Life Through the Eyes of an Ambulance Driver

I just finished drafting my fantasy baseball teams for 2010. I use Yahoo Fantasy Baseball. It’s free and I like the way their site works. Last year, I did terrible. I came in dead last in my rotisserie league (I was beat by a guy who didn’t even manage the team after the season started). I think my main problem was that my first draft pick was Jimmy Rollins, a former MVP, but had a horrible year that year. I did better in my head to head league. My team got to the finals and was beaten in the final match, so I got second in that league.

This year, I wanted to do better. I bought a couple of fantasy baseball magazines and watched the fantasy baseball 404 on mlb.tv. I also resided not to pick Cubs players for my team. I always pick them because I think they will do well, and I need to realize that they while maybe good players on the team, are not so great compared to the rest of baseball. The Cubs haven’t won a world series in over 100 years, maybe I should think about that. I also took some advice I read about not relying on rookie potential. It may be cool to land that next star that no one else took, but that won’t win you the league. However, Nelson Cruz worked for me last year, and this year I picked Jason Heyward fairly early on.

This year, I picked two teams again. One rotisserie and one head to head. I also picked another one as an experiment that I will outline later. The leagues are 12 team leagues. Yahoo uses the 5×5 format which keeps track of the following stats.

Batting:

• batting average
• runs scored
• RBI
• HR
• stolen bases

Pitching:

• wins
• saves
• strikeouts
• ERA
• WHIP

Yahoo fantasy baseball lets you have 10 position player positions and 8 pitcher positions. I also have 5 bench positions.

So for my first team, Splinter_hands, it is a rotisserie league, and my head to head team is blister. Don’t ask me where I got the names of the teams from, I’m horrible with being creative. This year Yahoo added an additional position to the position player group, another util spot. Yahoo also added another pitcher position. I was not aware of this until half way through the draft.

My draft picks are as follows:

Splinter_hands (7th draft position):

1. 1B Prince Fielder
2. P Roy Halladay
3. SS Derek Jeter
4. P Mariano Rivera
5. OF Jason Heyward
6. 3B Adrian Beltre
7. P Josh Beckett
8. P Heath Bell
9. OF Ryan Ludwick
10. IF Placido Polanco
11. P Jorge De La Rosa
12. P John Lackey
13. OF Carlos Gonzalez
14. C Benjie Molina
15. IF/OF Mark DeRosa
16. OF Brett Gardner
17. P Clay Buchholz
18. OF Juan Pierre
19. P Andy Pettitte
20. P Joba Chamberlain
21. P Phil Hughes
22. OF Austin Jackson
23. IF Troy Glaus

Blister (5th draft position)

1. OF Ryan Braun
2. OF Matt Holliday
3. IF Kevin Youkilis
4. 2B Robinson Cano
5. P Mariano Rivera
6. OF Jason Heyward
7. P Josh Beckett
8. IF Gordon Beckham
9. SS Elvis Andrus
10. C Bengie Molina
11. IF/OF Mark Derosa
12. OF Ryan Ludwick
13. P Jorge De La Rosa
14. P Tim Hudson
15. P Jon Rauch
16. IF Placido Polanco
17. C Yadier Molina
18. P Clay Buchholz
19. IF Maicer Izturis
20. P Joba Chamberlain
21. P Phil Hughes
22. P Derek Lowe
23. P Mark Buehrle

I feel better about this year’s teams than last year. I plan to rotate through my pitchers more on my head to head team. In previous years I had more luck in being able to hold just a couple of good starters and pick matchups that I liked each day to acquire pitchers each day. However, I just saw where I won’t be able to do that as much as Yahoo has put a 6 player a week acquisition rule in place. That puts a damper in my strategy. I wasn’t expecting to have great starting pitching picks as I would just choose each day who I thought would win. I’m going to have to keep an eye on the free agents and see if I can’t hold down some better pitching and just draft one pitcher a day for match ups.

