Chicago

I will be flying out March 31 to a place I swore I'd never go.  Chicago.

It's my first business trip.  For three fun-filled days, I get to spend 8 hours playing with the Sysmex XT-4000 then another 6 hours reading manuals for it.  Fun, fun, fun.

Since I also swore I'd never go to Dallas, I'm beginning to think that I should stop saying that.  Especially since I swore I'd never go to LA.

I'm not saying Chicago is a scary place.  I'm just saying it's number 13 in murders, 16 in robberies, and 26 in Aggravated Assault.  They don't even release their total rank in violent crimes.  As opposed to Glasgow which has had one murder in over a decade.

While working in Atlanta (8 in Violent Crime, 12 in Murder, 10 in Robberies, and 7 in Aggravated Assault), I stayed in a small and really, really sketchy efficiency unit in a really, really sketchy part of Norcross, GA.  After a couple nights of watching drug deals going down outside my apartment door—and a week of limping favoring the right side of my ribs after that idiot cop hit me—I decided  go invest in a Kevlar vest.  I dropped by www.bulletproofme.com and picked up a Level II vest.  Level II is the same protection as Level IIa, but heavier and stiffer.  It was a wee bit stuffy in Atlanta (in July), but the added stiffness translated into better protection during a car wreck.  Of course, my second car wreck was a rear-end, so it didn't do me a heck of a lot of good there.

At any rate, the piece of mind brought by being secure against up to three hits from a .44 magnum was worth the $350.  Plus, in preparation for my trip to the Windy City, I upgraded my 5x8" trauma pack to Level IIIa.  It doesn't add that much weight, and I'm guessing it'll be less stuffy in Chicago in March anyway.  I can certainly take it for four days to have a better chance at surviving a meeting with a thug.

Besides, I apparently have as much to fear from law enforcement in Chicago as I do from the lawless.

According to my coworker who preceded me to the training session, the facility and the hotel they put us up in are in a nice part of town, though.  Of course, I don't believe there is a good part of any city with more than 100,000 people.  Mankind was never meant to live stacked on top of one another.  Could be worse, though.

And I shouldn't have to worry about crazy Atlanta drivers, either.  Which actually figured into my purchase as much as shootings.  Possibly more, in fact.  More cops have been saved by their vests from steering wheel columns that bullets, after all.  Maybe they could actually wear their seat belts and not have that issue, though.

The real pain in the rump roast is that I'll be away from my ladies for the longest stretch since moving up here.  I wouldn't mind the trip nearly as much if I didn't have my kids who get excited and say, "Dada!?!?!" as soon as my key hits the front door handle.

HIS said I can draw a laptop from supply for the trip, and hopefully it has a webcam and Skype or Google Hangout.  There's a lot of teleconferencing in BFE, so I have a decent shot.  Plus, this place goes out of its way to make its employees happy, so I could probably use my own webcam and install Skype if it wasn't already equipped.

And because I'm having fun pointing out stupid gun tricks by the CPD, here's another good one.  At least no one was hurt that time.

Let the Cutting Begin!

a.k.a. Frequent Flyer Miles

So, a little late here, but in the biggest news since the announcement of Squirt, the Dot is getting her surgery.  After two years, two surgeons, three hospitals, and three insurance companies, our fight for our daughter has an end in sight.  The beloved—who, incidentally, kicks all kinds of awesome—finally got fed up and on the advice from a cranio forum sent the Dot’s CT’s to one Dr. Jeffery Fearon of The Craniofacial Center.

At this point, I would like to point out that the name of the center is quite accurate.  The Craniofacial Center is the be-all, end-all of the craniofacial world.  Dr. Fearon is the only doctor in the US (world?) who does nothing but craniosynostosis.  Pretty much everyone else is at least a plastic surgeon who at least does cleft palate, hare lip, and—in the case of our two previous doctors—boob jobs and tummy tucks.

