When It's Time To Gracefully Withdraw From Driving

Maryville P.D. had to clean up an ugly situation, caused by an elderly person who momentarily got confused, and struck 9 cars. Somehow, no one was hurt. The video's pretty impressive. 

Every year or two, I end up bringing a confused old man or woman into a meeting with his or her family, and we have a conversation about the eventual necessities of maturation. I have a talk that I've created, in which I reference how, when I was 11, I had to come to grips with the fact that I had to wear glasses. At  35, I realized that I couldn't run like I could when I was 25. As I advance into my 40s, I'm realizing that I'm soon going to need reading glasses.  Many people need canes as they get older, because falling could cause them to break a hip, or worse.  This is about accepting stages in life. Usually they will have similar experiences, and I encourage them to tell me about them.

My interactive talk is usually planned at 10 minutes, but tends to run more like an hour. Often there are tears from those involved. (Not from me. Not while in uniform.)

I get the elderly driver to turn over his or her keys, and promise not to drive again, unless cleared by a doctor.

I then inform the Texas Department of Public Safety Driver Improvement and Compliance Bureau that we need a Medical Advisory Board for this person, and I detail and include copies of call sheets for the calls for service which brought me to this conclusion. I have found elderly people lost and unable to find their way home in a town which they grew up in. I have found people with their foot on the accelerator as they chugged their car forward into another car, unable to figure out why their brake wasn't working. I have found people that had no idea that they were driving on a flat tire, having hit a bridge abutment and sideswiped another car. There is a point where a confused driver looks a LOT like an impaired driver. They can be very dangerous. And I have to be the instrument of the state which starts the process of taking this driver out from behind the wheel.

But here's the thing-- ANYONE can request this.
Just as anyone can call in a reckless driver, anyone can request that a person with medical impairment or simple old age be examined. Texans can fill out and mail in this form. If you have an elderly driver that you're worried about, here's further information from Texas Department Of Transportation.

Other states will have similar provisions, if you look.
Sometimes it takes a family member or loved one to put it all together. If Great Aunt Myrtle has had fender benders and senior moments in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook, the local constabulary probably won't have clued to it. But you know it.

Time to utilize one of the most powerful tools that a citizen has in managing the government: the Open Records Request. Get copies of the incident reports and/or crash reports involving Aunt Myrtle, and compile them into a time line, which you send to the licensing bureau, pleading for them to gently relieve Aunt Myrtle of her license. If they're like me, they won't tell her who sent them. Let the government folk be the heavies. Oftentimes, seniors won't listen to family begging them to stop driving, but they will abide by the licensing authorities's decision.

Remember, you're not taking away their driving-- you're helping to save them, and other people, from a dangerous situation. 

New (to me) car.

We live within our means, here at Chez G. That said, we don't buy new cars-- we just buy quality used ones, and drive them until the wheels fall off.

I bought a 2004 Toyota Tundra SR5 V8 with the cash back on my mortgage refinance. I found it on Cars Dot Com, and got a reasonable deal on it. It was a trade-in at a dealership. They'd had trouble moving it with the warped rotors that it had when it was turned in, so they were changing the front rotors and pads out when I came by the dealer. It being up on the lift, I took a shop light and checked around under it, and was happy. I still paid a mechanic to check it out. It passed. I went by the motor bank and pulled a few thousand out, and discovered yet again that you can hand people a handful of greenish rag papers with Ben Franklin's portrait on them, and they will hand you the keys to a tangible piece of property.

This one came with leather, and a Rhino liner, and four real doors. As it had a touch over 100k miles, I had my SAE-certified mechanic friend change the timing belt and replace the water pump for me.

It scratches an itch that I've had for awhile, and I own it free and clear.

Because we found pomegranate rinds int he bed when we first looked at it, and because of the color, it's already been dubbed The Pomegranate, or "Pome" for short.

Sure, it's really storage for the jack, but in my mind, it's totally Han Solo's smuggling storage in the Millennium Falcon. 

I like that strut, which holds up the rear seat when it's rolled forward. That's a nice touch. 

With only 240 horsepower, the 32-valve, 4.7L V8 produces not a RIDICULOUS horsepower, but it gives a nice 315 foot-pounds of torque. It's a true 1-ton truck. 

Dallas for the day.

Things are going missing around the G household.
Probably I'm just disorganized, but for the past month I can't find my most favorite Kindle, which I bought from Marko Kloos, and my most favorite flashlight, the PolyStinger D.S.

So it was time to get new.

I found on Craig's List that a lady had a NIB Kindle Paperwhite Touch for $40. I negotiated the sale, and went to the area of Cedar Springs and Oak Lawn to pick it up from her husband, a recent graduate of business school who explained that she had gotten the device as a work gift, and already had an iPad.

We shook hands, and, being in the area, I went to EatZi's for lunch. I hit the bakery, and was saddened that they no longer bake the prosciutto and black pepper loaf. But they still make the Kalamata Olive Loaf, and I got one, along with a 4 Cheese And Chili Boule, and had them run them through the slicer. Then I gawked at the cakes and stuff:

For scale, that's about a 10" wide cake under that buttercreme.
 

I've eaten their stuff. Given the quality, these prices are actually downright reasonable.