I’m excited to be doing my fantasy baseball this year. I know I spend way too many hours looking over all the numbers and keeping an eye out for better players to get, but that’s just part of the engineer in me liking to analyze numbers I guess.

So the third team I drafted I am experimenting with pitching. Typically, hitters are picked in the first round, and hitters continue to dominate the picks for the first few rounds. Pitching tends to be picked later on. I thought I would take advantage of this. Since there is no innings pitched limit in head to head,  I loaded my team with pitchers and plan to rotate them through on the days of their starts. I did however take hitters on first two rounds as they were top tier hitters, and I need some hitting production to compete at all. I’m not too concerned if I win this one, but I’m curious what kind of position I can get in the end if my picks are focused on only half of my stats (pitching) that I need to win each week. Here’s the results of my draft:

bud_selig_is_evil (7th draft position):

1. 1B Mark Teixeira
2. OF Ichiro Suzuki
3. P CC Sabathia
4. P Felix Hernandez
5. P Mariano Rivera
6. P Josh Johnson
7. P Heath Bell
8. P Wandy Rodriguez
9. P Clayton Kershaw
10. P Ryan Dempster
11. P John Danks
12. P Randy Wells
13. P Jorge De La Rosa
14. P David Aardsma
15. P Carlos Zambrano
16. 3B Adrian Beltre
17. C A.J. Pierzynski
18. IF Placido Polanco
19. IF Micer Izturis
20. OF Brett Gardner
21. OF Juan Pierre
22. OF Cameron Maybin
23. IF Troy Glaus

Now if I could only get Yahoo to make an Android app for fantasy baseball like they did for the iPhone

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.

Ever since I resigned from my job with Aurora Fire Rescue, I’ve been trying to get back on to a fire department. My latest endeavor is West Metro Fire Rescue. 

Starting earlier this year they opened up their applications for entry level firefighter. I tried to get on with this department when I first moved out to Colorado, but never got anywhere with it. They have the most difficult physical test of all the departments I’ve tested with. Their test isn’t difficult in the elements that you have to do, but your score is weighted based on your time. This means you have to go as hard as you can to get as low of a time as possible to get a better score. I got a 90% on the test, which is much better than the last time I did it.  I was really happy with that score. Last time I did it I barely passed somewhere in the low 70′s.  This time I had really trained hard to try to get a good score. The written test, I scored a 79. Not as good as I had hoped because I thought I knew almost all of the questions that I answered. Careless mistakes is all I can figure. The oral boards I had never done with this department. When I finished the oral board, I felt really good. I never feel good coming out of my oral boards.

This week I got my score for the oral boards and I scored somewhere in the low 70′s. This puts me #75 on the hiring list. I’m sad that this is my ranking. I want to leave my current job and get on with a fire department really bad. West Metro is a great department, and I would love to work for them. The hiring list is good for 2 years. Normally, I would think OK, I have a chance. But with the economy in the tank like it is now I don’t really think I have a good chance of getting hired. I don’t know how much hiring is going to go on if departmetns are not hiring to expand, but just to replace retirees.

I think what disapoints me the most is that once again, my life is still going to be on hold. Driving an ambulance, I don’t get paid much of anything. Basically all I can afford to pay for is food, rent, gas, and my car payment. There’s really not much I can do with my life. I rent a room in a house from a friend of mine. I really want my own home so I can have a dog and do what I want with my house. I have nothing to show for what I’ve done so far. I’m 32 years old and still living like a college student. Its very depressing to think that this is the best I can do when I know I’m capable of much more. My girlfriend lives in Salt Lake. She enjoys where she is living and I enjoy where I am living. She has more to keep her in Salt Lake than I have keeping me in Denver. She enjoys her job and I am sick of mine. If I can’t ever have a fire department job here, then there is nothing that can really hold me here. Getting a fire job for me is more than just getting a job, its about being able to start living my life the way I want to.

