X-ray Chapter 4, part 3

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In the ambulance, Frank waited. Today he was in the driver's seat, so Ian climbed in shotgun. "I guess I tech today?" he asked.

Frank's reply was to drop the ambulance into gear and drive them down the block for coffee. Clearly, today was going to be a repeat of yesterday, Ian thought, at least where Frank was concerned. For a while he turned his partner's peevishness over his head. Should he say something to Frank? Would that make it worse? Did it have to do with his previous partner, Richards? Andy seemed to think so. And Andy seemed to have a good head on the shoulders.

Deciding the Frank's bitterness had to do with Richards felt like an accomplishment, but brought him no closer to a solution as to what he should do to improve things. He went over everything again. This was easy to do because there was very little: he was new, Frank was bitter, Richards was retired.

Further thought along these lines proved equally useless, and after a while Ian found his thoughts drifting back to the woman with the green eyes. How he allowed himself to say that?

The beeping of the MDT, and the radio at his hip coming to life rescued him from further ruminations: difficulty breathing, no BLS available. Frank switched on the lights and siren, and Ian closed his window; the siren was deafening.

"You can take this?" Frank asked over the roar of the engine.

"Yeah, I can take it," Ian said. Of course I can take it. In his mind he reviewed his treatment algorithms and meds.

"Good," said Frank. "This is it," he added several minutes later as he brought the ambulance up to the curb.

Out of the sidewalk Ian pulled the quote from the ambulance. Frank started to walk off towards the building unencumbered, but Ian wasn't about to shoulder all the equipment alone. "Take this," he said as he handed Frank the monitor, "and this," as he handed him the O2 duffel. Ian grabbed the ALS bag in the stair chair and headed up the steps of the building's stoop.

A panel of door bells took a half of one of the walls of the 3' x 3' outer lobby, but few of them were marked, and none of the more than bore the apartment number of their patient. Now what? Perhaps the door was unlocked? No, it was not. He was figuring the PTT button of his radio when Frank caught up and pressed every doorbell on the panel. A sick buzz filled the lobby, Ian pushed the door open, and they were in.

Ian rang for the elevator, and the doors ground open, discourse in the smell of stale urine. "Don't touch the walls," Frank said as he stepped in.

"Look out for the condom, there."

"At least they're practicing safe sex."

The doors ground closed in Ian looked at his partner. Frank and delivered the line in his usual slightly annoyed, slightly bored voice, and his face betrayed no emotion. Had he been joking? Ian couldn't tell. The doors ground open again in the stepped out.

Down the hall, knock on the door, the door swung open. 90° heat enveloped them. A feeble cry issued forth, male or female, Ian couldn't tell: "don't let the cat out!" The medics stepped in and closed the door.

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The spider and the bee

Shadow is presently fiercely watching, and occasionally trying to pounce on a bee. The bee is outside, so she can't get it, of course, otherwise I'd intervene - Shadow doesn't need to be stung on the nose or mouth. But her harmless pounces have drawn my attention to the plight of this bee, which has caught one of its legs in a spiderweb.

The bee is desperate. It alternately tries to pull itself away by walking and by flying. Neither work. The spider, from its safe location on the far side of the web, watches patiently: the bee is to strong for the moment. Some minutes or hours of struggle will wear it down, and I expect that the spider will then move in to finish the bee off.

And I am faced with a decision. It would be very easy to open the window, cut the web, and release the bee. But our interference in matters like this is rarely beneficial, except in as much as we sympathize with the bee, and feel better once we set it free, as if we've done something to make the world a better, fairer place.

We haven't, of course. We free the bee, and the spider suffers. What is more, how is it that the bee should be valued over the spider? Or the spider over the bee? Gary Larson wrote on this subject in There's a Hair in my Dirt, the story of Harriet, who loved all creatures (all cute, furry ones, at least) and did all she could for them. In each case she freed the bee, and ultimately, she makes the world a worse place for it. There is a balance between bees and spiders.

