Random Noise

That kind of leads into a peeve of mine regarding this odd trend of people either streaking or dying their hair purple, especially the dark purple tint. The color they often use is very close to that of someone who's drowned and been underwater for some time, so every time I see the dark purple hair I start getting memories coming back of all the drowning victims I've had to deal with in the past.

Definitely go for a spring loaded punch. As frightening as it may sound, if you let your vehicle fill with water so the pressure is equal inside and out, the doors open with no difficulty. One of the lakes just south of me has a ferry that transports residents across the 2 mile width. In the not too distant past, if someone missed the ferry they would simply drive across the ice rather than wait. Not even the locals living near the ferry landing know for sure how many old cars and trucks are laying on the bottom of that lake when the ice wasn't quite thick enough.

In 20 years of highway rescue I've never seen anyone drive off a bridge, though driving off an embankment and into a river is relatively common. We always carried a window punch which is spring loaded and fits in the palm of your hand. All you do is press it up against a window and press the release button. It will take out any window of your vehicle and I don't think they cost that much either.

Last winter I was working on a live streaming app for my TV and somehow got hooked on watching the morning show on WCCB Charlotte. I think it was about 2 weeks ago I was watching a protest going on there about affordable housing and if you changed the buildings in the background you'd swear it was one of the continuing protests going on in Vancouver. I don't know all that much about other cities, but Vancouver is largely being bought up by investors from Hong Kong. My relatives here, whose property I currently have my tiny house parked on, are partnered with another Vancouver based company and were able to secure an apartment in downtown Vancouver as part of a business deal. The apartments are going at $1.5 million each and up to $6 million if you want an apartment on the top floor. Meanwhile, in other parts of Vancouver some people have resorted to living in RVs or vans because they can't afford a place to stay. For the 2010 winter olympics, Vancouver shipped out bus loads of homeless people and blocked the area to keep out the transient (RV, van, etc) dwellers so the world wouldn't see what a screwed up place it really is.

When I was small, the only purpose I knew of for an ironing board was to throw a blanket over it and make a tent so I could go camping in the living room.

And this episode of Sesame Street has been brought to you by the capital letter "C".

In my early teens the family went on a road trip with the camper. I was playing my Moody Blues tape "In Search of the Lost Chord" which was one of the very few tapes of "long hair hippy music" my parents could tolerate. There's one song that has a kind of squeaky repetitive sound that had my dad convinced the bearings were wearing out on the front wheel. I can't recall how many times he pulled over to check both wheels until we realized it was the instrumentation of that one particular song.

I had to replace the battery on the security system for my relatives restaurant about three months ago. The master control box should be by your electrical panel where the power and phone lines come in. You might have to unscrew the front cover but the battery is inside the control box. It's about 6 inches long and 4 inches high, though there are various sizes. The bonus is the battery unplugs very easily and you can take it with you for getting a replacement. I got a discount on the replacement battery for giving them the old one for refurbishing.

If you put a red suit on it, it could be Santa turned to the dark side.

Just honk. I'll go faster, I promise. By mere coincidence, I did a few errands for my niece so I borrowed her car for the afternoon. School had just gotten out and about a dozen high school kids were crossing the street. Then three or four of them looked back and noticed another five of their friends weren't crossing the road with them. They stopped in the middle of the road, started walking back, stopped again and waited for their friends to catch up, then the whole group finally crossed to the other side.

Had a bit of a snowstorm early this evening leaving about 3 inches of fresh snow on the ground. The roads are a little slippery but nothing of significance for anyone driving with care. I walked down to one of the local stores to pick up some cat food around 8 this evening. I like to do my shopping during the last hour because there's practically no one in the stores at that time and no lineups at the checkout counter. I got what I was after, and a big carton of egg nog because I'm addicted to the stuff. I was on my way back home and approaching an intersection when I noticed a Greyhound bus charging up the side street with one of those parcel trailers behind it. It was getting close so I stood back from the crosswalk so the driver could proceed out onto the highway without waiting for me to cross first. Good thing I did. The driver tried slowing down and slid past the stop sign so he just punched the throttle and fired right on through onto the highway. The parcel trailer he was towing slid right across the road and the bus fish-tailed another 40 or 50 feet while he tried to get it under control. Glad I wasn't on that bus!

I think that's why I see so many of them wearing ear buds. Regarding kids running around stores and all, I have a major peeve with people who come to their workplace on their day(s) off with yard apes in tow. Especially if they decide to have a coffee and chat for a while. The kids run around "whatcha doin'?" "what's this button do?" "what's this for?" "You gonna eat that chocolate bar?" "Who's this picture of?" "What do these papers say?"

A person I worked with years ago lived in Montréal for some time. She was laughing one day telling me about how a lot of guys there would "enhance" themselves by putting their wallet in their front pocket. Nope. Sorry, I told her. If you're going into a crowded place you do that to make sure you still have a wallet when you leave. I had my wallet lifted once and $100 cash went missing so no strangers invading my space.

On my 16th, I drank some beer with friends. I got a minor in possession charge, a $25 court fine, and the beer wasn't really all that good.