I had the deli man slice me some very thin Molinari Finocchiona Picolocini, which has fennel in it. Paper thin slices made you think that you had taken a mouthful. Economy of flavor, even at $13/lb. I also got a quarter pound of Citterio Spresata Salami, and a quarter pound of Molinari Capacolla Hot (Only $15/lb). I had them ring me up for these, along with the salad that I had them make to my specs, with lots of rare roast beef and stuff.  Then I sat at a broken tile mosaic wall-side bar on a stool, and drank good coffee with my salad as I listened to some Italian tenor. Not a bad lunch.

I then went by GT Police Supply, and bought me a Stinger DS LED HL. This thing puts out 640 lumens, in the same size as my old 360 lumen Stinger. I can't convey here how much light this little rechargeable flashlight puts out. It's enough to note on the sidewalk at midday in Texas summer.  Sadly, I grabbed a box with a metal, rather than poly, stinger. I'll be getting a new plastic one, soon. I need another flashlight, anyway.

I then fought traffic on the way back home. What should have been about an hour and a quarter was extended significantly, because two cars had a fender bender and waited in the left lane for the police to arrive, blocking one of the three lanes, and causing an unforeseen bottleneck which caused merging that did not, as one would expect, slow the traffic by 1/3, but actually slowed the drive-time traffic to less than 1/3 of its normal slow pace. As I passed the two vehicles, I noticed that both drivers were sitting in their cars with the windows up, so that they could enjoy their air conditioning on this 94 degree day. The BMW and the Land Rover neither had incapacitating damage. I'm afraid that I (in my un-air-conditioned old beater car) may have hollered at them to move their car, as they were in violation of Texas Transportation Code section 550.022(b), which states:

 If an accident occurs on a main lane, ramp, shoulder, median, or adjacent area of a freeway in a metropolitan area and each vehicle involved can be normally and safely driven, each operator shall move the operator's vehicle as soon as possible to a designated accident investigation site, if available, a location on the frontage road, the nearest suitable cross street, or other suitable location to complete the requirements of Section 550.023 and minimize interference with freeway traffic.

...which they were violating.

I'd've written 'em each a citation for it, were I the Dallas County Traffic Enforcement deputy.
The whole business of "I can't move my car, because the officer needs to see the crash scene as it occurred" is only applicable to crashes involving injury or fatality.

Last night, I fed the family with open-faced sammiches made from the high-end bread lightly-toasted with butter on cookie sheets, then broiled with paper-thin slices of the meats and some white cheddar and smoked gouda, with thin slices of onion atop them. The kids picked off the onion, and ate heartily. The wife added spiced mustard, and ate heartily. I just ate it as it was, and was happy to find two left this morning when I got up late (I work evenings today.). You could claim that your breakfast was better than mine, reheated with a cup of black coffee, but I would not believe your claim.

The cost of things.

I've told you that I'm not a rich guy. I'm not hurting for anything, really, but I'm on the lower end of the Middle Class spectrum. At a rough estimate, I've made around half a million dollars in my working life.

My parents would have been considered rather well-off, had either one of them been able to say the same thing at my age (the mid 1980s.).

I have never spent so much as $10,000 on a car, although most (not all) of the cars that I've owned did cost more than that, when new. Currently, all three of my vehicles barely would make that mark.

I have never owned a house that cost me over $100,000. My current house appraises at more than that, as did my last house that I sold for a tad under that. But I've never paid so much. When I was a kid, my parents bought a nice brick 2,000 square foot 3 BR 2 BA on an acre for $35,000. It appraises for $155,500 today, to different owners. (I note that it's had a 700'² addition put on.) 

So when I see a car that brings more than $35,000, it makes me think "that thing better have a bathroom and a pull-out bed in it somewhere, because that kind of money should buy a house." Of course this is silly talk, because that kind of money would by $133,000 worth of house, in today's dollars.

When I look at the Mercedes-Benz new G63 6X6 SUV, I think of that $457,000 price tag, and consider that it's almost equal to the number of dollars that I have been paid in my career in the workforce. Dude. It's just a truck.

Fifteen Years Ago Today.

Fifteen years ago today, I got up with a little bit of a hangover, and went to play a miserable game of golf with my two best friends, Scott and Bill. Y'all may have noticed that I don't talk much about golf on this blog. That's because it doesn't interest me to talk about. But it's a pleasant walk with a pair of good friends, and occasionally hand-eye coordination pays off. Also, it's an excellent way to polish your judgement of distance and wind.

After putting up a score well north of 100 (I never have seen the point in fudging my score, or adjusting the way my ball lies without taking a penalty. What's the point?), I went back to my house to get showered and changed. My fiancée was at the hairdresser's, getting ready. I was to meet her at the church.

We were getting married that afternoon.

I was muddy, and sweaty, and probably non-too-savory from the toxins that I was sweating out from the shindig that my friends had thrown me the night before. I got in the shower and drained the water heater, and then had to wait for the water to heat back up to shave.  Finally, I glanced at my watch as I put on my tuxedo. Ooh-- 3:20pm. Cutting it a bit close, for a 4:00pm wedding, with a 15 minute drive.

This was when I discovered that the vest was a size Small.

I'm not a Small. I'm not even a Large. I'm more in the range of XXL.

