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Happy Mother’s Day

There’s a guy bleeding in here…

That’s the call control got last night at about 9:30 pm.
We were already dealing with a female at booking who just wasn’t cooperating with anyone. She was being read her Miranda Rights by a Sheriff’s Deputy, but the whole time she was yelling at him. Lot’s o’ fun.
I get a call, on the phone, from our control room officer who says that I should probably go over to the lock-down unit and take a couple of officers with me. He tells me that a guy is banging on the cell door, and seems very upset. I go and get some gloves and tell everyone that we need to check out the cell. We get to the outer door of the unit and, over the radio, we hear control call for officers AND medical to the cell.
When we get to the cell, there’s a guy at the door and he is bleeding from his mouth. Hmmmm. There are only a couple of things that can cause that. One is internal medical problems, one is self-mutilation, and another is an angry cell-mate.
We opened the door and took the bleeding guy out, and then I went in to talk to the cell-mate. He was calmly sitting on the floor like nothing had happened.

Me: “Did you pop him?”
Him: “Yes”
Me: “Are you alright?”
Him: “Ya.”
Me: “Let me take a look at your knuckles”
I see that he has a gash in his knuckles and it’s a bleeder.
Me: Let’s have medical look at that, ok?”
Him: “Ya, it hurts.”
Me: “That’s odd”
Him: “hehe”

So medical looks at him, and she determines that both inmates are going to need stitches. Hospital here we come. Luckily, we weren’t terribly busy (sans angry female at booking still), so another officer and myself took them to the hospital. (separate vehicles, of course)
At the hospital, it was pretty busy. We were told that there were a couple of critical patients that were being tended to, so we had to wait in the waiting room. I had the other officer sit far away from me and my guy, so they wouldn’t try anything on each other.
It’s weird being in a waiting room with a shackled inmate. Everyone looks at you, and nobody wants to sit next to you. You can hear little kids asking their parents about the chains on the inmate, and the parents usually just tell them to not talk about it. We didn’t have to wait more than 10 minutes, so at least that was in my , and their, favor.
After we got back to an actual room, I started to question my guy about the rest of his side of the story.

Me: “So, what started all of this?”
Him: “He just went off, and started freaking out?”
Me: “What got him all fired up”
Him: “I don’t know, he just started banging on the door and then turned and kicked my mattress [on the floor], and asked me ‘You want some of this?’”
Me: “What was he freaking out about?”
Him: “He was mad that he wasn’t in the medical unit, and wanted to be moved back.”
Me: “So, what did you do?”
Him: “I took off my socks, rolled up my pants, and stood up. He turned around to me again, and I hit him.”
Me: “What did he do?”
Him: “He fell to the floor and started bleeding. I threw him a towel, and I washed my hands off in the sink. Then I got on the [intercom] and told the officer that there was someone bleeding.”
Me: “How long after you called did it take for us to get there?”
Him: “I think you were already in the unit by the time I called.”

I ended up talking a bit more with this inmate about the fight, and I told him that he should of gotten on the intercom before he hit him, so we could have removed him and evaded this whole thing completely. Mostly though, he was worried about new charges and if hitting the guy was going to hurt his chances to move out of the lock-down tank. He will probably be disappointed on both accounts.
Later, I was able to talk to the other officer and found out the part of the story my guy had left out.
The day before, they had gotten into an argument, and it didn’t get resolved, so there was tension. The night of the fight, my guy had yelled at the other guy for flipping the pages of his book to loudly. The other guy jumped out of his bed and told him that they should “settle this once and for all”. My guy didn’t want to fight, and that made the other guy mad, so he started banging on the door and freaking out. After that, their stories are pretty much the same.
I just wish that we had been able to be aware of the situation about 2 minutes earlier. We could have separated them, and none of this would have happened.
At least it wouldn’t have happened that night.

Workin for the weekend!

Whoo hoo! It’s my weekend.

I can’t really complain about this last week. As far as weeks go, this last one was fairly good. I had pretty cake assignments every day, and that is always nice.

Of course, even with the easiest jobs in the jail, it is always nice to be home.

p2p VS NewsGroups VS RIAA

So, we all have heard the hub-bub with the RIAA hammering down on all of the peer to peer services. Starting with Napster, and going to Kazaa, limeWire, and more recently to Bit-Torrent and the lesser used networks/programs. We all have heard of some little old lady getting sued for something her grand-kids did, or, better yet, some little old lady getting sued for illegally downloading ‘Tupac’ files when she doesn’t use her computer except to e-mail forwards to all of her contacts. My grandma would fit that bill, minus the RIAA attack. Priceless, but sad.

