Top Secrets Revealed!

I finally got the skinny on the big secret meeting they had the other night. I'm glad I left early that night because the participants were told not to talk about it and that would have aggravated the poodles out of me.

Apparently they chose the participants pretty much at random. Just so they got a good cross-section of the people who worked here. They wanted one lieutenant, one sergeant and four CO's.

The scenario was that a 6.4 (or so) earthquake hit centered on the border of one of the neighboring states. It lasted for about 35 seconds or so. A little while later there was an aftershock almost that large. This happened during mainline.

Both dining halls and part of the control center collapsed. 10 house and 28 house were on fire and the stairwells had collapsed. The smoke stack from the power plant collapsed onto the laundry building and while the biggest water tower was still standing, the main outflow pipe was cracked and spewing water at a phenomenal rate.

The shift commander is dead and both the phones and the radios are out. I never heard if the fences were still intact or not.

I was apparently killed in the comm room when the upper floor collapsed. Now way to get to me or the armory. The whole floor was inaccessible. That left us with two shotguns with 15 rounds each out in the P-cars as our only available weapons.

Lots of inmates dead. Lots of staff dead. No way to call for help and with that kind of disaster going on, not much hope of getting any outside help anyway. And more people were killed during the aftershock.

Quite the ugly little scenario they had going there. Why they thought that we were required to go over something like that I have no idea. Most of the people who heard about it when the participants were allowed to talk just shrugged and said "We're screwed."

Which kinds of sums it up in a nutshell.

They say that we passed, which I guess is a good thing. The people that survived kept their heads and did the right thing.

On paper, anyway. Reality often tends to be something completely different.

Me, I guess I got off easy. Being dead, all that was required of me was to lay there and ooze a bit now and then. I can do that.

I guess I can list that experience as one of those that I hope never happens but on the off chance it does, I hope it happens on my day off.

So! On to happier things. Tomorrow, aside from being Lincoln's Birthday, is also National Plum Pudding Day. And Sunday is another twofer: Get A Different Name Day and Dream Your Sweet Day.

Sunday sounds like it's gonna be a good day. I hope I get a decent name out of the deal. With my luck I'd get stuck with an odd handle like "Alphonse" or "Fabian" or something like that. Pfui.

About The Names

The nicknames I use for people at work have gotten a bit of attention lately. Or at least several comments. I figured I would reiterate some of the stuff I said early on when I was first starting this blog to quell any confusion.

I suspect that if I came right out from the beginning and said "My name is John Jones and I work at the Steven King Correctional Center in Derry, Maine" (except using my real name and the real name of the prison) that the administration could find a way if not to force me to quit blogging than to make it really uncomfortable for me to continue. They are real touchy about people making public statements aside from their duly appointed PR people.

There was another blog.... well, it was actually a message board, run by some folk from the prison up the road that occasionally got confused with mine. Most of the people who commented there used handles, but when they were talking about staff and offenders there, they used real names. They named names and places and posted pictures (oh lawsy) and were very blunt and tended to be rather derogatory. They made no bones about who they were talking about and where they worked and what they thought.

It got kind of ugly, there for awhile. I'm a big believer in the freedom of speech, but you gotta use some sense. It didn't take too long before they got shut down a couple of times and then I believe they got closed down permanently by the big cheeses up in the capital.

I didn't want any part of that sort of action.

So I am just darev2005 or "Rev" for short. I work at the Raccoon City Correctional Center and I am an employee of the Umbrella Corporation. And every single name I use is a made up nickname. I started blogging because it looked like fun and a good way to vent off some steam now and then.

Sure, some days it's a chore to come up with something to write about five days a week. I'm sure you can tell the days when my attention is elsewhere or my meds have kicked in sooner than I thought they would.

Most of the names I use are in some way evocative of the person they represent. Either some physical or attitudinal trait or something that person does consistently. Most of the people who work here can look at the names and say "Oh yeah. I know who that is." right away. Some of them are a little tougher. Once in awhile someone will come up and ask "Who is so and so?" and when I tell them they'll nod and laugh.

Everybody there "knows" that I blog and alot of them have read it. But if someone official were to come up to me and say "We know this is your blog and we don't like it. Shut it down." I can say with a straight and completely truthful face that there isn't a blog anywhere on the internet with my name on it. They would have to get a federal warrant to link me with this blog for any legal purposes and I don't think any judge in his right mind would sign such a document.

I may be deluding myself, but it's what protection I have.

I have said for quite some time that I should have been keeping a list of which nickname I assigned to who, but I never did. So once in awhile somebody's name gets changed just because i couldn't remember what I called them last time. It's all good.

So that's where the odd names come from.

On to the calendar. Didn't need an umbrella today but I did spend the day working for Umbrella, so I guess it all worked out.

Tomorrow is another two-fer! It's both White Tee-Shirt Day and Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk Day. Hmm... are you allowed to cry if you spill milk on your white tee-shirt?

Is This A Good Time?

I don't know what some people think. It's bad enough dealing with the inmates. They are inmates and you expect them to be stupid.

If you thought about it, you'd expect the people who run the place to be a little smarter than them. After all, they're in charge, right?