They had gone on and on about how the groomsmen had matching vests in one color, and the groom had another colored vest that complimented them but was distinctly different. I thought about where the tux place was-- 3.8 miles away, through town. I got my keys, and left at 3:30pm. Driving through town, there wasn't much of a way to speed up the drive. I arrived at about 3:40pm. I dashed in, told the girl at the counter the problem, and demanded a larger vest. She searched and found one, and then removed, if I recall correctly, about 19 straight pins from it before adjusting it to me. I was impatient, and told her that we'd have to make do with how it was. I fled the store, and hopped into my pickup, at about 3:53PM.

Google Maps claims that the 8.5 mile trip from the mall to the church takes 13 minutes to drive. Under normal conditions, I would have to agree, and on weekdays at drivetime, you can double that. But this was a Saturday, and I was wearing my wedding tuxedo and was en route to my own wedding. I decided that I would never in my life have a better excuse to speed.

The 1989 Ford F-250 extended cab pickup with full-length bed was a big old beast, somehow the same length as the King Cab that year. It's heavy, and handles like an ocean liner. Mine had dual tanks and a 7.3 liter International diesel engine, that put out stupid amounts of torque, and seemed to want to give me 12.5mpg no matter how I drove it. The speedometer only went up to 85, but playing around with a GPS, I had learned that it would do 103mph before the governor kicked in. I jumped the median from the access road, and floored it.

While en route up the hill to the church, I saw a slow-moving car tapping its brakes, as if the driver were lost and checking the house numbers. I blew past my friend Bryan and his wife, parked at the church, and walked in. It was 4:00:30 PM by my watch. My dad, who was standing in the lobby and looking anxious, laughed and shook my hand.

I joined the pastor and my two groomsman in the anteroom, off the side of the church. We sent someone to inform the bride that we were ready. And we waited. And we waited. For over 20 minutes, we waited. It turned out that my mother in-law, not content with the professional hair-do that my wife had just gotten, wanted to mess with her youngest child's hair some before sending her down the aisle.

Finally, the music played, and the pastor (a retired military man) led the processional to the alter. Interesting training kicked in; we all began on our left foot, and marched at 120 steps per minute in 30 inch steps to our places. Such is the so-called Quick Time march, which my friends and I had learned in high school JROTC. Thus, in very short order, we were in place, and watched the woman who presently would become my bride be escorted up to us by her elder brother. It seemed like that their march took several minutes.

The rest is kind of a blur. The pastor used his opportunity to give a sermon that I didn't want. We picked up candles and used them to light a single candle together, and I found that the candle wasn't really a 24" taper, but was actually a white-painted metal tube with a spring pushing up a small insert candle, to keep the "tapers" the same height. I grabbed the thing, and the spring shot out the bottom, and I somehow caught it, shoving up the wax insert just before it went out. I managed to light the communal candle without burning down the old church.

Then, it was over. I kissed the bride (as such she now was), and we turned to meet our future. A friend caught this moment with her camera. It was murky in that old church, so I hope you'll forgive the poor picture. (I think she only had 100 speed film.) 

The vest really doesn't matter much, does it?

We retired to my amazing friend Paula's house, and took some more pictures. My friend Blake served the most amazing barbecue and beans and smoked ham that I've ever eaten. My friend Kevin served the beer that he and I had brewed using his grain sparge system. (I got rave reviews on it, but of 10 gallons, I only got half a plastic cup. Figures.)

I removed my wife's garter, and flung it to the waiting bachelors before an amazing sunset. An hour or so later, I was told that it was time for us to leave. Apparently, the bride and groom are expected to leave while everyone else is still there, so that they can throw rice at the couple.

Friends, this makes no sense at all. Here I was, at a party with everyone that I gave a damn about in attendance, and I had to leave it early. What we SHOULD have done was go back to our house, changed out of our finery, and re-joined the party in blue jeans and flannel shirts. If you're getting married, do that, friends.

We went to a lovely bed & breakfast place that my best friend and his wife had provided for us, took care of a necessary formality, and watched Rowan Atkinson performing a stage bit, on the televisor. In the morning, there were chocolate banana muffins, and strada.

And we went home, a married couple.

My bride has borne me two amazing children. She has my love, and my loyalty. This is just the first multiple of 15 years.

First Day Of December.

--My wife just purchased my younger daughter her first pair of brand-new cowboy boots for Christmas. (She'd had others, but not brand-new to her).  After tax, they went $192. They're turquoise and brown. When my wife told me this over the phone, I said, "Good Gawd! Jeez!"

She responded, "Oh, they're not that garish. There were lots of men's boots that were more wild-looking."

"It's not the color! It's the price!! $192 for a 10-year-old's boots?!? What do we do when she grows out of them?" I exclaimed.

"Oh, I'll inherit them," she said. "I wear her size."

"Good Gawd! Jeez!" I said again, for a different reason.

--Very humid. Cloudy. High in the high 70's today. Wind is fresh, out of the southeast.

--I've been working a lot of off-duty, on top of my fire shifts and my work and grad school. I'm tired.