So with all of the furor surrounding the RIAA’s litigious nature, I can’t say that I’ve heard anything about people getting ‘caught’ using newsgroups to procure their daily downloads.

If you don’t know about Newsgroups, go here.

As soon as I found out about programs like napster and kazaa, I was hooked. I had kazaa running, literally, all of the time. This was in my pre-cable-internet days, so it was slow, but I knew that sooner or later, I would be able to get everything I wanted… Then it all ended. I heard about one guy getting sued, and I decided that my MP3 collection could grow no longer. I was done. No thank you, Mr. Riaa, I get the message.

A couple of years went by. I got older; added broadband internet to my telco bundle; added a wife into the mix, and all without a single leech from my good ol’ kazaa and limewire. Then one day I was enlightened by a friend about a little used (in contrast to p2p) corner of the net.
Newsgroups.

I couldn’t believe it. Could it be true? Could I have my cake and eat it too? I just wonder when the RIAA will find a way to ‘get wise’ to what is going on the usenet. A simple search shows that the RIAA is pretty “mum’s the word” when it comes to the usenet.

Are we about to see a shift of the RIAA spotlight. It seems that they have the p2p scene by the cajones. I know that not everyone who downloads from these programs is targeted, and I also know that there are ways to minimize your piracy silhouette. I am just wondering; since the crackdown on p2p is driving more and more people to newsgroups, are we to assume that the RIAA is scheming on how to get info on newsgroup downloaders too?

In short, is this the beginning of the end for the leechers?

Just a little payback.

The best way to get a telemarketer to stop calling that I have heard! I think that everyone should try this.

Click here to see what I am talking about

digg story

Tune-up

I recently tried to hunt down a song that catches my ear every time I hear it. I rarely seek out new music, but that is probably due to my stubbornness and musical singlemindedness.

Mostly, I like acoustic type music. Don’t get me wrong, I listen to pop or rap/R&B on occasion. Not that those are bad, or instances of cultural music iconology. I merely use these as the yang to my usual ying, or vice-versa.

The song I looked for was featured in a Liberty Mutual commercial. The one where someone does something nice for someone, and another person sees it, so they, in turn perform their own act of kindness, and so on and so on. If you have ever seen that commercial, then you have already heard this song.

The band is called “Hem” and the song is called “Half Acre”. Here are the lyrics, and if your speakers are up a little, you may hear it playing in the background.

I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
And folded in this scrap of paper
Is the land I grew in

Think of every town you’ve lived in
Every room you lay your head
And what is it that you remember

Do you carry every sadness with you
Every hour your heart was broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with you

A man is walking on the highway
A woman stares out at the sea
And light is only now just breaking

So we carry every sadness with us
Every hour our hearts were broken
Every night the fear and darkness
Lay down with us

But I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
I am carrying this scrap of paper

That can crack the darkest sky wide open
Every burden taken from me
Every night my heart unfolding
My home

So there it is. I just wanted to share, and I hope you liked it. I did. The mp3 you heard has been altered. The volume has been lowered so it plays as background music. The song has been re-equalized to sound better when played softly, and has an added lead in of about 15 seconds. If you want the original un-edited version, you can get it here on iTunes. Cheers.

DO-Overs SUCK

So, I had to redo the template. It isn’t as good as what I used to have, but it will have to do for now. I hate Internet explorer.

Ok. Done.

I am going to dayshift soon, but it isn’t all that great. I really don’t look forward to all the busy bees at the jail. Maybe I will like it better than the last group did. I will at least give it a try.

BTW. Let me know if the template is working for everybody now.

UNCLE, UNCLE

I’m an uncle again. My sister Cathy just had her baby. I got a call tonight that she had him, and my dad said that he was 8lbs 14oz. No comment on length. Cathy and Mordachai are proud 1st parents, and named their son after Daddy, Mordechai. I think I’ll call him 2.0, since I can’t call him Junior. He’s a cutie. CLick on the pic to see all of the pictures.

Comments..

Any comments related to the newer layout. I frequently change my layout, so any feedback is useful and interesting to me.

• Likes
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Preferrably more detailed than that though.
Thanks.