So do I give in to the emotions and free the bee, or give in to my reasoning and leave it to its death? Either way, I'm not exactly happy.

Postscript: Turns out that the bee escaped on its own, so all this was for nothing.

A disaster plan should use simple language

A disaster plan should use simple language, so as to avoid misunderstandings. The people using the plan may not, for any of a variety of reasons (e.g. tiredness, being distracted by the disaster itself or its sequela (real or imagined), being of limited education in the field of disaster management (or generally), reading in poorly lit conditions) have the capacity to dissect intricate prose, navigate through layered parenthetical commentary (however relevant that commentary (or parts of it) may be), or understand recursive commentary. Sentences should be short. Vocabulary should be basic.

How long do you want this story to be, anyway?

"What a fellow you are, [Stephen]. Such a thing won't be invented for another hundred and fifty years. And if we did have it, it would make for a very short story."

"I suppose it would. No better than a novella."

"Not even that. A short story. And not a very good one, either."

A day off

Yesterday, I had a day off. Finally. No TPC work bar a phone call or two. I spent the day occasionally on the computer, but otherwise either asleep or playing with my cats.

Joy.

Beyond this place there be DRAGONS

Hooray for open code

I'm not sure how, but my Firefox profile corrupted. I created a new profile, but the generic bookmark toolbar of the new profile stubbornly refused to be overwritten by my imported older toolbar. The solution? Open the profile's bookmarks document in TextEdit, pull out the code that gave the generic toolbar precedence, and give that code to my toolbar.

Hooray for open code!

X-ray Chapter 4, part 2

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Sara’s side of the bed was empty when he woke up. He stumbled out to the bathroom, tripping over Mynx as he did so, and emerged several minutes later, clean and shaved if not awake and energetic. Coffee, breakfast, and the walk to the car. Five minutes on local roads, half an hour on the BQE, several more minutes on local streets, and he pulled in to park, putting the car by the Fire Department Personnel Only sign again. He left a handwritten note in the dashboard to the effect that he was fire department personnel. At the station Lieutenant Squadron provided him with a key to the door, a real parking pass (Ian used it to replace his note, which he had little faith in) and took the parking ticket exchange, promising to take care of it.

Lieutenant Squadron also explained how the change of tour was supposed to work, with the change of radios, keys, and narcotics, and assigned him a locker. "Most of the medics come in in civilian clothes and change here." And he gave the general tour of the building: main office, closet, Captain's office, break room, Lieutenant Squadron's office, women's and men's locker rooms, garage, BLS supply, ALS supply; the last two being the glassed-in rooms Ian had seen yesterday. Only handful of rooms, Ian thought, but he makes it seem like a maze.

As he stood there, contemplating the hyperactive lieutenant, a tired looking paramedic approached him. "You're Steele?" The woman asked.

Ian read her name tag, which said Green. "Just like your eyes," he said, instantly regretting it. "Yes, I'm Steele. Ian Steele," he admitted.

"Here's your radio, here's your keys, and narcs'll be at the desk."

She walked off, and Ian ruminated on what had been his introduction to her. Only the second day and he’d already insulted someone.

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Author's question Re: X-ray

On my previous X-ray post (the first part of Chapter 4: Mortimer) I played around a bit with the chronology, presenting things out of sequence, to a degree, but I'm not sure that this came across.

*** BEYOND THIS PLACE THERE BE SPOILERS ***

My intent was to start in the middle, with the parking ticket, then quickly back up in time to when Ian arrived home. I did this for two reasons: first, "A parking ticket" follows closely from the closing of the previous chapter, binding them together. Second, I wanted to play around a bit with the narrative by moving back and forth in time. So I backed up by an hour or so, brought the narrative forward to the same point "A parking ticket?" and then continued forward past where that chapter began.

Did this work? Or was it too confusing?

X-ray Chapter 4, part 1

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CHAPTER FOUR
-- Mortimer --

"A parking ticket?" Sara asked.