--The main cafe in town has a Mexican cook and some decent Mexican food, but no breakfast burrito on the menu. I've been ordering a breakfast burrito made special for about a year, there. Now I find that our new rookie with the PD thinks that he started the trend there. He's a good guy, but he clearly needs his comeuppance. I've been this week campaigning to get them to name it the "Matt G Burrito." It's just a bit of schtick, but it would be funny if they did make it. (I have them make it with grilled jalapenos, cheddar cheese, onions, sausage, and chorizo. )

--I didn't make my Christmas tamales for Thanksgiving this year like I meant to. I still plan to make them. I typically just debone a rotisserie chicken and spice it in a hot pan for filling. I've got some pork, too. I've also got some beef. And a little venison. And some mushrooms, for veggie tamales....

--My moustache has grown to previously-unseen proportions. It's getting unruly.

--The 'stache may be gone in a bit, too. I'm considering hacking it off. It sure 'nuff hacks off my wife.Which is funny, because the beard that she wants me to wear again sure wasn't worn Amish-style.

--Our arraigning magistrate told me that, after figuring in his regular work and his salary for coming in every day for setting bonds, he only makes about $9/hr on his salary on months when they have No Refusal Blood Draw Weekends.

--They're doing those more and more, including Thanksgiving weekend, now. I'm okay with them-- the officer gets a warrant, under probable cause, to take the defendant's blood. Anymore, it's getting rare to take a breath sample for DWI's.

--I went to a trial the other day in which the defense attorney went after the character of the arresting officer, in a case where his client had clearly committed the action. The officer's character was not the issue. While I appreciate that the attorney had a tough case to defend and and was charged with putting up a spirited defense, I think that it's reprehensible to make a personal attack on the character of the officer and his reputation, especially when the officer was actually trying to help his client when the defendant attacked the officer. It's been a long time since I had a defense attorney do that to me, but it makes me seethe. It's not actually that common of a practice, when an attorney wants to continue to practice in the same county. Believe it or not, I actually have quite a bit of respect for most attorneys that I know. Not this one.

--There are black spidery things that appear on the Martian dunes every summer, and go away every winter. We don't know for sure what they are. That's awesome.  A known unknown.

--I've never understood why people have made fun of Rumsfeld for his Unknown Unknown statement. In addition to being a succinct statement of logic, it was a lovely answer to a question that he didn't want to (or could not) answer.

--I made one of my famous bourbon sours the other day using the juice from a Meyers lemon that I had picked one minute before from the potted tree in my sun room. Oh, crap. It really does make a difference. I was afraid of that. I've only got two more lemons left on that little tree.

--Do Meyers lemon trees self-pollinate? It had small fruit on it when we bought it.

--The more and more that I run across dogs in our town, the more convinced that I am that at least 1/3 of all dog owners should NOT own dogs. Maybe half, even. If your only interaction with that pack animal is to feed and water it for a couple of minutes a day and your dog spends the rest of the day entirely alone, I'm talking to you.

--Although both my parents have dogs that are sometimes a beating for me to be around, I in no way  could include my folks in that exclusionary group. Their dogs are living the high life.

--If reincarnation were for real, a person could do worse than to come back as a retiree's dog.

--People are shocked to learn that Rosa Parks wasn't a passive, hapless victim.What does it matter? She was being wronged. Her intentional act of passive resistance was a singular act that motivated a change.

--I don't understand motorcycle rides in which a dozen or more riders all cruise a single itinerary together on weekends. Some do this every temperate weekend. I thought that the draw to motorcycling was freedom? Having caravan'd a few times with friends, I have found that while they can be fun when you have time to stop at other people's whim (It's like being on a train with one of those emergency brake cables accessible to every kid who wants to stop to look at a woodchuck.), but they do restrict your freedom.

Goodbye, old helper.

Last year, I bought a '94 Dodge van with a bunch of miles on it, for $500. We brought in flooring, and moved out old flooring, and pulled trailer-loads of topsoil, and moved friends and relatives. Today, I sold it online for $500.

The guy who bought it drove it around town, and talked me down from $550 because the battery was about shot (it needed jump-starting), and we went inside to do the paperwork. He shook my hand several times. You know, I actually believe that he and his buddy really will start a carpet-cleaning business, and not use it as a child-abductor van.

I wish him luck.

In the meantime, the House Of G will probably be purchasing a new vehicle pretty soon.

Fireman stuff.

I ended my patrol shift at a structure fire, and wrote my first "Crossing Fire Hose" ticket. I knew my brethren in the red hats* would give me hell if I just let it go, and I hadn't gotten to help with the fire, proper. (Always a bride's maid, and never a bride.)  We had to run a 5" line diagonally across a major intersection, and it's harder than you'd think for one car to stop down all traffic and let them understand that they have to turn around and go elsewhere. I will make a guess that every state in the Union has some kind of law about this, so that we don't have to have a man guarding fire-hoses from each direction; the law says don't cross it without permission.

I am perpetually reminded that people are creatures of habit. If I throw a roadblock in the way of their routine, a surprisingly high percentage of the population simply cannot conceive of an alternate course of action to take. I have commented before on how people suddenly taken out of their comfort zone in expect to be told where to go. I kept having people drive up to a blocked intersection in the middle of a downtown (admittedly, a small downtown) grid of streets, asking me how they were supposed to get to work, and then still not figuring out the answer when told that this was the only intersection being blocked. They literally had to be told to make a U-turn, make three lefts, and a right, to perform the detour. Sure, if I'd had the manpower, it would have been great to have blocked the streets a block away in each direction. But I didn't, and the blocked intersection was visible from blocks away in each direction. I worry about our future, and the people that I serve.

