It’s National Public Safety Telecommunicator’s Week and what better way to show support for our public safety dispatchers and operators than by pointing out ways to show our support year round. 9-1-1 Cares has many ways to help dispatchers and operators.
Some ways to show your support:
- I get to help people.
- Sometimes, when police officers come into dispatch to get paperwork I throw stuff at them….just cuz I can.
- I get to serve and protect those that serve and protect.
- When my job is entertaining, it’s REALLY entertaining.
- When my job is boring, I seek comfort in the fact that it’s boring because people aren’t requesting help.
- My co-workers all have a twisted sense of humor whether they want to or not.
- I get to help catch bad guys.
- I get to be the disembodied voice of a police department.
- I get to hear stories about sloppy drunks, strange injuries and grotesque deaths but I don’t have to see or smell these things.
- The public knows that help is just a 9-1-1 call away. Police officers and firefighters know that help is just a radio transmission away. They know this because dispatchers and operators across the county have earned this reputation. I get to live up to this expectation everyday I go to work.
April 11-17, 2010 is National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week. If you’re a 9-1-1 operator, a police dispatcher, a fire dispatcher, etc., then thank you for what you do every day!
“We the People” – 3 really big words on a really important document. 3 really big words that mean that we (the people, that is) are in charge of the country. 3 really big words that I still believe in. Our government represents the will of the People. It is up to the People (that would be us), to make sure our governments know what we want.
Now “We” is a lot of people. There are about 206 million adult citizens in our country. “We” consists of right-wing nut-jobs and left-wing wackos, Christians, Jews, atheists, pagans, socialites and shut-ins, butchers, bakers, candle-stick makers, etc. You could fill every NFL football stadium (2,165,404 seats) and every major league baseball park (1,303,268 seats) with people who feel the same way you do about an issue and you could still be very much in the minority. When I hear people shouting that the government is no longer following the will of the People, I wonder if they realize how many people make up “The People”.
Our system of government works best when our representatives get lots of feedback and input. Think of government like a car, the more involved you are in steering your car, the less likely your car is going to veer off the road. Government is the same way. The more involved we are at steering our governments, the more likely it will reflect our collective views. Unfortunately, 75 million American citizens still did not vote in the November 2008 elections and right now in Colorado 33% of the registered voters are considered inactive. If we are not involved in our government, it will not be able to work for us. It is important to be involved (even just a little bit) in every level of government that represents you.
So how much effort does it take to be involved in your government? Not that much. Here’s the easy way to get involved:
- Make sure your registered to vote from your address - If you live in Colorado, you can go to the Colorado Secretary of State website to make sure you’re registered correctly.
- Find out who your representatives are – Congress.org is a great resource to find your federal and state representatives, just type in your zip code and it will give you a list. For your city and county representatives, check your city and county websites.
- Party with the party people - If you’re affiliated with a political party, go to your party’s website and, at the very least, sign up for their newsletter.
- Communicate with your representatives – I am subscribed to an email newsletter or RSS feed for every one of my representatives that has one. At the very least, keep informed on your representatives actions so you can respond the them and be more informative when elections come around.
So please, do us all a favor and get involved!
If you’re a user of Facebook (and who isn’t), you’re familiar with the little “Suggestion” box on the right side of your home page. It usually suggests fan pages or groups or friends you haven’t interacted with in a while. Sometimes it recommends new friends to you because you have some mutual friends. Sometimes it recommends completely freakin’ random people to be your friend. For example:
Facebook thinks you should be friends with Bob Smith. Bob Smith is 17 years old and lives 2000 miles away from you. You have no mutual friends and he’s into men’s bikini volleyball. Send friend request?
No! Why would I be friend’s with Bob Smith? Why would Facebook possibly think I have anything to do with Bob Smith? These suggestions are usually met by me cocking my head to one side and squinting at my monitor like I’m going to somehow look through the screen to devise the purpose of this suggestion.
Imagine my surprise this morning when Facebook suggested I become friends with some random guy named Martin St. Louis. I don’t know of any friends or family named Martin St. Louis. I didn’t graduate with any one with the last name of St. Louis. As a matter of fact, there is only one Martin St. Louis that I can think of, but no it couldn’t be that Martin St. Louis, could it? So I check out his publicly available information on his profile. He’s in Tampa Bay, FL and this is his profile picture…
Yep. It’s 5 time NHL All-Star and Stanley Cup Champion, current alternate captain of the Tampa Bay Lightning, (mar-tan san loo-e). What can I possibly have in common with a 5 time NHL All-Star player? Apparently Facebook thinks we have something in common.
This entertains me to no end.
So I do what any self respecting person who’s easily entertained would do, I take up Facebook’s suggestion and send Martin a friend request along with this message:
Facebook said I should be your friend
I am so entertained by this bit of internet randomness, I thought I’d send you a request just for the hell of it. I’m not sure what Facebook thinks we have in common except that you play NHL hockey and I watch it. Anyways, enjoy the rest of your season and stay safe!
-Scott
I’ll let you know if he responds.
One of the worst things about working the night shift is planning your sleep. On most days, I sleep in the morning, right after I get off work and get Ashlynn to school. Other days, I may have to stay up and sleep later in the day. On my transition days (days where I switch from being a normal night-sleeping person into a batty nocturnal person and vice versa), I usually have to fit a nap sometime during the day. When it works, it’s great!
But when it doesn’t work, it’s oh-so-bad. Being unable to sleep is harder on us night shift workers than it is for the rest of you folks. We do the same thing you do when you can’t sleep. We toss and turn. Watch something crappy on TV in hopes it lulls our brains to sleep. We eat crappy food which bothers our stomachs and keeps us awake longer. But we also have to deal with what I like to call night-shift insomnia guilt or I-have-something-better-to-be-doing-isis.
What is night-shift insomnia guilt or I-have-something-better-to-be-doing-isis?
See when you normal people can’t sleep and it’s 2:30 in the morning there’s nothing else you can do. Your goal at 2:30 am, the goal that you are spectacularly failing to achieve, is to be asleep. This is what is expected in normal people land. 2:30 am is not the time to clean your house, mow your lawn or run errands. While you may do some of these things anyway, you don’t feel guilty about not getting them done.
Now imagine it’s 2:30 pm and you can’t sleep. The sun is out, the grass is long, the kitchen is a mess and you’ve been laying there for 2 hours trying to sleep. 2:30 pm IS a great time to clean your house, mow your lawn and run errands in normal people land. It’s also a great time to work out, go for a hike, kick a puppy or hang out with a friend. While I don’t operate by all the rules of normal people land, I still like to feel like I belong so I end up feeling guilty. “Why am I laying here when I could be doing something better with my time?”, “I should’ve tried to nap some other time so I could be getting something productive done now.” These are the thoughts that run through my head while I try to hide from the sunlight.
This happens a lot to us night-shift-types. I wish I knew how to fix it, but I don’t know how. Oh, and I was kidding about kicking puppies. I was just curious if you were still paying attention.
Scott Pantall | April 12, 2010