Well the week started out kind of different. Its nice to get some variety as my job is boring me to death.

My regular partner wasn’t able to get into work for the first day of the week as he was stuck at an airport from bad weather. So that left me without a partner for the day. I manged to keep my self entertained. I went on a blood draw for a DUI. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was the person who had hit one of our ambulances that evening. My old partner was on a scene when this guy hit the side of her ambulance. Cops were already on the scene and saw it happen. The crazy thing, is the guy who hit the ambulance tried to drive off. The Cops ran him down on foot and pulled him out of his car to put him in custody. Thankfully no one was seriously injured, but my old partner had some pretty bad back pain as a result.

The next day, thankfully,  my partner was back. We had one call that was interesting. Our patient had had recent knee replacement surgery and had fallen. When we got there, his artificial knee was sticking out of his skin. It looked as if the stitch had ripped open. It reminded me of that scene from the Terminator when Arnold cuts open his hand to show the guy that he is a cyborg. We used the KED to stabilize the injury. Its a shame that we don’t have anything really good for stabilizing this kind of an injury.

On another note, I was talking to a friend of mine this week that works for one of the other agencies. He was transporting a non emergent patient. They stopped at a stop light when two guys opened up the back doors to their ambulance and they threw a guy in who had been stabbed. My friend told his driver to go emergent to their trauma center. The guy who was stabbed was a big guy who was sweaty and bloody, so he was difficult to get up on the bench seat. His driver was driving like a mad man throwing him around the back of the ambulance. Come to find out the guy who had done the stabbing was trying to run the ambulance off the road to finish the job. They finally got the hospital. Lesson learned, lock your doors.

Today, Google announced that they have taken their web browser, Chrome, out of Beta. I know there are concerns about privacy and whatnot, but I still really like Chrome. It has been my default browser for a while now. Its much faster to load the program and then to load pages than the other browsers out there.

Before I was using Chrome, I was using Opera, as it loaded the fastest. Before that it was Mozilla Firefox, and I was using that back when it was called Phoenix and Firebird. I had become a big fan of Mozilla there for a while, but my tastes have changed. I was using Thunderbird for my email client. Now I am using Gmail. I was using Mozilla’s Sunbird/Lightning for my calendar. Now I use Google Calendar. I’m just not the fan of Internet Explorer. My company makes us use it to interact with our scheduling software. That is the only time I use it now.

Bill O’reilly had some interesting points to say last night during his talking points. He was talking about President Elect Barack Obama’s plans to control our intelligence gathering capabilities. Here’s what he had to say.

Tension is rising between India and Pakistan because it looks like the killers who attacked Mumbai were based inside Pakistani territory. If shooting breaks out between these two countries, the world will have yet another crisis created by Muslim terrorists.

It is obvious to sane people that the American intelligence agencies must continue to stay ahead of the terror-killers and disrupt plots like Mumbai should they be directed here. To do that, information from captured terror suspects becomes vital.

But President-elect Obama has committed himself to an undefined no torture policy and is also having some difficulty finding someone to head up the CIA. Former CIA Chief of Staff John Brennan has taken himself out of the running because some far-left loons criticized him for taking an aggressive anti-terror stance after 9/11.

This is very disturbing. The far-left wants the CIA to go by the Army Field Manual when interrogating suspects. If that happens, all of us will be in danger.

Why? Well, here’s what the manual says: “Prisoners of war who refuse to answer (questions) may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.”

Now — and this is important — that is fine for the military. It is not their job to break down terror suspects. It’s their job to kill or capture them on the battlefield. The CIA should interrogate high-value targets.

But if Obama orders the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies not to employ any tough interrogation methods, trust me, many people will die. The terrorists are not going to stop, and only very aggressive action against them has kept us safe since 9/11.

But these far-left loons, these despicable people who blame America for worldwide terrorism, now have far more power in this country than they did just one month ago.