It's been a bad couple of weeks with the weather and all and we have been running short of people like crazy. And between this morning and this afternoon we got another two inches of snow dumped on us. Slippery slippery crap, lemme tell ya.

I left uber early just in case it was too bad and I got stuck someplace. It took me maybe an extra ten minutes to get to work and I was nearly crushed between a minivan and a semi truck on the way there. 'Twas a near thing.

We had twelve call-in's when I arrived. It doesn't sound like a lot, but that's about ten percent of our shift. I knew we'd be running skinny.

I noticed the Major was still there when I arrived. Usually he leaves not long after I get there most days. And yeah, before you even say it, I have that affect on alot of people. It was odd that he was still at work.

Then I saw a couple of the Assistant Wardens lurking around the Admin building. And not long after that the Warden Himself came strolling over. I thought "What the snap?" And the robot in the back of my brain was flailing it's short little arms and yelling "Danger Will Robinson! Danger!"

Finally the Fire and Safety Geek came in with some sort of VIP on his arm and they all went back into one of the visiting rooms.

Once they were all assembled they had a list of participants they needed for whatever it was they were doing. They called: Lt Wheelie (who was our only available zone lieutenant), Sgt IHOP from 1 house, Sausage (the only regular on B-yard), Walleye from 6 house (the bubble officer), Littlest B from the Hive and some new little dude from 10 house that I don't know very well but doesn't seem very bright.

We were already down twelve custody officers and their little meeting shorted us another six (two of which were critical spots) for about three hours. Uncle Scary from 9 yard and the Watcher from 30 yard had to keep popping back and forth to help cover B-yard. I don't know who helped cover the Hive and 1 house.

Supposedly it was some sort of preparedness scenario and they did it all on paper rather than try to run a live drill, which was a sort of blessing in disguise. I'm sure if they had tried to run something with the weather and staff shortages being what they were it could have gotten ugly quick.

But you would think somebody would have looked around and said "No. We are already too short on staff right now. Let's do this some other time."

Well, that didn't happen. We just had to grit our teeth and go with it. Shortages and all. It's no wonder I'm prematurely grey.

I got through Toothache Day without one, and I guess I'll manage on Umbrella Day tomorrow without one of those as well. Even if I had one, we aren't allowed to carry them inside the fence. But for those of you who might need an umbrella, tomorrow is the day to carry one.

Stay dry!

Through The Looking Glass

Day two of training. The practical applications of defensive tactics. Such as it is.

I wonder who decided on this manual of things that we must show proficiency in?

It all looks very pretty and professional. If we were ever challenged in court, they could point to the book and say "These are the skills our officers are trained in." It's alot like the stuff they used to train soldiers with, except for the moves that are most likely to kill somebody.

As a matter of fact, I found an old hand to hand combat training manual one time from WWII. And it showed almost all of the moves that we train on even today. Except for, as I mentioned, those moves most likely to kill or maim. The snapping of the neck and driving the nose bones up into the brain sort that the general public tends to frown on. I can understand it. Those sort of things make most people a bit queasy.

But I'll have to tell you that in my (almost) eight years with the department and the dozens of times that I have had to put my hands on an inmate intent on mayhem, I have never once to my recollection ever used a single one of these techniques.

Because when the chips are down and you are fighting for your safety or the safety of someone else, you just do what you need to do. Unless you are some martial arts expert or a trained assassin or something, you never think to use techniques like these. You don't think about center of gravity and proper body mechanics and pressure points. All your world narrows down to is the need to thump this fool and make him stop acting stupid so I can get my butt out of this mess and go about my business.

And usually while I am in the middle of a donnybrook I'm yelling "You miserable so and so! Now I'm going to have to do hours of paperwork! And that really pisses me off!"

Occasionally, just yelling that makes them stop alot sooner. Especially if I yell it loud enough and they think I'm really pissed off. Alot of times at that point they just lay down on the floor and cover their heads and say "I'm sorry! Really! I quit!"

Maybe they should spend less time teaching body mechanics and more time teaching yelling.

Oh dear. For Kite Flying Day I didn't do any of that. It was way too freaking cold outside for such nonsense. And tomorrow is Toothache Day. I'm not much looking forward to that either, I must say.

Face Time With The Chief

As you may recall, my first two days back at work are comprising my yearly training.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned that earlier. But heck, as foggy as I was last week I could have told you I was flying off to Borneo to have my corneas waxed. Waaaay too many Nyquil Liqui-Caps.

Our annual training, which used to take an entire week of torture has been distilled down, by the grace of budget cuts, to two days.

The first day (today) was spent with CPR/AED (those portable defibrillator thingys), and the classroom part of defensive tactics.

In between those two gems of mysticism we got to have some face time with the new Warden.

This is new.

The old Warden you hardly ever saw unless you were in trouble or if he was showing some VIP around the camp. Sure, every now and then he'd light up a fat cigar and wander around the camp for awhile, but for the most part he stayed in his office.

This new Warden wants to get out and be seen. He says he wanted to hear our concerns and complaints. I can dig that. If he really means it, anyway. But if he really was a CO like us twenty five years ago, then he knows our concerns and complaints.

