The Edge of Empty

At yet another rest stop, A E seemed to be thinking "It's a big scary world out there, but I feel safe here."

I travelled into Maryland last week for a training session.  I must say that I love driving through Maryland because the  road signs are always amusing to me.  There is no pussy-footing around for the Maryland sign makers.  They are not afraid to use all caps, different colors, and brevity to get their message across to drivers. You will have to forgive the lighting and angles in the pictures below. When you are driving, you can't stop in the middle of the road to frame a shot.  In Maryland, you can't drive and use a hand-held cellphone either.  I wonder what they would say about a camera? Anyway, I left my house at 5:30 in the morning and the sun was just coming up as I saw this sign.  The sign says "ALTERNATE RIGHT OF WAY". Now this is what drivers should do in a merge zone, but this sign leaves no doubt about it. A bit farther down the road, this sign appeared.  "Form single lane NOW".   No wonder it seems that Maryland drive...

This summer, the blogosphere had a presence that loomed large and crossed over blog boundaries.   The Bloggess introduced us to Beyonce here .  Sightings were made all over the country and the continuing saga entertained us all (and continues to do so if we are honest).  When I was on the way home from a training course in Maryland last week, I passed through Lovettsville, VA.  As I pulled to a stop at the traffic light there, I glanced to my right and was astounded to see Beyonce (or one of her acolytes) gathering an army of pigs.  If you look carefully, you can see the large corncob that she must have been eating because she has gained some size and is now as tall as the house she is standing beside.

A Ferret would a walking go, mm hmm... A E enjoys a few minutes of exploration at a rest stop.

For those who are faithfully tuning in on Thursdays for CryWolf® hints, I hope that you are finding the notes helpful. For those readers who are scoping out information on their competition (you know who you are, Texas), I would be happy to review your product for my readers if given the opportunity. And now, back to our scheduled "blog cast". The other day, my office ran completely out of black ink. And I mean OUT.  No warning, no partially printed pages, just full stop by the printer.  Of course, we were in the middle of printing after processing a long weekend.  We are also in our high season for renewals so the queue was full and then some.  That night, without thinking, I shut down my computer.  When I realized what I had done, I felt sick because I had no idea if the printer would retain all of the jobs or if they were gone. I'm sure you have had instances of closing a program when a job was printing resulting in a half printed page in the printer tray. ...

Docile to devil in mere seconds.

A E likes to view nature from the safety of the screened in porch.  Here he is watching the neighbor's puppy.  Our cat died about the same time as their dog.  We got our new pets the same week.  Ours is much cuter : )

So does all of our talk about letters recently have you interested in the letters in your CryWolf® database? If you would like a quick way to review them, in Maintenance, go to the Forms menu, and then choose Review Letter information. In the View Letter information window, there will be two options: View Basic Letter information and Preview All Letters The view Basic Letter information will give you a table listing all of the letters and the basic information about them such as the letter use, the letter title, and any charges associated with the letter. It will also show the template used, the letterhead, who the letter is sent to, if there is a registration form associated (and which one),  and if an invoice is attached (and which kind). Also, any special actions associated with the letters will be listed. The Preview All Letters option produces a continuous file of all of the letters in the system.  This is a quick way to review the letters.  If you cho...

A E loves to wrestle.  Teeth play an important role in this play--or at least that is what seems to be the case in our house.  To protect ourselves, we often wear a pair of the Hubster's old thick wool dive socks.  We call them the "sock monkey".  The sock monkey is A E's favorite wrestling partner--whether or not there is a hand in them.  A E particularly likes to defeat Sock Monkey from the inside.  Here A E is preparing his attack. The attack is well under way here: Stealth is key to victory, so pretending to fall asleep lulls the opponent into a false sense of security. Although you can't really tell from the picture, A E's head is at the toe of the sock in this photo.  It is really funny to watch when he is fully into the sock like this.  Inside the sock, he is trying to bite the toe of the sock.  While doing so, he lifts his head up and moves it around--it is similar to watching an earth worm. Soon he will emerge the victor in anoth...

Our unit has had a continuing problem with staff turnover.  Without a written employee handbook, this meant that what was be obvious to one person may be missed by another.  Besides creating an employee manual, I have been working to automate as many processes as possible.  Automating processes has the benefit of reducing human error and forgetfulness. Fortunately, CryWolf® has many tools to assist in this effort. Although CryWolf® has the ability to communicate with CAD (computer aided dispatch) systems, we are not taking advantage of this capability...yet.  This means that my staff must manually enter relevant information into CAD.  Unfortunately, a review of recent actions showed that some notes were added and some were not.  I find it especially disturbing that notes placing an address in No Response status remained in CAD long after the status had been removed in our office. The solution that I settled on was adding a pop up note that appears when ...

As a person with sensitive skin and a mother of a child with sensitive skin, we don't do a lot of soap and detergent changing.  Once we find a product that doesn't irritate our skin, we stick to it for life--or as long as they manufacture it.  One product that I have been using since I was a child is Ivory soap.  It's gentle, reasonable priced, and it floats .  When Youngest was packing for school, I picked up a multi-pack when I was at a local retailer.  One day in the shower, I noticed a pleasant new scent.  I didn't equate it with the new bar of soap though because everyone knows Ivory is unscented.  After several days of trying to find the source, I finally concluded that Ivory must have added a scent to the soap even when I knew how ridiculous that was. When I finally took a look in the closet, here is what I found: The scent is Simply Aloe (the classic is now called Simply Ivory).  But wait, according to their history timeline , Ivory in...

