, half of the keyboard on my laptop began to only work intermittently. I discovered that banging harder on the keys don’t make them respond any better.

So I left Denver on Sunday 12/21. Of course, the day after  the crash at DIA. I was afraid I wasn’t going to make it on time. I planned to go to the Park and Ride that RTD offers, but the lot was full. I was bummed because my roommate had given me free tickets to ride the bus. It was going to be sweet. Free parking, but it didn’t work out. So I proceeded to the economy lot. Upon arrival there, I discovered that it was full, and I had to go to the overflow lot. By this time, I had exceeded the cushion I had built in to my leaving from the house time. I rushed my way to the overflow and took the shuttle to DIA. Let’s see $5 a day for 10 days, great, I’ve gone from free parking for Christmas to $50 parking for Christmas. Now that’s a deal!

I got to the kiosk right about the edge of the check in time for having checked baggage. I had already done the online check in, and I just had to check my baggage. Now, off to fight the security gates and try to make it to the gate in time. Security wasn’t too bad and I made it in time to the gate…. to find out that the flight was delayed. I spent 2 hours in DIA delayed, meanwhile I had a connection flight in Houston, TX to get to my destination in San Antonio, TX. Most of the country was delayed that day because of some bad weather. So the reason they gave me that we were delayed leaving DIA is because of bad weather in Houston. I checked the weather radar (because I discovered that DIA has free Internet, its slow and not very good, but its free). Low and behold, there wasn’t a single cloud over Houston. I don’t know what this mysterious weather was that was over Houston, but apparently we couldn’t leave.

Thank goodness I had exit row seats though. When we finally boarded the plane, they wanted volunteers to give up their exit row seats. Maybe I’m just a cold hearted jerk, but I am not giving up my exit row seats. I have long legs, and what ever reason someone else has can’t be much worse than mine. Some nice person gave up their seats and a lady with her leg and arm in cast came back to take his seat next to me. I asked her “Let me guess, skiing accident?” She said some snow boarder on the slopes had run into her without even stopping to see if she was OK. The guy with her chased him down. Then the flight attendants realized they couldn’t allow this woman in the exit row as it was against regulations to have someone disabled to sit there. Seeing as how they crashed one of their planes yesterday, they needed to make sure they played by the rules.

When I got to Houston, I got off the plane about 10 minutes before my connecting flight left. I ran down to find the gate only to find, that once again, my flight was delayed. I was a bit thankful for this as I doubt I would have made it. So, I went off to get a bite to eat. I got a salad at Wendy’s which according to the person working there was the last one. Lucky me, but no free Internet at Busch International Airport.

I got to Houston a little later than had planned. Wendy, came to pick me up and bring me to her parent’s house. Her mom was up waiting for us. It was around midnight when we got there, so we all went to bed. I had a great time visiting with Wendy’s parents. They fed us well and kept us entertained. We went to a swanky restaurant called Tower of the Americas. The food was good. It was like the space needle in Seattle. It rotated and we were able to see a full view of San Antonio. Pretty cool, and my steak was great. We then went down to the Riverwalk and did a boat tour. The lights were pretty and it was fun. We also went to Nixon, TX where Wendy’s dad is from. I got to meet several of Wendy’s Aunt’s, Uncles, cousins, and her grandmother. Its a tradition for them to have a big family party on Christmas Eve at her grandmother’s house. I had a great time meeting her family.

On Christmas day, we opened presents. Wendy gave me an iPod Touch. I couldn’t believe it. That was something I had been really wanting, and  its expensive. I had no idea she would spend that much on me. I guess she’s serious about this 😉  Well, it was a wonderful gift and I have been enjoying it very much, especially at work. Wendy’s dad smoked a turkey that we ate for lunch. It was a really tasty turkey. Late that afternoon, Wendy and I flew to Jackson, MS where my family is.