He also does free e-mail consults with concerned parents, which is flat-out awesome.  I suspect he does it to get weird cases.  He has 300+ publications since 1985, and I doubt you get that many without scoring some out-there case studies.  Speaking of publications, one of his most recent was an August 2013 retroactive study of 34 of the surgery that the Dot will be getting.  The nearest to that is a center in Paris…with five.

Hey, when your kid is having her head split open in two places, might as well get the best.

Dr. Fearon suggested two tests that we can’t get in this state or any of the surrounding ones.  Welcome to the frontier.  He also recommended an MRI, which, luckily, you can get in Billings.  Unfortunately, the reason we had to go Billings it has to be under sedation for a kid that young.  I have anesthesia-phobia.  See earlier post.

At this point, I would like to introduce the second hero of our story, Dr. Janet Armstrong.  Since the surgeon in Billings wouldn't return our phone calls, Dr. Armstrong cut orders for the MRI.

The MRI showed a seriously warped skull (shocker) and slightly restricted CSF flow secondary to a 5-8mm Chiari malformation.  Said malformation is known to cause transient autistic spectrum disorders.  Hmm, I wonder if maybe we’ve been saying that to doctors for two years.  Or maybe even have two years of documentation from various other docs and early interventionists in three cities in two states.

Once that was emailed to Dr. Fearon, he said she needed a suboccipital decompression for the Chiari and a cranial vault restructuring.  Everywhere else would do those separately, but he feels the risks of two trips under anesthesia outweigh the risk of adding extra cutting to one surgery.  I agree (see aforementioned anesthesia-phobia).  And with 34+ under his belt, he has to be getting good at it by now.

So it looks like we will be flying down to Dallas to get our surgery.  If we can’t get an exception, it will be out-of-network and insurance will only pay 60%.  That said, MSHA claims it can do anything, so out-of-network, they only pay 20%.  My math says that paying 40% is twice as good as paying 80%.  Or you could say them paying 60% is three times as good as a place paying 20%.  Either way, [insert rude and anatomically unlikely suggestion here] Crestpoint/MSHA!  You suck.  Not that I’m bitter or anything over about $3,000 in bills any normal insurance would have covered.

It’ll still be a steep hit, but between my 20% pay raise, grants for travel and co-pay, and an absurdly generous church family, we should come out financially intact. Maybe.

The important thing is the Dot finally has a shot at a normal life.  Here’s to awesome doctors and tenacious mothers.

Crime in the big city

So, apparently, we have some of the smartest criminals in the world up here.  They’re so sneaky smart, they don’t commit crimes.

After a coworker expressed relief that her husband’s car door was open, otherwise the total stranger she found taking shelter in there would have died of hypothermia, I found myself a wee bit dumbfounded.  I mean, I think I’d have another reaction like, “What the [redacted] are you doing in my car!?!?!”  She did express relief that she and her husband had stopped leaving their keys in the ignition a few weeks ago.

This is the second time I have found myself truly baffled by the sense of security around here.  A few weeks into my tenure, I overheard a conversation about a nurse who had accidentally locked herself out.  Another nurse replied that she herself no longer knew where the key to her own door was.

At any rate, I did an unscientific crime history of the town over coffee this morning.

Me:  “So everyone leaves their cars running in the winter.  Has there ever been a car theft?”

Coworker 1:  “Not that I know of.”

Coworker 2:  “Well, it would be kind of hard, since everyone knows what everyone else drives.”

Me:  “Ah.  Okay, everyone leaves their doors unlocked.  Has there ever been a break-in?”

Coworker 1:  “Not that I know of.”

Coworker 2:  “Wait, remember a few years ago?  That girl that broke into a couple houses?”

Coworker 1:  “Oh, that’s right.  They caught her, though.”

Coworker 2:  “There’s lots of break-ins up at St. Marie, though.”

Coworker 1:  “Well, yeah, but that’s St. Marie.”

There is the occasional bar fight, and these days there aren’t any rifle racks in the rear windows of trucks (they’re under the back seats, though, and everyone knows it).  Other than that, crime is non-existent.  For now.  Williston was a quiet area, too, until they found oil.  There’s none around here, but the Bakken pipeline should be coming through nearby.  That said, the plan is apparently to build a work-camp and keep the workers as far away from town as possible.  Plus, it should only be for a couple years.