I had one man tell me, quite upset, that this would cause him to miss his morning coffee at the convenience store he wanted to get to. When I pointed out that there was another one conveniently located along his route to work, he dismissed that as an impractical option, because he didn't know right where the coffee-maker and cream and sugar all were at the other convenience store. Mind you, we're talking about another store in the small rural town that he lives in, which he drives by almost every day. Not an option, to him.

One of the other cops that came over to help me chatted about the fire stuff we saw. He mentioned that he heard a lot of fire alarms going off, and I wondered about that, having heard none. Then I realized that he was hearing the PASS alarms on Scott SCBA air packs. The PASS alarm has a sensor on it that detects if the pack has not moved in about 20 seconds, and sets off a pre-alarm, and then goes into full-alarm. When the firefighter hears the pre-alarm, he does a little duck-waddle shimmy with his butt, to shake the pack and tell it that he's fine. Occasionally, when the pack is doffed, the alarm is not turned off properly (the bottle has to be turned off), and they'll go off.

Earlier this week, I did a shift at the FD, and practiced getting better at engine pump operations. Yes, I still need to attend the official classes, and no, I don't think that I'm qualified to be an engineer. But if there's a structure fire, I can get your engine placed pretty well, get it into pump gear correctly, prime the pump and get it up to the pre-set RPM or pressure (we are spoiled with a high-end pump system), crack open the water re-circulation cooling system, get water from the tank to the correct hose (front, rear, or two cross-lays, or deluge), and open the intake valve for water from the tanker we'll have come out to nurse from.***  I can also throw out a portable pond to draft out of. That will get us out of 90% of our problems, in our fire district.  Areas that I need to work on: actually drafting, and putting on 5 inch hydrant supply hoses (we've got two different kinds of adapters, and while I can figure it out, I need to get proficient, so that becomes a task that I perform without really having to think about.)  I drive that engine pretty much where ever we go when I'm on duty, and I perform the check-off's of the engine when I work a shift. (Others do it in 10 minutes. I generally take more than half an hour.)

It still amazes me a bit, sometimes, that it is common practice to let an unpaid volunteer get into a quarter million dollar piece of apparatus and go to work. Even more impressive was that I did it just a couple of months after starting with them. This is why they vet the firefighter applicants, and why one of the biggest reasons to dismiss an applicant is for traffic violations and accidents.

________________________________
*Figuratively speaking. Actually, in our fire department, the color of the helmet denotes the rank of the firefighter. The Chief's is white. A captain's is red. A lieutenant's is black. Mine is yellow**. I just think of the "red hat" as the firefighter, and the "blue hat" as the police officer. There are two of us who are on both departments, currently (the other guy is a full-time firefighter).  I'm seriously thinking about making us red and blue hats that have both logos split down the middle, just for the fun of it.

**Even though it's the basic brand and not really mine, per se, that Morning Pride yellow helmet tricked out with goggles, an LED light, and blast shield runs north of $300, making it the most expensive headgear that I've ever had.

***One thing that I really didn't know as a cop was that one of the first rules of the firefighter is to not use that 1000 gallons on board the engine, if you can possibly avoid it. That's to be kept in reserve, in case there's a problem with the water supply when the firefighters are fighting. There have been instances of engines arriving on the scene of structure fires, putting maximum output out of their deluge gun, and then being unable to do anything even after the tanker arrived, later, until the engine tank was refilled. Or so this rookie is being told.

Thursday afternoon thoughts.

--Why is the ATF SWAT team responding to a cop shooting at Virginia Tech? That's a local crime.

-- I'm surprised that I've only seen 29 of these 100 so-called cult movies. And some of them seem strange for "cult movies." Piranha? (saw it in the theatre as a kid) Superstar? Really? (Never saw it. Am I missing something?) How many have y'all seen? You'd be amazed at the gaps in my moviewatching history.

--Folks are worked up about the fires in the Chevy Volt electric that sometimes occur from the batteries a week or two after a major crash. This is worse than a gasoline-powered cars why, exactly? I've been to some humdingers of some fires after petrol-powered autos cracked up, and sometimes the driver have had trouble getting out* after the wreck.

--I was chatting with Stingray and Vine the other evening, and we agree that this is one of the best examples of the "mashup" genre of music that we've ever seen. As I've mentioned, Joan Jett was an early love of mine, and this "fanfaroff" guy (if he's the producer of the mashup) does a nice job of matching the hooks of some popular music. I can't figure in the RATM contribution in the bit, though.

--Appropos of nothing, what kind of computer is that with the faux wood cabinet used by the Eurythmics at 1:05 of this mashup vidjo, right after it is declared that it's Hammer Time?

--My geeky friend Susan (whose daddy really was a rocket scientist in the 50's and 60's, when they got to do cool stuff) pointed out this T-shirt as one she'd like to wear every seven years. I pointed out that someone who wore such a shirt had best know the ins and outs of what it entailed, and pointed her to this informative short documentary.

--That fanfaroff guy really does seem to have something.

