Farewell "Old Man"

it is with much sadness that I was notified that one of my fellow firefighters from my station passed away at 0345 this morning at Arlington Hospital. Perry "Old Man" Clark succumbed to an unknown brain tumor. He had been suffering from migraines lately and still helped out at our open house last weekend before going home to rest.

Farewell Old Man, may the gods reward you for your years of selflessness in serving others with the fire service.

I'm in heaven.

Can i just say that i already love my new job? the people are cool, and finally i'm with a project that has some of the same techno/religious beliefs that i do. I.e. one of the mandates is to use 'open source solutions such as linux' wherever feasible.

wow.

no more meetings where 'yes we agree that this linux. solution that you're proposing will in fact save us a few million dollars, is much easier to manage remotely and yes the NSA believe that it far more secure, but we're going to go with WinXP because of look and feel. The irony is that the smegheads i worked for have "information and technology for better decision making" on their homepage.

Since when Department of Defense care more about look and feel than National Security? Too funny. This was why i left and went to the treasury project from hell. The only good thing about the treas gig was the commute. MUCH shorter than going towards the pentagon.

Yeah, it's a year later and i'm still bitter about that. wankers.

Point is, i think i might finally be happy with my new job.

(and yes, it really is 5am - i couldn't sleep - sick as a dog with a cold/flu thing)

/rant

Come join the Dark Side

So I'm going back to the Dark Side. Treasury sucked big time. I really really really didn't like my job there. I didn't do anything.

Ya know Bob, I'd say that in a giv en week I only do about 15 minutes of real work.

Happily this is about to change. Tomorrow morning I report to a facility near Fair Lakes where I begin what at all accounts appears to be a dream job. I can't wait. Rumour has it I might actually get an office!

I'll update tomorrow (maybe)....

For Sale By Owner

Well i'm finally getting around to updating this. I put my townhome for sale. I'm leaving the overly un-stimulating South Riding for an equally exciting suburban hell called Stoneridge here fun Loudoun County.

Good news is that I'm asking $75k more than I paid last year.

I'm selling it myself because the realtors would eat $27k of my profits (leeches!) It's cheaper for me to pay the mortgage for a year than to use one of those blood suckers.

So the new place is a nice 2 bedroom condo. 2 levels, and a 1 car garage (nice place to park the bike). It's a model unit so it has a nice kitchen, hardwood floors, fireplace, etc etc. It's loaded. I really need to paint though - the model designer had a neat idea in what they were trying to do with colours, but they... well they missed. So time to paint before I move in (hopefully next weekend)...

Other good news is that despite the loss of the tax benefits of home ownership, I'm still saving like 40% on my montly expenses.

Other other good news is it's closer to my firestation.

Bad news is it's slightly further commute to my new job (more on that soon)...

Perchance to dream...

Okay, I found the bike of my dreams. While she isn't as fast as the R1, 1000rr or the ducs, she just looks hot and menacing. I want one.

Shame they're like $43k. Oh well, I'll just ride one in my dreams, kinda like i do with Ziyi Zhang

Protective Hearing Equipment Required

So last week I went for some Pho with Smith. We were both on our bikes - him on his new R1, and my on my lil 'ol blackbird. We fired up our rides, his roared into life, and then smoothed down into a meanacing soft grumble, whereas mine just whimpered softly.

Well not anymore.

I managed to find some D&D slip-ons for my bike. OMG.

L O U D

I went for a small spin down the road, and wow - my bike sounds super loud. I like the sound though. While i don't think i'll ever ride without earplugs or my ipod with my awesome headphones for fear that i'll damage my hearing. Seriously.

But hey - they're still fun.

Anyway, but to the pre-open house cleaning obsession....

I'm too sexy for my hose

A recent survey showed that being a firefighter is the sexiest job in the U.S. While I can understand the romantic view, it's not all that sexy.

Consider the hoses pictured above. Now imagine rolling them up after a big fire, loading them onto the fire engine, and taking them back to the station. Then you get to unroll them, pressure wash them (BOTH sides) and then pressure test them and put them back on the apparatus. (And yes, I did this last night)

Nothing sexy about that.

However, Some things are fun. Last night (in between hose washings), we did an extrication drill. We had a donated car that we got to cut up.



So we had the car on it's side with an imaginary victim inside it. Then the fun began...



And Voila - insta-Audi convertible. All in all it took about 15 minutes to stabilize the vehicle, and 5 mins to cut through the windshield, and cut the roof off. It was pretty fun.

The other neat thing is we had a couple people drop by because they were interested in joining, talk about giving the wrong impression. They might actually think we do cool things all the time.