Growing up, I remember when my parents finally started locking their door.  They did, however, leave the living room window unsecured so that if they forgot the key, one of us kids could go on through.

‘Round here, they haven’t even gotten that far yet.

All that said, I would point out to those that might decide to take advantage of the townspeople’s trust in their fellow man:  at 57.7%, this state has the third highest rate of gun ownership in the country, plus at a population of 2500, everyone knows who lives in the house next door to them.

Small town quirkiness

The joys of small-town northern America.

1)  The radar display under the speed limit sign displays a smiley or frownie face depending on if you're above or below 5 over.

2)  Free outlets in employee parking for your vehicle's block heater is listed in your official benefit's guide.

3)  Big rims will get you eye rolls from the ladies, but big tires will get you points.

4)  Nobody locks their doors, which is good, because half of them have lost the keys.  Yet there hasn't been a home invasion in recorded history.

5)  People leave their cars running unattended during errands.

6)  Gas stations sell 2 different kinds of diesel depending on the time of year.

7)  Gas stations sell Yellow and Red HEET, and people know when to use which.

8)  70% of vehicles are trucks.  90% of those are 4WD.  100% of those have had it engaged.

9)  When an out-of-town trucker rips the top of his trailer off on the one overpass in town, the citizens ask, "Again?"

10) The only daily publication is six 8.5 x 11" pages, 4 of which are ads.

11)  Bars are considered places to stay out of trouble.

12) The directions to the dump include:  "Turn left at the 'Canada left' sign."

13) The high school fundraiser is a pub crawl led by the Saskatchewan Police Bagpipe Band.

Glyndwr Michael

Started on the anniversary of this hero's death.

Glyndwr Michael during his lifetime was known as an unfortunate man.  It probably all started with his name.  I mean, clearly, his last name should have been his first, not to mention the complete lack of consonants.

Glyndwr was born 4JAN1909.  He died 24JAN1943 from accidental ingestion of rat poison in an abandoned warehouse.  He was a semi-literate drifter who occasionally managed to find work as a day laborer.  His father committed suicide when he was 15, and his mother passed 3 years before he did.

In death, however, Glyndwyr saved the lives of thousands of his countrymen.

The Brits were planning an invasion of heavily fortified Sicily.  America had the support of the Sicilian mafia, who bribed, assassinated, and guerrilla-ed their route across the island to make their trip easier (another story altogether).

The Brits had Glyndwr.  Operation Mincemeat was a plan to let a fake intelligence officer wash up on a Nazi beach with vague intelligence on a planned invasion of Greece.  The stage was set, but they had one slight issue.  They needed a body.

Not just any body.  They needed a young-ish guy who could look like he died at sea and had no relatives who might ask annoying questions like, "Why do you need his corpse?"

So, when Glyndwr died, he disappeared and a couple months later, on the deck of the British submarine Seraph, Major William Martin was born.

The operation was successful, and the Nazi's pulled back troops from Sicily, making the British invasion less costly in time and lives.  Of course, on Stalin's advice, FDR decided to attack a heavily fortified beach in France (Gee, I wonder why a guy trying to own Eastern Europe would suggest that) instead of Churchill's plan of working from the awesome island that was now under Allied control and attacking a wider, less fortified stretch of sand, but again, that's another story.

William Martin (29MAR1907 - 24APR1943) is currently interred in Huelva, Spain.  In 1998, the British government released his actual identity, but hey, he was buried by the enemy with full military honors befitting a Major, so why disturb him?

KG7GPB

                  √    Amateur radio Technician

                        Amateur radio General

                   x   EMT-B

                        EMT-A

                        Ropes Rescue I

                        River Rescue I

                        Open Water SCUBA

                        Skydiver A

Unlike most people, my bucket list does not consist of places to go or things to do.  Mine consists of certifications I want to get.  Last November, after about two decades of "I'll get around to it" I finally sat for my amateur radio Technician class license exam.