"A parking ticket." They were sitting down to on usually late dinner for them, their normal schedule disrupted by Ian on arriving home until close to seven o'clock. Earlier, Sara had returned from work to an apartment without Ian: the situation she realized would not be uncommon in the future. "It was like walking onto the stage of ER when they're not filming," she had told him when he finally came home.
Ian gave her a tired but questioning look.

"I recognize the set: here's the triage desk, here's the trauma rooms, but it's empty. Lifeless," she added after a pause. He didn't understand her, she knew, but whether that was due to his tiredness or her poor description she couldn't tell. Probably a mixture of both, she thought. In any case, she let it go. "How was your day?" She asked.

Ian had thought extensively about this is he had driven home. The anticipation had far outweighed the reality, he had decided. He admitted this to Sara before collapsing onto the couch. Mynx sprang up next to him and he stroked her two or three times, but mechanically and without emotion. He looked up at Sara. "I guess we should think about dinner."

Sara nodded. "I'm sorry," she said.

Ian shrugged his shoulders. He was tired, and he didn't care; he was merely relieved to be home with Sara.

From the kitchen, Ian heard the refrigerator open close, and the sound of the sink. "How's your partner?" Sara called out to him.

"He's a schmuck." Ian stood and walked into the kitchen. "Want me to cut that?"

"Please. Not too small."

"I get to the bus -- the ambulance, and the whole cab is filled with smoke. Tells me to check the equipment -- I don't know where anything is. So I get him to show me but he's not happy. And then he goes off about how I should put my stuff only the top shelf, because the bottom shelf is his. One of the cabinets for our personal bags," he added, seeing her confusion.

"I don't think he said a single thing to me that wasn't absolutely necessary, and he's dressed like a mess, I mean he just radiates slovenliness." He turned his knife over and scraped his carrots into a bowl. "All the vegetables, right?"
Sara nodded. "Is he your partner tomorrow?"

"For the next day or two. My other partner I haven't met yet."

"Maybe he'll be better. When you meet him?"

"Thursday or Friday. He couldn't be worse." Ian put down his knife. "I tried calling you," he said sadly.

Sara embraced him. Mynx tangled herself in their legs.

"Come on," Sara said eventually. "Dinner will be at midnight."

Half an hour later they sat down together at the table. As he sat, Ian heard the crumple of the parking ticket in his back pocket. "Oh, yeah," he said, pulling it out to show Sara, "and to top it off, I got a parking ticket."

"A parking ticket?" Sara asked.

"A parking ticket." He dropped out of the table.

Sara picked the ticket up. "It says you parked in a restricted area?" She asked.
"Fire Department Personnel Only."

"But you are fire department."

Ian put down his fork. Why didn’t I think of that, he asked himself. "That's true," he said, taking the ticket back and looking at it. "I am."

"Maybe they can do something."

Ian nodded but the ticket back into his pocket. "How was your day?" He asked, forcing himself to smile, even if only a little bit.

Sara shrugged. "The reports are coming alone, and Jim seems to have finally figured out what he's supposed to be doing, but the air-conditioning in the library --"

"They still haven't fixed that?"

Sara shook her head. "They did but they didn't. One of the conference rooms is usually open and I go there. I don't think this is done she pointed her forget the piece of chicken on her plate.

"I don't know. Maybe it isn't." Ian swapped the chicken off their plates and onto a clean plate, which he put in the microwave oven. "What we talking about?"

Sara thought for moment. "I don't know," she finally said.

After a pause in which the microwave finished and he retrieved their chicken, Ian sat down again. "I did meet one guy that I liked, though. Well, two actually," he said, thinking of Captain Pullings. He had to admit to liking for the obviously benign, obviously competent, thoroughly spooky officer. "The guy who let me in -- oh, I still don't have a key --"

"They didn't give you one?"