There aren't enough of us, we get paid jack, our benefits suck and everybody treats us like dumbsnits.

That's it in a nutshell. And there's not a damn thing he can do about any of that.

What we used to carry in a full tool bag as far as options with the offenders can now be carried in a wet tissue, thanks to the bleeding hearts in the legislature and complaints by the mostly felonious family members of career criminals.

And there's not a damn thing he can do about that either.

So we got to listen to an hour of whining about things that we can't fix. But hey, it counted towards our training so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Tomorrow morning we go in for the practical part of the defensive tactics class and the test out session. There aren't that many of us so I envision taking lots of breaks and filling alot of time watching St Francis and the Mad Bomber suck at ping pong.

My goal for the next day is to get through it without re-injuring my arm. I have been mostly pain free for about two weeks now and I really hope to make that a continuing trend.

So let's see what the auguries for tomorrow read. Checking the old teal leaves, so to speak.

Dang! Today would have been a good one. Charles Dickens Day. I could have limped up to the Warden with my paycheck stub in hand and said "Please Sir..... I want more!"

That would have been good for a laugh, anyway.

Tomorrow is Kite Flying Day. I'm sure it will be windy enough, but I'm sure the ice would build up on the string pretty rapidly. Maybe I'll just tie a string to my hopes of things getting better and see how high I can get....

Sorry, Sold Out!

According to the story on Yahoo news this evening, we are fresh out of internet addresses.

The Global Internet Address Warehouse (which doesn't really exist as a place so much as an idea or a system) is, as of this morning, completely empty.

When the internet started getting really big, they implemented the IP4V system, which contained four billion IP addresses. That's 4,000,000,000,000. I'm sure somebody looked at that number and said "Yeah. That should be plenty."

But since they made it so easy for anybody to snag an IP address and we end up with all of this useless nonsense (alot like this blog, for instance) floating around the internet for anybody to see, we have used them all up.

So now we're looking at changing over to the IP6V system, which hold trillions of new IP addresses.

Oh yeah. That should be plenty.

You can read the original story here, if you'd like. Enjoy.

Tomorrow is an unusual one. I think that Create A Vacuum Day is a little more suited for the great halls of government than the average person, but we should all give it a try, hey?

Good, Bad And....

Well, it's about 16 degrees outside and blowing snow flurries with 15-20 mph wind gusts. We got maybe an inch, possibly inch and a half of combined snow and ice in the last couple of days.

It's the ice that was the real beeotch. It rained pretty good for half a day the the temperature dropped. What was already on the ground froze and what continued to fall was frozen when it hit. Both my truck and the minivan are encased in ice. It may take a few large hammers and maybe an immense bandsaw to extricate them. We'll see.

I've still got head and body aches like I went ten rounds with Sonny Liston and the occasional full-body sweats that are both embarrassing and more than slightly disgusting. Just all of the sudden I'll be soaking wet and smell like I just ran the Boston Marathon. Yack.

And these horrible sudden sneezing fits. Vicious and brutal. Something Rommel would have used in Africa. Or maybe what brought down the walls of Jericho. I'll get this sudden pain between my eyes like I'm being given a lobotomy with a stone axe. My face and body will contort for long seconds trying to fight off the attack and gasping for air at the same time. And when I finally do manage to get a lungful of air I'll scream out this horrible eldritch noise... some ancient chant or primal koan that I am pretty sure come close to summoning the elder Gawds back to our plane of existence each time.

I'm pretty sure the only thing that has saved humanity up to this point is that my wife had the forethought to buy plenty of kleenex. You should thank her for that. I have.

I wish I could have recorded some off the delirium dreams I have had the last couple of days. They were all a mixture of Poe and Lovecraft and Joyce with an admixture of Coleridge and H.R. Geiger mixed in. Mr. Escher couldn't have drawn some of the things I have seen. He would have eaten all of his pencils in despair had he tried.

But despite all of this nastiness, I am on the mend. Each day I wake up feeling just a skosh better than the day before. I am far from back to 100%, but I feel a damn sight better than I did a day or two ago.

So this is Wednesday, the pivotal day in my vacation. I still don't have the energy or wits to tackle any of the projects that I had planned for this time and it's too freaking cold and nasty to go out and do any of them anyway. I'm willing to bet that the door to my shop is frozen shut again, like my truck. There's five gallons of primer and a pile of boxes of laminate flooring in the garage waiting to be ensconced in the living room. I'm sure that the wife is going to start getting testy about that pretty soon. Her whole life/scrapbooking area is in disarray waiting for me to replace the flooring in there. She has the patience of a saint, that woman does. For awhile, anyway.

Well! I think I've about run out of words and energy for the moment. I'm still feeling quite fuzzy around the edges. But I had some things to get out of my head. Y'all are lucky I can't remember some of it. Me, too.

Today is February 2nd already? Ye gads. I have been so lost, not knowing what day or time it was and not really being sure if I was awake or asleep half the time. Today is Purification Day. And tomorrow is Cordova Ice Worm Day, which is something you should click on the link to read about. I really hope that purification part works!