2011 was another wonderful year for Wendy and I. We had a lot of fun and got to go see more new places. Its fun still being in the first years of marriage.

Wendy is still enjoying her job doing urgent care for kids. She works most evenings which means we get to spend time together during the day. Believe it or not, but I do mange to keep myself busy even though I don’t have a job. I just don’t see how families with both spouses working find time to get things done. This summer, Wendy got more interested in biking, and she joined me on some bike rides. I’m glad that she can share my joy in bike riding.

Speaking of bike riding, I had to buy a new bike this summer as my old one had frame issues I wasn’t aware of until a local shop pointed it out to me. After a lot of sweat and work, I finally was able to make it to the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon this summer riding my bike. Last summer I was only able to make it up part of the ride. It was a big accomplishment for me as I rode up the road several times a week. I was also able to do some bike riding with my neighbor this summer as well. It was fun getting to ride with other people this year. Enough about biking.

We spent another week in AZ this year to go see my beloved Cubbies at spring training. Wendy was able to go to a conference while we were down there so her job payed her way. Unfortunately this year my Cubs were abhorrent. I stopped watching baseball before the summer even started as I was so discouraged. To make things worse, I had to hear about the Cardinals winning the World Series. Ugh! Maybe I just needed to take some time off from baseball as I’m looking forward to next season already.

Later on in the Spring Wendy and I made a trip back to our homes to visit with family. We spent a few days in San Antonio, TX  (Wendy’s home town), and we spent a few days in Madison, MS (my home town). I’m pretty sure that is the last time I will cast my shadow on the state of MS as my parents have decided they are going to move out to UT. They are in the process of fixing up and de-cluttering their house so they can put it on the market come spring time. It will be nice to have family nearby. My parents have made three trips out to UT this year looking at homes and getting to know the area. They’ve also brought 3 trailer loads of stuff to put in a storage facility. Guess that means they are putting down roots. We don’t know when they will move yet, but they want to get their house sold first before that happens. Its a pretty big deal as they have called central Mississippi their home their entire lives.

My brother Chris and his wife Lisa left Virginia this year. Chris got a job back in California with the Air Force. They are back living where they were in Palmdale before they moved to Virginia. Chris will be teaching test pilots how to be test pilots. On their trek across America, they stopped in at our house for a few days. It was nice getting to visit with them.

During the summer, Wendy and I took a road trip out west. Yeah, I know, we live out west, but there’s more West past us. We drove through Nevada (Reno, you are a disgusting little town) and toured around Northern California. It was a fun little trip and we got to see some great sites.

Our big trip this year was a backpacking trip to SW Colorado. We spent 6 days on the trail in the Weminuche Wilderness. It was an awesome trip. Wendy said it was the most hardcore trip she had ever been on. It was a route that had been a dream of mine for several years. It was a tough hike, but we had a lot of fun.

We also made another short trip down to southern Utah to visit Zion National Park. We went in early fall so the temperature was perfect. There was a lot of beautiful scenery down there.

The week before Thanksgiving this year we flew to Tulsa, OK to visit with Wendy’s grandmother and more of her family. We had a great time. I think Wendy enjoyed showing me off to her family. Grandmom June is a wonderful person.

I’ve spent the last year and a half on the hiring list for Salt Lake City Fire Dept. I started as #13, but they only hired 8 people during this two year list time. I have sat at #5 since then. Unfortunately, the list is set to expire here soon, and I’ll have to test with them again. Its very frustrating as I am in a good hiring position, but the city budgets haven’t been conducive to hiring. Stupid economy. I’ve tested a couple of other times with other departments, but have had no success. I’ve decided its time to step up to wearing the big boy pants, and I’m going to go to paramedic school. Starting this January, I’m going to be taking a couple of classes (Human Physiology and Medical Terminology) at the local college for prerequisites so I can apply for paramedic school that would start in Jan 2013. I hope that getting this will help improve my chances of getting hired. I’ve also come to realize that I really do enjoy the medical side of firefighting. It will be a while before all of this happens, but I’m starting the process now.

As you can see  in the photo this year, we got an addition to our family. Her name is Daisy. She’s a German Shepherd/Lab mix, not quite a year old. Madie and her have become friends, and we’ve enjoyed having her around. Benjamin, the cat, was not so excited about our decision, but all the kids are getting a long peacefully now.