______________________________________
*No, not because "the seat belt trapped them." Usually it was because of injuries sustained in the wreck, which a seat belt would have helped to prevent, along with doors and windows failing to open after the wreck.

Reassurance to a rookie.

One of my former rookie trainees called me last night, and we had a nice chat. John* has moved on to another department, and has been making a name for himself.

John described a situation that he had the other day, which frustrated him. He had stopped a girl for a significant traffic violation, and had smelled the odor of alcohol. It being a weekend night, he had her step out, and administered the Standardized Field Sobriety Tests. As he finished them, another officer with a PBT drove up. My friend hadn't been able to see much in the way of Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus, which really is the gold standard of tests. She did somewhat poorly on the Walk And Turn, and One Leg Stand. But it bothered John that he hadn't seen the three clues for each eye. After some thought on the clues that he had, he let her call for a ride

While they waited, he asked her to blow into the PBT (Portable Breath Test device, not admissible in court because of inability to guarantee calibration in the field.). She blew a .21 BAC into a device that he had found to be very accurate, when the results were checked against credible instruments. John was shaken. This "girl" as he kept referring to her, apparently was a professional alcoholic, with almost 3 times the legal limit for blood alcohol content. He had barely been able to show that she was drunk, and had decided that the evidence wasn't good enough to go to court with.

After she was driven away by her ride, John told the other officer what the reading was. The other guy told him that he would have taken her to jail, John said. John felt like maybe he had done the wrong thing.

"Stop right there!" I interrupted. "Your buddy out there-- did he offer to take that woman to jail? Did he offer to do the report? No? Well it's funny what other cops may say they 'would've done,' when they don't have to carry the paperwork. He doesn't know what he would have done if he was in your skin," I said.

"When you arrest a person, you take them to jail, and then you write a charging document in which you list the reasons that you believe that she broke the law. You --not anyone else-- are the man who then signs his name below an oath that you make before God [John is deeply religious], swearing that everything you have said above is the Truth, as you believe it in your heart to be," I continued.

"If you had doubts, then you didn't fully, completely believe it. That's the time to cut. her. loose. Sure, after you've gotten more experience under your belt, you probably would have zero doubt in the same situation in the future. But this time, you had doubt, and you did the right thing. You got her off the road, and you didn't file a charge that you weren't SURE of. John, this is not a bad thing. We'll catch her some other time, trust me."

We went on to talk about other things. He's a good man, and I know he'll make a good officer. He already is one, actually; he just needed to hear it.

__________________________________
* Not his real name.

Why we do it.

I had to stand as bailiff, the other day.

The officer who regularly handles our municipal court bailiff duties wasn't available, so I got called in to handle it.

Usually, the bailiff in our little municipal court kind of acts as a gofer for the judge and the court clerk, and stands around making things look official. I don't much care for it, but it's part of the job, and it's a job that needs doing. Every so often, court rooms can get a little tense, and ultimately, the bailiff's job is security for the court.

On this occasion, part of my job was helping out with a jury trial. We don't have a lot of municipal jury trials. Starting about 45 minutes before court was to begin, good citizens began filing in with their jury trial notification forms. I helped out the court clerk by taking their filled-out forms, assigning them a jury badge, and providing them with paperwork from the judge informing them of their expected duties and behavior. I was impressed by the huge turn-out. We got about an 85% response rate, with several of those who hadn't shown having already contacted the court clerk with legitimate reasons for not responding.

None of the jury candidates was particularly irritated about this disruption in their lives. They simply came to do what they were called to do. I made it a point to thank each one directly for attending.

The voir dire was longer than I would have thought, with both the prosecutor and defendant's counsel doing their best to weed out potential problems, and both making a sincere effort to get the remaining candidates to keep an open mind to their own side.

The trial was a simple traffic court. The charge was the most common: speeding. The defense raised some great points, and the prosecutor courteously treated those points as genuine threats to the State's case. Direct examination, redirect, closing statements-- all were delivered with the solemnity of a murder trial. The trial took two hours before the jurors adjourned to their room, deliberated, and came back with a verdict.

In Texas, Speeding carries a minimum fine of $1, and a maximum fine of $200. Given the cost of paying the judge, the court clerk, the prosecutor, the bailiff, and paying for the building overhead, the city wasn't going to profit a dime from this, no matter what the outcome.

The jury decided that the defendant was guilty, and the judge thanked them, discharged them, and set the fine. The prosecutor and the defense attorney both shook hands and left.

The court clerk remarked to the judge that it hardly seemed worth all that trouble, what with bothering all the jurors to come in, then going through the selection, then taking so long for the trial, for such a small fine. The judge immediately said, "No, this is the most important thing that we do here. If we didn't treat each and every case with this kind of respect, your job would be a lot harder, and the city would be a joke."

I have to say that I agree. Every ticket that I write, I need to be prepared to defend to the court why I have compelled a person to address the issue at hand. If I am not prepared to endure that scrutiny, than my badge, uniform, and office mean nothing. Considering that failure to respond to a citation in Texas means that a warrant will be issued by the court, that piddlin' little ticket actually is pretty important. And occasionally writing tickets to enforce the rules of the road is part of what makes it generally a safe proposition to drive through our little town.

I live here, too.

Irritating, that.