My mom, brother, and his wife came to pick us up at the airport. We got in late so we got home and all went to bed. My dad was working, but he was going to have the next few days off. This was the first time Wendy had met my family. On Dec 26th, we did our 2nd Christmas, this time with my family. We sprung my grandmother out of her retirement home so she could be with us. The neighbors fried us a turkey for Christmas dinner #2. It was pretty good too. Mom cooked way too much food as usual. My aunt, uncle, and two cousins came up from Louisiana to vist late that afternoon. I hadn’t seen all of them at one time in a long time. It was great seeing them. The next day Wendy and I went to go visit my friend Ramsey from college. He told me he didn’t believe Wendy existed so I had to prove it to him. We also went by and visited a couple of my other friends from school. I had been wanting to introduce her to my friends. She’s a great catch and I want to show her off. One night we at at Cock of the Walk in Ridgeland. They serve southern fried catfish. A home meal I always look forward to. It was really tasty.

Of course we were rushed to try to see everyone and do everything. There’s never enough time to spend at home as you would like to have, but I was glad to get to spend the time that I did have. And I was really glad that Wendy and I got to spend time with each other’s family.

Next year, who knows what is going to happen.

Merry Christmas!

This is a copy of the Christmas email I sent to the people I know who’s email addresses I have

I hope this finds you all doing well.

The last two years have been a big growing experience for me. During this time I have discovered that for most of my life, I have been taking things way too seriously. I’ve been way too concerned with what people think about me. Some may argue that that makes me more compassionate, but I see it as making me too hesitant. I think it’s a fine line. So I am learning to be more relaxed in how I approach things.

I was unable to keep my firefighter job because I had a problem with anxiety. I have since cured my anxiety problem. Anxiety was something that reached into several areas of my life, unbeknownst to me. Life is much more enjoyable without that monkey on my back.

I’m still, unfortunately, working on an ambulance as an EMT Basic. I’m sure most people won’t be able to believe this, but I am incredibly bored with my job.  Last year I had a wonderful Paramedic that taught me how to become a great EMT. She and I have since parted ways to work with other people, but I am indebted to her for all I learned. That by no way means that I am done learning. This is a job that you never know everything. If I were really interested in medicine, I’d go on to get my paramedic, but that is way more responsibility than I want.

In the mean time I am still trying to get hired with a fire department. I haven’t found anyone yet that seems to think that they can’t function without me, but I’m working on it. The only department I have anything going with is West Metro, here in the Lakewood area where I live. I’m #75 on their list. The list is good for 2 years, but with the economy in the tank, I can’t see there being too much hiring going on. I can only hope that there will be a bunch of people retiring from there in the near future.

Wendy and I are still dating. Don’t ask how long we’ve been dating, because I doubt either one of us could tell you when we started. She has been done with her residency for about a year and a half now. She is a pediatrician at an urgent care clinic in Salt Lake City, UT and really loves her job. I’m really glad that she is happy with what she is doing.

We see each other once a month. Our schedules tend to work better with me flying out there. People sometimes tell me I should just move out to Salt Lake. It’s not that easy for either of us. The distance is what is limiting us now. One of these days, someone will move somewhere. We’ll have to see what happens.

We have had some cool adventures during the past year. Earlier this year we went to Grand County, CO where we went to a hot spring, did some snowshoeing, and also went on a snow mobile tour. It was a lot of fun and it was nice to get up in the mountains for a few days. This summer we went to Moab, UT where we did some white water rafting and some sight seeing. Our favorite trip this year was when we went to Grand Teton National Park. We spent 6 days and 5 nights backpacking in the park. On our last day there, I had to chase a bear out of camp. It was a really beautiful place. Pointing the camera in any direction gave you pretty pictures. It was great to get away for a while. I often forget how great the simple life is. Since Wendy and I first met at a backpacking camp, we were both in our element out there. We’ve already decided that next year we are going to Glacier National Park.