In my defense, for most of the time I delayed, there were 5 classes, and 4 of them required a minimum proficiency of 5 words per minute in Morse code.  The 1 non-CW class was Technician, and it is still a relatively low-privilege class.  I cannot play in the HF band, which is where most of the around-the-world conversations take place.  It just didn't seem worth it at the time.

So when I found out that at some point in the last 20 years, they did away with 2 classes and ditched the CW proficiency requirements for the other two, I was ready to finally get around to trying.  Which of course means, it was 2 years later before I finally got around to it.  Just like I passed the exam in November and was so happy with myself, I am finishing writing about it 3 months later.

Hey, I'm a busy man.  If I don't teach my daughters to say "Rock On!" and throw horns, who will?

The Beloved has been somewhat dubious about the utility of amateur radio.  In her defense, most technology I touch tends to malfunction.  In fact, at the various labs I've worked, the following equation describes my luck:

R=D/T

Where R is the Reliability of an instrument, D is the distance from me, and T is the Time spent with me.

However, on our recent trip to Billings fort he Dot's MRI, I managed to use my poor old used 55-watt 2 meter mobile unit to contact a repeater from about 30-40 miles out and reach a fellow ham with crystal clear reception and transmission in an area with no cell reception.  Not that my rig is decrepit or anything.  It was NIB and the height of technology when it was introduced...roughly around when I learned about ham radio for the first time.  And that was on a temporary set-up with a magnetic mount antenna and a down-and-dirty power feed job.

So now, I have picked up a couple 25-watt 2 meters (which really are old and a little beat-up), my 5-watt handheld dual band, and my 55-watt Kenwood.  I'm supposed to pick up a 6-meter (diet shortwave) unit on extended loan, and figure I can rig a temporary inverted V dipole for it.

I'm leaning on the beloved to get her Technician later this year while I sit for my General.  And eventually I will splurge on a nice multi-band radio.  For now, I just want a dual-band  with dual-mode so I can work satellites from one unit.

Now to find a landlord that will let me build a true aluminum farm.

XY*

My worries of starting to lactate and/or menstruate have been officially laid to rest.  The oncoming storm is to be a bouncing young boy, hereafter to be referred to as “Squirt.”

Thank God.

Hopefully, there wasn’t a huge misreading of the ultrasound, especially given what I am about to say.

I would like to state that I don’t think I can exactly say I would have been just as happy if the Squirt had turned out to be a Squirtette, but I can say that had the Dot and Lump both been XY’s, I’d have been pulling for this one to be an XX.  I don’t think I could handle 3 or either genotype.  

And right or wrong, there are certain aspects to having a son.

For one thing, there’s just something about passing on your family name.  From a clinical, detached point of view, I’m not sure why.  The genes get passed down either way, but for whatever reason it’s important, it is.

And now my father now has 2 chances to pass on the family name.  Given the accident-prone nature of our lineage, it’s always best to have a back-up.

Plus, there are just certain things that a father can do with a son.  Like go to the garage once a month to flee three sets of ovaries work on the jeep.

Not that I would be opposed to the Dot or the Lump learning about auto work.  In fact, I intend to help them restore their first cars, as long as they choose a classic Jeep, early model Bronco, classic Toyota FJ, or VW Thing.  It’s not that I’m choosy, I just want to instill good taste and keep my children from going over 50 mph.

Who needs a nanny chip when you have 33” wheels?

This also frees me from attempting to make one or more of my girls into a rough-and-tumble tomboy.  Now when we have tea parties, I don’t have to feel I need to take them to a demolition derby to balance things out.  Girls, thank your brother someday for that.

On top of all that, there's the relatively insignificant fact that the Squirt’s name has been picked out since before the Beloved and I tied the proverbial knot, and it would have been a shame to waste such a great name.

So here’s to a Y chromosome to have a beer with someday and say “Man, women are crazy.”



*Part of my backlog; started several weeks ago.