This year, Toyota aired a big ad campaign admitting that they screwed up big-time. Well, they did-- they installed a whole mess of faulty throttle controllers. Well, a few.

But that needed recalling. The device that controls your engine's power output should work. Absolutely.

But this business of the car with the messed-up throttles being unstoppable is proven to be poppycock. Even if your brakes wouldn't stop the horrendous power of the engine propelling the car, simply shifting to neutral would stop the power from getting to the wheels. Turning off the engine would stop the power from getting to the wheels. ("But that cuts the power steering!" Oh, grow up! A moving car is steerable in a straight line without power steering. )

But the fact is, the brakes DO stop the car. Car & Driver found that, with the throttle wide open and the brakes stomped at 70 mph, the Camry stops shorter than a Ford Taurus with the throttle closed.

Then we come to the single most famous case of the throttle sticking, which now looks like simple fraud in the worst light, and gross driver error in the best light. The problem wasn't the hardware in the Prius-- it was the software between the driver's ears. He's either inept, or a swindler, or, possibly, both.

But if you still are terrified of your Toyota, and don't trust 'em, I'll take one off your hands. Especially if you've got a Tundra that's been threatening to kick in your front door, eat the children, and crap on your rug. I've got a deck to build.

_______________________

Hat tip to Les Jones.

That which interferes

This last week has been Drunk Week. Three DWIs and one P.I. in four shifts. The paperwork for a DWI can be routine, but fairly involved. In such circumstances, an open-and-shut DWI can be a pretty high likelihood of a conviction, with a medium likelihood of going to court. I like to push the detail of the report a bit further, to get a very high probability of conviction, with a low chance of having to go to court. I don't want the D.A. to have to wonder about a detail; it should be in there.

The people I mostly have to convince are with the District Attorney's office. They'll cop a plea with the good cases, and throw out the mediocre ones altogether. A lot of them seem to think that a case without a specimen of blood or breath is a bad case. This could be true, but isn't necessarily so. I don't make the arrest to ask for breath or blood, without having had probable cause to arrest in the first place.

None of the DWIs from this past week blew or gave blood. I didn't get a blood draw warrant for them. I didn't need one. They were drunk, and this was apparent to me without a chemical test to prove it. It will be apparent to anyone who reads the report and watches my mobile video. Not only the things that they said, but how they said them, indicate to a casual observer that these people were drunk. But I can't put a number on their levels. I know that all of them were over 0.10 BAC, but can't articulate how much over. Fortunately, I don't have to. Actually, the prima faciae level for intoxication is 0.08, but I know these folks were higher. (I was originally trained for the 0.10 standard.)

But without that number on a sheet of paper spit out by a lab or an intoxilyzer machine operator, I have to go a bit further to convince the Intake division at our DA's office that this is a hill worth fighting over. I'm averaging 9 page narratives, and putting in written statements by witnesses, and transcribing the statements for lazy attorneys who don't want to try to skim some one's longhand. I'm including maps with itineraries of drivers who don't know where they are when I speak to them, showing DA's who don't know the area just how meandering a route the drunk has taken, and how far off their intended path they've gone. I'm including post-Miranda audio captured in E.R.'s and recorded on frickin' cell phones, because body mics won't reach to the car. I'm coming in off-duty to type in supplements to my original report, about statements that I've gotten.

The days of "saw drunk; arrested same" are over.

And these are just misdemeanors. This time. For some, the next one will be a felony.

Wow. Just... wow.

I've been in a few pursuits, and things have gotten exciting on occasion. But never anything quite like this. Wait for the end. This one is almost as impressive as the famous Montana pursuit of a few years back.

Please remember that it's hard to get bullets to go where you want them to, when shooting through compound complex curved safety glass. Even harder when, as the good sergeant in this pursuit had to do, you're shooting through TWO pieces of glass. (His own windshield, and the bad guy's.)

Woa.

Remember friends, don't forget to tip your snarker.

Friend Tamara is marooned 400 miles from home with near catastrophic brake problems and no money to speak of, and is making crazy talk about selling off guns.

I can't help but notice that she's got a little yellow Tip Jar button. I was impressed at how easy it was to use. For those of us who check into Tam's site for free every day and pay nothing, dropping a sawbuck or two is cheap, for the entertainment that we get.

You might help the lady out.

EDIT:

I noticed that the link to the little yellow tip jar button didn't work, probably because each click creates a discrete transaction number, which is how they keep things safe. Anyway, it's a yellow button to the top right (no, LabRat, your other left) of Tam's blog. Well, here-- it looks like this:

Pogonip, again

16 degrees, heavy fog. The fog freezes, coating every thing with a hard, fuzzy crust.
Weird.

Supposed to be dangerous to breathe because of the damage that the airborne ice crystals can do to your lungs when inhaled, pogonips are pretty damned dangerous for other reasons. First off, getting to your car is an adventure. My hip aches a little where my Kimber Stainless Classic did a poor job of cushioning the iced pavement from my somewhat better-padded person. It took me 10 minutes to get the crystalline grey cobwebs off of my patrol car this morning. The light bar was unrecognizable. I had to bash the door several times to break the strangely organic-looking rime that sealed the driver's door shut. Visibility is a bitch, and people seem incapable of realizing that headlights are a MUST in heavy fog. You, in the grey Buick! You, sir or madam, should be horsewhipped for this morning's driving at 50 mph in 20 mph visibility, with no headlights on at 7:00 AM! It ain't the breathing that's the most dangerous part of a freezing fog.