Ian shook his head. "I barely got there on time, and of course they weren't expecting me anyway. But the guy who let me in seems pretty cool. He was saying that Richter -- Frank, was ticked because I took the place of his last partner -- somebody named Richards, I think."

"They got along well?"

"No idea. Didn't get to ask."

Sara paused with her fork halfway to her mouth.

"Harvey," Ian said. "I didn't ask Frank, he wouldn't answer. Harvey was the guy who let me in. You want a beer?"

Sara nodded. "Thanks."

"I think," said Ian as he pulled to bottles from the refrigerator and put them on the table, "I think -- well, I don't know. He's only my partner half the time, the other guy's probably better."

They finished their dinner and dishes, finished their beer in front of the television, and Ian finished another beer. Halfway through ER Sara crept off to bed. Halfway through Letterman's Top Ten List Ian caught himself nodding, and he dragged himself off to join her.

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Author's note: not sure on the domestic pieces, though I think they are important as Ian's domestic situation will change, and I think I need to show where they start.

Also, X-ray will now update on Tuesdays.

This became policy how?

Jay and Bill (not their names), of Marketing, often schedule marketing events here in the center. These events theoretically include a practice exam for the exam whose class is being marketed, followed by a sales pitch trying to get students to sign up for a class. All fine in theory. In practice it often devolves into let's just let the front desk people handle it, probably because they neither want to come into the center on off-hours nor hire someone else to proctor the exam and give the sales pitch.

There are a few problems with this. First, the front desk folks have several other responsibilities, none of which include marketing. Most of those responsibilities include actually being at the front desk itself, though occasionally we run down to the basement for materials. Thus, if we're to proctor an exam, we have to run in and out between out other responsibilities, and things get haphazard - the phone rings and doesn't get answered; there's no one at the desk to greet or direct incoming students; or answer questions; or scan (grade) exams of the students who want to leave, but would like their results before they go; etc.

Further, we can't spend the time in the classroom to actually delver a marketing pitch, so selling the course doesn't happen, anyway - all we have time for is to run in, start the exam or the next section, and run out. Sometimes it means that we have to choose between putting a caller on hold or letting a testing session run over.

How does this sell the course?

Wake Forest drops the SAT

The New York Times reports that Wake Forest and Smith College no longer requires prospective students to take the SAT. They are not alone.

This is not a new debate, of course, but nevertheless I'm going to toss in my 2 cents. Whatever else the SAT and ACT may be, money plays a large part of the game. Applicants have to pay to take the exams, and pay to have the scores forwarded to the schools. Test Prep Company and its competitors make a lot of money on the test as well. So wherever the SAT may be headed, it's not going to vanish without a fight. (Not convinced? Consider also the 2005 revision of the exam, which were arguably due to the University of California's decision to stop using the SAT in its application process unless the exam underwent a major overhaul. UC attracts a lot of applicants, which means a lot of test takers and a lot of money.)

My position? I'm currently making money off of the system, but I hope not to have to do so for very long, and I wouldn't mind seeing this exam cast aside. Since it is a money game, since affluent parents can afford test prep programs and aids, I'm not sure how students' exam results can fail to reflect their SES. And really, is SES the criteria by which we should be basing entrance to higher education?

Um, No?

This post is more about my seeming inability to say 'no'. I'm teaching two classes (down from three a week ago - I dropped my SAT class) and tutoring a half-dozen students. Doesn't sound like a lot, until I started to really look at my schedule: yesterday, for instance, I tutored from 9am - 10:30, taught from 11 - 2pm, tutored from 2:30 - 4:30, and taught again from 6 - 9pm. 12 hours, albeit with a 1 and 1/2 hour dinner break (which wasn't really 1 and 1/2 hours, as students always have questions, and I can't bring myself to hustle them out the door. I find that if I only leave fifteen minutes between obligations I tend to start my subsequent session late.)