The Hubster has been wanting to ride his bike on Skyline Drive for months.  It is a great idea especially  since one of his upcoming triathlons will be in a mountainous area so some mountain training would have been in order.  Our summer has flown by though, so the fabled trip never materialized until last Sunday when we finally made the trek out to Shenandoah National Park . Coincidentally, this is the 75th anniversary of the park and there are lots of activities to commemorate this special landmark event.  I love the old signs at the national parks and I was glad to see that the anniversary didn't prompt them to install some horrible modern monstrosity. It was great to once more be in possession of an annual pass that gives access to all of the national parks in the country.  I have to admit that I liked it better when it was called the "Eagle Pass"--it was much simpler than saying the "America the Beautiful-National Park and Federal Recreational Lands ...

After several months of not having Coffee Mate in the house due to A. E.'s addiction , I felt sorry for the Hubster and purchased a box.  It didn't take long for the A. E. to "ferret" it out.  I caught him in the act as he was investigating the pantry on his way to the "crack".

I have mentioned before that ferrets are curious creatures.  During our recent air conditioner/hotel adventure, A. E. was particularly mesmerized by Youngest's new pocket watch.  Too bad we couldn't hypnotize him so that he would stop crawling under the beds.

I have been told that we may be having some new visitors from the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of FARA stopping by this week.  Welcome!! You might like to check out my disclaimer here and some previous CryWolf® hints here . Today, we are continuing our discussion of letters generated by CryWolf®. We previously discussed how to send a letter from the account screen and also how to use portions of the bulk letters screen.  There are many times that it is necessary to send a letter to an alarm user beyond the alarm notifications that are generated when processing alarm calls.  Before my arrival in the unit, the practice was to draft a letter in Word and send it out.  This certainly served the purpose, but record keeping in CryWolf® was being ignored.  Most of the time, the accounts in CryWolf® show no indication that a letter was sent--so staff members have no idea to go looking for those letters. Although the letters were saved and are available on the shared hard driv...

One of the benefits of having the Hubster's project completed is that hair is no longer taking over our home.  Our bathroom particularly is blessedly becoming a long hair free zone.  In helping those efforts along, I decided to clean out the strainer plate over the shower drain.  I had noticed that there was some hair caught in it and I wanted to get rid of it.  Little did I know what awaited me.  When I pulled up the strainer, a huge mass of hair came snaking out of the drain.  Honestly, it was so gross that I about puked.  What I thought was a few hairs was a mass so thick that it filled up the entire pipe--I can't believe that we didn't have draining problems.  The mass was bigger than A. E. Ferret, and itt looked a bit like it could have been a relative too. My poor mom is probably thinking "where did I go wrong? I taught her how to clean a house."  However, blogging is a bit of an adventure--you never know when a bit of over-sharing wi...

I am determined to buck the trends when it comes to blogging--that shouldn't be too hard with a site that focuses on false alarms and features photos of a ferret.  I just don't think that there are many blogs out there that focus on either of these things--and certainly not any that combine the two. Also, I figure that there are enough posts about current popular topics without me adding my two cents.  Hurricane Irene and the earthquake are recent examples.  However, I can provide a public service announcement for those living in the earthquake affected areas.  We have lived in Japan and California, so have experienced earthquakes several times.  I knew that I should inspect my home for damage, but to be honest, I didn't really feel much  any concern that there might be damage.  That is until last Monday when my husband called to tell me that a neighbor texted him that he had smelled gas near our house when he walked his dog.  Needless to say...

As anyone in Law Enforcement can tell you, the Law Enforcement Torch Run benefiting Special Olympics is a special event that takes place across the country and around the world culminating in the lighting of the Olympic torch at the opening ceremony of the summer Special Olympic games.  The torch run was begun in Kansas City in 1981 by a police chief who saw a need and was moved to action.  The International Association of Chiefs of Police soon adopted the cause and the torch run has grown to become one of the largest fund raisers for Special Olympics. Special Olympics provides so much for the athletes and is something that the athletes benefit from year round.  The best way to describe the spirit that I have seen in the athletes is competition with love.  It is rare these days to see a fellow athlete demonstrate caring for his competitors.  This attitude is shown every day across the country in Special Olympics venues though. The sports events also become soc...

Our travels last weekend had us venturing through Columbus, Ohio.  Of course, I had to check out the local False Alarm ordinance.  My search began with a peek at  Municode .  This is one of the companies that helps local and state government organize (and create) their regulations. Fortunately for me,  Columbus is one of the cities that is listed with this service. I found the false alarm ordinance  for Columbus in the Business Regulation and Licensing section (title 5 chapter 597).  (If you are trying to find the ordinance for your area, quite often it can be found in the licensing or nuisance abatement sections but it can appear under business regulations or might even have a section all its own). Columbus has chosen the Licensing Section for the Department of Public Safety to administer the ordinance for the city.  This is fairly common across the country and is one way jurisdictions reduce costs.  It does make sense--issuing re...

It seems that the boys in this household are addicted to games.  This is supported by the number of game systems that have taken up space in our household over the years.  The youngest boy is no exception.    Here he makes his answer selection during a friendly family game of " Scene it! " on our X-box.