My parents are out here for Christmas. My brother and his wife will be coming in tomorrow. It will be a full house here at the Cotting residence, but its nice to be surrounded by family.

I hope this finds you all well and hope that the next year will find you even better.

Jason

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YARPP

A while back, sometime in the late 90′s, I read about a place in Southwestern Colorado called the Weminuche Wilderness. Also known as The Backpacker’s Nirvana, it is located in the San Juan National Forest. I made my first visit to there in 1998 with a Philmont friend, Bill Sassani, where we did an overnight trip, and then drove around the area. I was hooked. I wanted to do more exploring in the Weminuche. I’ve made two more additional trips there since then. Once with Wendy in 2007 where we backpacked up the Valecito River. The other time with my brother Chris and a college friend Ramsey where we did some day hiking the week before my wedding in 2009.

There is an historical narrow gauge railroad that runs between the towns of Durango and Silverton called the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad (D&SNGR). It runs along the western edge of the Weminuche Wilderness and makes a few stops along the way. I read about how backpackers use the train to access the wilderness, and I soon decided that one day I wanted to make a backpacking trip that took advantage of the train.

In the book Hiking Colorado’s Weminuche and South San Juan Wilderness Areas, there is a hike described using the train to do a trip. The hike starts with the train dropping you off at the Elk Park stop, and then you get picked up at the Neddleton stop. Wendy and I decided to do the hike over 6 days and 5 nights..

Wendy had some additional time off outside of the planned hiking days so we decided to do some extra touring around. Our first day we drove to Telluride, CO where we spent the night at the Victorian Inn. From the door of the inn, you could smell a mouthwatering restaurant. It smelled like a steak place, but I wanted to have a steak at the end of the trip, so we decided to try another restaurant. The inn was located within walking distance of the main strip of town where the shops and restaurants were located. We found an Italian restaurant called the Telluride Bistro. I had the best chicken parmesan I’ve ever had before. After dinner we took the free gondola up to the ski area. It was a nice little moonlit ride up and back.

Telluride, CO

Next morning, during our free breakfast at the inn, we overheard some other guests referring to some snow coming in the next few days. The weather report I had seen earlier referred to a chance of snow, and these folks were talking about inches accumulating in Telluride. It was something to consider. We headed out towards Silverton. The drive between Ouray and Silverton is hands down my favorite drive in the country. Its a beautiful mountain drive that puts you up along sheer rock walls, with beautiful views, colorful mountains, and old mining ruins. Its a windy road that is just fun to drive, so it can be hard to look and drive. We took our time getting to Silverton stopping to read signs and take photos. We ran into some rain along the way too, a precursor to the upcoming days.

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1. California Bound Wendy had some time off over the 4th of July...

YARPP

When we left town, we left Madie, our German Shepherd, at doggy day care at Dogmode. She seems to really like it there, and we have been impressed with how well they treat the dogs. We drove all the way to Missoula, MT the first day by interstate. That took most of the day and left us with about another three hours to get to the park. More importantly about the day, according to Wendy, it was Wendy’s birthday! She opened gifts and had cake a couple of days earlier to celebrate.

The next day, we toured around Missoula a little. Missoula is one of the bases where the National Forest service keeps some of its smokejumper wildland firefighters. I was particularly interested in this and was excited to get to see the base. There was a college intern there that was taking care of the visitor’s center and gave us a tour.

This is the base for the National Forest service Missoula Smokejumpers

After driving around town a little more, we headed on to Glacier. We bought a National Parks annual pass earlier this year and used this to get into the park. Once inside we headed to the West Glacier visitors center. I have to say, I was not impressed at all with the visitor’s center. It wasn’t very big and it didn’t display much information. Even the gift shop was just a small room. We later discovered that the newer larger visitor center was on the East side of the park. From there we headed over to the backcountry office where we got our permit for staying in the backcountry. A number of national parks have gone to a backcountry permit or reservation system to help regulate the number of visitors to areas of the park. This helps with overcrowding issues that have been happening in national parks.

The sign to the entrance of Glacier National Park on the West Entrance

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YARPP

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

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YARPP

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.

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YARPP

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.

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YARPP

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.

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YARPP

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.

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YARPP

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?

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YARPP

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.

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YARPP