So, why can't I say 'no'? I'd like to say that it's because I need the money, and this is true, but really, I don't want to disappoint. It's probably also related to the fact that for some of the teaching and some of the tutoring, I'm one of perhaps two people who are qualified. The other guy is new, and I don't know that he's tutoring yet. So, my schedule loads up, I can't find time to do my laundry, or play with my cats, or replace my car.

So, my New Year's resolution is to say 'no' more often, and from here on out, I intend to take Saturdays to myself - no classes, no tutoring, no front desk work. I recently dropped my Tuesday and Thursday front desk hours (I'm still on Suday during the day) and for the short term, I don't intend to replace them with tutoring or teaching - I'll be catching up with my own life.

At least, that's the plan.

Mars Bars ...

... aren't made on Mars.

It's false advertising.

WALL-E

I saw WALL-E last weekend (the weekend before the 4th, that is). This movie has had a long period of advance advertising, with cardboard WALL-E models in theater lobbies and such, and when I first saw those models, I thought that this was a sort of cartoony Short Circuit, and I wasn't really interested. Even when I learned that it was from Pixar, I wasn't intrigued, which indicates a shortcoming on my part, since Pixar generally puts out a good, thought-provoking product. But I caught a review in the paper (The New York Times, I think) and leared that the movie, though animated, digs into some very real issues: what is the likely outcome if we human beings continue in our present path of consumerism and laziness. The outcome is potentially bleak, and all the more so as we don't really seem to notice what it is that we're losing. Just now, for instance, in one of my rare free moments, I'm sitting here at the computer blogging instead of playing with my ca

The zero tolerance approach to punctuation

From the New York Times online, in an article discussing the varying fortunes of the semicolon:

Correction: February 19, 2008
An article in some editions on Monday about a New York City Transit employee’s deft use of the semicolon in a public service placard was less deft in its punctuation of the title of a book by Lynne Truss, who called the placard a “lovely example” of proper punctuation. The title of the book is “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” — not “Eats Shoots & Leaves.” (The subtitle of Ms. Truss’s book is “The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.”)

Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

The rocket's red glare

This weekend a friend and I went up to her old camp in Vermont. Every 4th of July, they have a big get together, with fireworks over the lake and a bonfire.

The fireworks show was nice, but not particularly noteworthy until it occurred to me that there might be a real connection between the fireworks that we set off in celebration of the Fourth and the rockets whose red glare illuminated our flag at Fort McHenry back in 1814.(1) And it appears that there is (no big surprise). Congreve rickets, which the British used, came in several types. The incendiary type may have been the most prominent, but other versions existed, including one with an exploding head, designed to send metal balls or shrapnel into the opposing troops, and a type with a parachute, whose purpose was to illuminate the battlefield or send signals. I can't find any evidence of this, but it may have been this type of rocket that illuminated the flag. Or it may have been the incendiary rockets' glow as they flew through the air, I don't know.

What's the point of this musing? Perhaps it's that the meaning of things gets lost over time. We remember that things are important, but can't seem to remember why. The Fourth of July is about winning our independence from King George, really. And it goes farther than just the Fourth: Christmas isn't really supposed to be about gifts, (nor is Chanukah, for that matter), the site of the World Trade Center is not a place to smile for the camera (you're standing where thousands of people died, remember?), and isn't Easter supposed to be about something other than marshmallow peeps? I'll refrain from mentioning the true meaning of Labor Day (I've forgotten), but how about Memorial Day? That's supposed to be the day when we remember those who died for our country or, as has been the truth lately, died for our president. I am reminded of humanity as depicted in WALL-E (SPOILER ALERT!), a mindless group of people who are not really sure why they're doing much of anything, though they seem to think that they're doing enjoyable things. (END SPOILERS). We do what's been done; why, we don't know. Given that we've forgotten, why do we continue?

(1) Before anyone starts sniping, I am aware that the attack on Fort McHenry occurred during the War of 1812, not the Revolutionary War. That's not the point.

Note to self

The name of the sloop? The Badger, of course!

Happy 4th of July!

I probably won't be posting until after the 4th of July weekend, so have fun.