I believe Barack Obama understands the danger the Muslim terrorists pose to the world. I believe Mr. Obama will not destroy the CIA’s ability to break down terror suspects. He has to know that hardcore terrorists are not going to give up information easily.

But still some people don’t get it, and these people are foolish and dangerous, so crazed by their far-left ideology they’d allow innocent people to die for it.

The USA should never torture, but coerced interrogation at the direction of the president is vital when lives are on the line. Of course, the loons will never acknowledge that. They don’t want to do anything “unpleasant” to terror suspects.

And that’s “The Memo.”

I have to say I am in complete agreement with him. I am also very concerned about what is going to happen when Obama closes (read bottom of page 5) down Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo). Something many people don’t seem to understand about the prisoners being held at Gitmo is that they are not protected by the Geneva Convention. They are not even prisoners of war. Anytime anyone decides to take up arms against another country and does not wear a uniform identifying themselves as a member of a fighting army for a soverign nation, they are just terrorists and criminals. If you have an official picture of Al Qaeda’s uniform (and by that I mean more than a turban, beard, and some raggy clothing) I’d like to see it. That is because these people are not representing any sovereign nation. These people are being kept at Gitmo because they are not Prisoners of War (POW’s). Therefore they are not afforded the rights of a POW. Gitmo is outside of the USA and therefor not bound by having to give prisoners the same rights that prisoners who are caught in the USA have such as a speedy trial. Once Gitmo is closed, those prisoners will be brought to the USA where the ACLU and every scum sucking lawyer will have a field day on giving these people rights and forcing them to be released. Many of these prisoners have no official charges that they are capable of being tried for. But make no doubt about it. They are enemies of the USA. They hate the USA. As soon as they are released, because of the ACLU taking the federal government to court over their wrongful imprisonment, these terrorists would have no hesitation in walking into a daycare and blowing it up. These people hate the USA, and the best thing for our safety is to keep them locked up and throw away the key. By keeping them in Gitmo, they can stay there and be out of reach of left wing bleeding heart liberals who want to set them free. As long as they are there, they can’t ever hurt us. Unfortunately, while bleeding hearts mean well, they are naive. Their little ideal world does not exist and reality is not something they understand. There are people out there that hate the USA and want to see it and everything it stands for destroyed. Don’t believe me, think about what happened on 9/11. Jihadists around the world would love to see that happen to all of America if they knew how to make it happen. 

In addition to keeping these terrorists behind bars, Gitmo allows us to have a place to interrogate these people without human rights activists breathing down our necks. There is nothing right about pulling out people’s fingernails, beatings, or any kind of physically debilitating torture. Things such as sleep deprivation, with holding food, playing loud heavy metal music, or The Barney Song played over and over are humane interrogation methods. It is methods that break people down so we can get them to tell us information.  Remember Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? 

He was the architect of 9/11. He was captured in Pakistan in 2003. He was eventually sent to Gitmo where he squealed because we turned the screws on him. What did he tell us? He gave us names and descriptions of other terrorists as well as plans that Al Qaeda had in the works towards hurting the USA. This information has been instrumental in deterring terrorist attacks on our country.

It boggles my mind that people value the well being of terrorists who are hell bent on killing us more than ensuring that America stays safe. I gauran-damn-tee you that terrorist will not EVER return the favor for of us being nice to them. Want proof (more, more, more, more) ?

It is absolutely imperative that we do not ever let up on fighting the war on terrorists. The longer it is since 9/11, the less people seem to think that anything will ever happen to us. Terrorists are resigned to killing us even if it means their own death. It appears to me, there are many terrorists who are more dedicated to this cause than many Americans who instead want to make sure that we are nice to terrorists.

I know there are many people that believe that we can’t become like them because we have to be different. I agree. Here’s an idea, we let the military and CIA do what they need to do to win. I’m sure the majority of the people in charge of defending our freedom can be held accountable for their actions without getting the ACLU involved. When did terrorist ever get rights in our country anyway?