My parents retired after they sold the family resort and got a motorhome with plans to travel, see the country, and basically do what they wanted. It was about a year later, I was 17 at the time and in school that day, that my dad was working in the yard of our new home and felt chest pain coming on. Mom drove him to the hospital and he was dead on arrival at the emergency room. Mom lived another 34 years, passing at the age of 91. I often noticed her staring out the living room window and she would say to me "we had all these plans ...," or "today was your dad's birthday," or "today was our anniversary." No one is born with a warranty certificate stating how long you're going to live, and I know from attending numerous motor vehicle accidents that even teenagers with a whole life ahead of them can have it terminated right then and there. If I can offer any suggestion, it's enjoy your traveling, enjoy your restaurants, and enjoy your get togethers. Live happy, live content, and live without regrets. Don't find yourself like my mother saying "we had all these plans ..."

I got an invite years ago from a FB user and signed up for an account, something which I came to regret later on. I find the whole social media thing counter productive. Most bothersome to me is that Google, Facebook, and Twitter have those little widgets that appear on so many web sites now. If you have an account on social media and still have the cookies stored on your browser, all the sites you visit, news stories you read, online shopping that you do, help build a profile about you, what your interests are, and people you associate with.

I've attended two such incidents. Performing CPR on a 4 year old is one memory I'd prefer not having.

Yes, that's true, but usage of the video afterward makes all the difference. There are privacy laws that determine what can or can't be shown if the video is used, and you can be charged if misused. I'll give you a real life example as to why these laws exist. We once had a two car (ambulance) response to a motor vehicle accident west of town, about 30 miles or so. The people involved had only minor injuries but there was an elderly couple in the one vehicle and their injuries dictated that they should be seen by a doctor. While the police were slowly letting the traffic through on the other lane, someone decided to snap some photos as they drove by and they showed this couple laying beside their vehicle. The person who took the photos got into town and stopped at one of the gas stations where he began talking about the bad accident on the highway and the fatalities he saw. Then he started showing some of the photos when one of the bystanders said "Holy #$%@*! that's my uncle and auntie's car." Within the next half hour, the entire family was reeling over the death of their relatives, and people even called their workplace that they wouldn't make it in that day because relatives had died in a car accident. When we got to the hospital emergency entrance, the entire family was standing there waiting for us. They were initially very shocked, but also very relieved that our patients were very much alive and doing quite well. As for the guy who took the photos and started the whole mess, the police found him and gave him a good lecture on his activity and a warning.

While in high school I had an interest in going into broadcasting. Fortunately, the local radio station was a 2 man operation and they gladly helped with training in exchange for doing menial tasks like bulk erasing reel-to-reel tapes and the old tape cartridges used for commercials. In the afternoon we would hang with the newspaper guys and catch up on the latest gab going on around town. That was in the 1970s and there weren't all that many restrictions as to what was covered as long as you could adequately document the story if questioned about it later. Sometime in the 1990s the privacy laws started coming into effect and certain limitations were placed on reporting a story. For instance, anything involving a minor, so on TV you'll often see the faces of children blurred on TV and names won't be mentioned for their protection. Injured or deceased victims of motor vehicle accidents, or some violent crime will generally be blurred as well. One other example off the top of my head would be someone suspected but not actually charged with a crime. I'm sure there are more but that's a general idea of what can't be shown on TV or in newspapers. Unfortunately for AgentRXS, as has happened to me on several occasions, the requirements of performing your job will put you in the middle of a news story from time to time and there's not much you can do about it. One lady I worked with for several years came up with a brilliant idea where she had the newspaper reporters carry her gear back to the ambulance. They were so busy toting equipment that they never had time to take photos. I'm not sure what options would be available if a TV crew showed up. Maybe some good can come of it though and some donations might come in because of the story.

I never made it on TV but appeared in the local newspaper on many occasions. Even made front page a few times. If it was me, I would have yelled "fake news. fake news. fake news," as I walked by. They would have edited it all out and merely shown you driving away.

Damn! and I once drove to the next town to get my (former) girlfriend's favorite pizza for her night shift at the hospital. From someone I know who did this kind of job for extra money, they wear headsets, so I recorded the most god-awful ear piercing screeching sound I could find on the answering machine and played it back whenever I got one of those calls. They hang on for about 0.5 seconds and disconnect.

At least with a drunk you can give them a couple more stiff drinks and flop them in another room somewhere while they sleep it off. My brother did one of those IQ tests years ago and some fool told him he was a genius. He joined Mensa and often wears Mensa tee shirts so everyone around knows they're in the presence of greatness. At any kind of gathering he'll dispense unsolicited advice about anything he believes you happen to be screwing up in your life.

Sure, video gaming is just as valid as any other hobby or recreational activity. On the other hand, I believe the general gist of the postings here relate to it becoming more of an obsession than a recreational activity. I played Zork during my college years but I only talked about it with other people that played it. I certainly didn't talk about it at the dinner table or go racing back to the computer after finishing my plate so I could chart my way through the passages, nor did I inundate people who didn't play it with continual talk about it.

The Inuit in the arctic have a word "ookpik" which means "hoot owl." I can't begin to tell you how long it took me to catch on when the younger ones would ask ookpik? ookpik? I found out much later that the common usage was "want a hoot?"

I have a relative who was tribal chief for one of the local native bands for awhile, now he spends his time meeting government and corporate executives for launching new companies either partially or completely owned by the bands. They're currently still in the planning and organization stage, but they're launching what they expect to be the largest medical marijuana growing operation in Canada and perhaps all of north America. So, if you're considering a career change ... maybe quality control testing?