If you want to see pictures from our adventures this year, you can go to this link:

http://anvilgear.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=2204

This Christmas is going to be cool. I am flying to San Antonio, TX to spend the first half of the week with Wendy and her family. On Christmas day, we are flying to Jackson, MS to spend the rest of the week with my family. It will be nice to be around family for a change.

I’m still living at the Phat Pad with PJ and Bill “Italian Stallion” Sassani. They are friends of mine that I’ve known since I started working at Philmont. It’s hard to believe its been 5 years since I worked there.

I’m sorry for not being much of a communicator the last couple of years. I plan to be better at it this year. New Year’s resolution maybe?

I’ve become a fan of using Facebook. If you’ve never used it, it’s a social networking site that lets you keep up with people you know. It’s great for seeing what the people you know are up to. I’ve also decided to start writing a blog. Now everyone can keep up with my uneventful life. Yeah!!

Well, thanks for listening to me. May you all have a Merry Christmas and a fantastic New Year!

Carnage at DIA

Well, if you were to believe the sensation of liberal media news, that’s what you would think. Last night there was a Continental Airlines airplane flight 1404 that skidded off the runway at Denver International Airport (DIA). No one was killed and all the injuries were minor. One trauma red from what I hear, the rest were yellows and greens.

It’s really hard to determine how bad the incident really was. The news media will do its best to sensationalize the whole thing. Its not as if the plane was careening down the runway doing cartwheels with body parts flying everywhere and flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air, but they want you to believe that so you’ll watch their news, up their ratings, and get more sponsors. Its all about money to these folks, not responsible news reporting.

Yes, the plane did skid off the runway, its not in millions of pieces, but its never going to fly again. Some photos from 9news.com. From what interviews with officials are saying, it seems that yes this was an emergency for sure. The passengers were evacuated with emergency procedures and the plane did catch fire. Kudos to Denver Fire Dept’s ARFF team. It sounds like they had a good working fire when they got on scene.

I was working that night and my company sent some ambulances to Denver for mutual aid. It was a Mass Casualty Incident (MCI). We tuned in to the mutual aid radio channel for Denver Paramedics to listen to the traffic. It sounds like they called in a few different agencies to help with transporting patients from DIA and for back-filling for their regular call volume. There was a bit of confusion at first in determining where patients were being transported, but that was corrected shortly. Denver Health hospital is the zone master for Denver. This means that when hospitals are on divert (the emergency room is full and not accepting patients because it is unusually busy) or during an MCI, the ambulance transporting calls to the zone master where they determine which hospital to transport to. This makes sure that one hospital isn’t overrun preventing best possible care for each patient needing care. During an MCI, hospitals are contacted by the zone master to determine how much of what they can handle. Having one person controlling patient destination helps keep everything more organized.

From listening to the radio, it sounded fairly well run. I can’t be for certain as I wasn’t there. I know I got excited when I heard on our radio that two of our ambulances were headed emergent to DIA. I immediately thought there must have been an airplane wreck. I was disappointed I didn’t get to go, but it sounds like I didn’t really miss much.

Well, hopefully  that is the quota for airplane catastrophies for DIA for a while.

Insane money

My brother sent me a link this week relating to the insane deal that C.C. Sabathia got for signing with the New York Yankees. C.C. is a starting pitcher that went from Cleveland to Milwaukee last year and is now a free agent. He just signed with the Yankees in a record deal of 7 years and aproximately $160 million. It is rediculous how much people are getting paid to play a game. Anyway, the link he sent me lets you enter your anual salary and how long it takes for him to make your salary. At $21,000 a year that I make, he only has to throw 2 strikes, not even one out. I don’t understand how on Earth anyone could ever be worth that kind of money for a game. How about teachers, EMT’s, Police officers, military folk, or anyone who actually makes a difference in people’s lives and have some real value for what their efforts provide. Entertainment should not be that lucrative, but that is what our society has decided is important.