My Alma Mater, Mississippi State University, has had a pathetic excuse for a football team since the turn of this century. The loss in the egg bowl, against our biggest rivals, the Ole Miss Rebels, had to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Losing 45-0 is an embarrassment that can’t go unnoticed.

Today, Sylvester Croom, head football coach for MSU resigned. Its about time. He has only had 1 winning season in his 5 years compiling a 21-38 record. Considering MSU is in the SEC, considered by many the strongest conference in the NCAA, there is no excuse to not be able to recruit talent and field a good team. Croom went 4-8 this season, making $1.7 million. I’d have to say, after seeing the computer labs that we were given to work with while I was a student there, there are a lot better places that kind of money could have been spent.

I was excited at the prospect of finding great deals online for Black Friday with retailers offereing prospects of big sales online. I must say I was disappointed on two levels. One, I didn’t find anything I really wanted that was a great deal. Two, I’m broke. So po, I can’t afford the ‘o’ and the ‘r’ to go with it.

For example, my laptop is 5 years old. I’m surprised it is still working, being a Dell. That and surprisingly, I can still use it for my daily needs, except for any computer game made in the last 4 years. But otherwise, it still serves the original purpose I got it for, being my entertainment center. I’ve been eyeing Apple’s the new Ipod Touch. Now that our ambulances have wifi, we can sit and play on the Internet all day (such as I am making this post). The Itouch, as it sometimes referred to, would allow me to peruse the Internet from the front of my ambulance without having to lug this bohemouth around. With Apple’s traditional Black Friday Sale, I was hoping maybe, just maybe, I could get a smokin deal on one. But, the best I could find was about $20 off. Yeah, that’s better than nothing, but with my pathetic hourly wage, I still can’t see where I can afford $200 for a luxury item like that. So, here I sit with my ancient computer, still doing the same thing I’d be able to do with the Itouch, just $200 cheaper.

Ordinarily, getting the opportunity to sing “Start your day with DOA, doo dahh, doo dahh…” (sung to the tune of Camptown Races) is funny. But not today. Its supposed to be the day when families drive from around town to a family member’s house to enjoy each other’s company and have a wonderful piece of Granny Schikelgroober’s pumpkin pie. But that isn’t what happened. Instead, today was the day when Granny Schiklegroober wakes up dead only to be found by family. Its sad. I feel bad for the family who is having to cope with the lost of their loved one today.

It’s comical how many fire alarms that the fire dept went on today. The majority of them were in the first half of the day, which is when people are cooking. It appears there are a number of people that don’t know how to cook without trying to burn down their house. My personal favorite is when the fire dept got called on a structure fire. It turned out to be an oven fire. I can just picture it. People are panicking as they watch flames erupting INISDE their oven. I emphasize inside. Lets think about this. The inside of the oven is nothing but metal. Its designed to withstand a lot of heat. You know, if you close the door, there’s a great chance that the fire won’t get outside of the oven and it might just extinguish itself because it will burn the oxygen in there. This isn ‘t rocket science people.

There was a somewhat good dinner for us to eat today. Surprisingly, there was no Turkey. How do you have Thanksgiving without Turkey? There was some tasty honey baked ham that the company sprung for. It wasn’t a Thanksgiving dinner like mom makes, but it was better than the ham sandwich I packed in my lunch box.

I looked at my paycheck stub that was in my mailbox today, only to find how disappointing the pay rate was for one of my shifts. I picked up a 24 hr shift last pay period and discovered that I was only paid the state minimum wage of $7.02/hr.  Ordinarily my regular wage is a paltry $10.04/hr. I don’t understand how my company can justify to pay me less money per hour to do the exact same work. Not only that, how they can justify paying me minimum wage. Uneducated, unskilled idiots get paid minimum wage to do mindless tasks with shovels and dirt. I am an educated skilled worker doing a job that requires me to have a 3 certifications, a driver’s license, and a clean criminal background to do my job.