Overtaking an unlighted car in the frozen soup makes for for hurried braking, on roads that can only be described as, um, interesting. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to explain what surfaces a pogonip will adhere to. The old standard of "elevated structures freeze first" doesn't necessarily follow.

This one lasted a long time. Odd spectacle.

Doctor, please, some more of these.

Just a friendly reminder that, just because your Mother's Little Helpers came in a bottle from a pharmacy that took a doctor's script to release to you, doesn't mean that you're on solid ground when

[Outside the door, She took one more]

you double up on your dosage, mix pain pills with your Xanex and your Valium, and fire up the family wagon to go get a pack of smokes. No, when you put it into the ditch and cause callers to dial 911 on your driving, the simple virtue that they were prescription meds doesn't get you out of hot water. You're DWI, kiddo.

So, instead, why not just stay home, call your friends and family and beg off as sick and impaired on your medicine, and... just relax, stay inside and listen to some music, Okay? Do you have any Allman Brothers?

More idjits with GPS devices.

The insurance lady was supposed to meet us at the house. My wife went ahead to the house, while I took care of some other stuff at the old house. Half an hour later, she called me to ask me to look up the insurance agency and contact the appraiser, to see if she was lost. I dutifully did so, and soon met the frustrated appraiser on the phone.

"I just called to see if you're lost," I said.

"Oh, my lord, YES, I'm lost," she replied.

"Well, where are you, and I'll vector you...?" I began.

"This darned GPS! It wasn't finding new streets, which are important when you're an insurance appraiser, what with new construction..."

"If I could just get the..." I tried to interject.

"...So I downloaded the upgrade, and now the stupid thing won't find the new streets correctly. Or even the not-so-new ones," she complained.

"Or the streets that have been platted for one hundred years," I chuckled wryly, thinking of the old town plat that I had seen at our city hall, showing my street planned by the railroad in the 1880s.

"Uh huh," she responded. "Can you help me?"

Finally. "Sure. What road are you on?"

"Well, I'm near a silo, and a mailbox that says... wait, does your mailbox say Weinhardt on it?" she asked, completely ignoring my question.

"You're near the Weinhardt place?!?" I said. "So you're at the corner of Harding and FM 1234. Come south," I advised.

"Is that to the right or the left?" she asked.

"I don't know which way you're facing. Just come south on FM 1234," I responded.

"But I don't know which way that is," she said.

I was perplexed. She had a GPS on her dashboard. Every screen indicates N, S, E, W of every GPS I've ever seen. The time was 9:30 in the morning, with the sun still closer to the eastern horizon than to the zenith. My children could easily extrapolate "south" from that information. FM 1234 is a north/south road, with Smallville to the north, and Tinytown to the south.

"Okay," I said. "Do you know where the main four way intersection in town is? Go that way."

"Of course I do," she said tersely. "I've lived here all my life."

Of course she has.

- - - -

I'm beginning to formulate a plan to implement Basic Orienteering into the mandated skill set that must be shown to receive a state driver's license. Normally it goes against my nature to add more requirements, but to most of us, this would be a cinch. To those whom it is not, this would be a valuable vetting technique for the safety and well-being (and sanity) of the rest of us.

Matt's traveler tip of the day.

Have with you the means to find an alternate route to your destination.

Stopping and demanding for a viable detour from the cop directing 3 lanes of traffic through a half lane at an accident scene is not an option.

Oh, and if you've got one of those shexxy dash-mounted GPS devices with the pre-loaded maps on them, especially don't. My hand to Gawd, I had a citizen with a Garmin Nuuvi tell me, "This thing only tells me where I am! It doesn't, like, tell me the future, about, like, what's up ahead!" I leaned in her window, tapped the minus button on the map screen twice, and showed her that life existed beyond the edge of her previous LCD screen map. (This took approximately 1.5 seconds.)

And, while entertaining, ma'am, your partial disrobing does not move me to redirect you through the accident scene where I've got a helicopter landing.

We don't watch a lot of sports in my house.

"Who's that?" my wife asked as I finished my coffee in front of a television screen depicting a dark-haired woman crying.

"Danica Patrick," I said. "She races Indy cars, and just proved that she's not Anna Kournikova."

"Because she won, even though she's a hot chick?" my wife inquired, watching the screen. Well, at least that part was obvious.

"Yeah, and even though both of them have posed for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. It's too bad she'd crying, though; it's bad for the image. But then again, I'll bet a lot of guys cried the first time they won an Indy race. Turns out, though, that it's not only the first big race she's won, but it's the first Indy race that a woman has won."

"So she caught some flack for posing in swimsuits?"

"Yeah, people said that she was just trying to get by on her looks. But, hell-- she's marketing herself, and there was a lot of interest in her, and..."

"...And she was the best person on the track today. So she was a young, attractive woman in her 20's --looking as hot as she was ever going to look-- who chose to pose for pictures in a swimsuit?" My wife asked. "Good for her."

"I'm so glad we see things the same way."

I may be paraphrasing some of the above.