There’s an interesting article on the Asterisk VoIP News site. It appears as though the German government has been discussing the use of a “Skype Capture Unit” made by DigiTask. A trojan horse-style piece of software, it sits on your PC and sends copies of your Skype conversations to a remote server.
In principle, I have no problem with this – in fact, to a degree, I welcome it. It brings Skype back to the realms of telephones in terms of law enforcement and contrary to Big Brother theorists, despite even my own somewhat dubious police experiences at times, I do believe that this is a good thing and that the law enforcement agencies are, in general, trying to Do the Right Thing.
Arse, that is not all in fact.
Today I stumbled across a new geektoy. While quickly documenting my workspace for Pixel Rigs (a flickr pool started by Rands), I started reading the others and came across Synergy. Now you can have one keyboard, mouse and pastebuffer across multiple machines (each with its own monitor). It’s a bit of software, works over TCP. And by works I mean, it just works. I love it.
Sean showed me this the other day. It’s not from him before you ask, it’s between two acquaintances. But the raw passion in it took my breath away:
If I lost you, there’d be no reason to breathe any more. No reason to eat, drink, get up, live. Because every second of every day that I was without you, I’d be reminded that never, ever again in my fucked up life will I meet someone like you. Someone who knows just what a fucked up little freak I am and -still- loves me utterly and unconditionally. Someone who -I- love so utterly and unconditionally I’d give up everything for.
I just had to post it. Some people know why.
That is all.
What a bizarre night.
With my leg almost back to 100%, I headed out tonight for a shift with Rich on the RRV in Caerphilly again. The shift started well even though Rich prophesied a quiet shift based on others this week. Tonight’s weather is horrendous – classic Welsh weather – horizontal and torrential drizzle. If you’ve never experienced torrential drizzle, it’s weird. You look out and think “Oh, it’s fine, it’s just a touch of drizzle.” but by the time you’ve taken 5 paces, you’re drenched. Add in the “horizontal” qualifier, and what you end up with is being drenched on one side only. Trust Wales to specialise in rain.
So we started well – no sooner had we finished checking the vehicle than we had a call – 72 year old female, chest pain. We hurried up there to find that she’d been diagnosed with angina recently and had used her GTN spray several times already. ECG was clear, she was rather bradycardic, but that could be attributed to the beta blockers she was taking. She definately felt unwell, so she headed in to A&E in the truck – a quick call.
That’s where we ground to a halt. The shift started at 1700 and we’d headed back to the fire station. We had several false starts and one actual call before we decided around 2130 to head out for dinner – Chinese tonight. The night was slow, I’d read all of today’s newspapers and sorted Sean’s CV out. So we came back to the fire station and I sat down while Rich started getting his onto a plate ….and the phone rang. “Respond red to a female, fallen, ?head injury?”. All I’ll say on this one is that it was alcohol related. We had a spate of calls after that and it was all silly stuff until suddenly “Red call to a male who’s cut the end of his finger off. Police on scene.” That sounded impressive, and we headed across Caerphilly to find a guy and his female partner who’d had some kind of tiff. It wasn’t impressive, he got a plaster, she got a special plaster to hold the laceration closed. He was arrested, we left.
That was the start of the madness. We ended up looking for a man who had apparently cut his own throat – we ended up at that call twice. The police dog caught him in the end. Lucky for him since there was a full firearms team deployed as well. We had a 5 year old with a “?dislocated eblow?” which wasn’t. We finished off with a male in his 40’s with chest pains which turned out not to be cardiac related.
So it’s been a strange night. I still haven’t seen my big RTC/trauma despite there being a few minor traumas tonight, I’ve also realised I need to work on my children skills. It seems Sean had just as weird a night but hey. A few medical points picked up this evening, nothing exciting. Oh, and the reason why the guy with the chopped-off-fingertip and missus were in the area? They’d travelled across the country to go climb Pen Y Fan tomorrow. If I get called to see them tomorrow…
I’ve no idea where the recipe came from, but my mother picked this up some time ago and it really is fantastic. A nice change and typical fare for us on Boxing Day, my mother’s birthday. I’ve posted the recipe here (below the cut) more as a way for me to keep it somewhere than anything else. Feel free to comment if you try it out and let me know what you think of it.
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It’s been a while since I posted last and a few things have happened. I’ve spent a lot of time with the two Richard’s on the Caerphilly RRV, both of whom have been excellent and I have learned a lot. The two most significant things is that I have a long way to go to get anything like their knowledge and experience. The second is that I think I would enjoy being a Paramedic as a career. Who knows, maybe if I win the lottery…
Anyway, with Sean off working in his local theatre (it’s Jack and the Beanstalk this year), I’m up at my sisters for Christmas. I love coming up here, but it is exhausting – my nephews are 10 and 8, and I love them to bits. I don’t, however, have any idea how my sister deals with being a teacher and then comes home to cope with them. I don’t think I’d have the energy.
So, a few comments on the last few weeks:
- If you’re diabetic and you’re ill, check your BM regularly. Hypo’s are no fun. Hyperglycemia even less so.
- If you think you can manage people but you’re constantly at odds with all of your staff, ask yourself what’s wrong. Could it be that you’re a twat? (NB: This is not a comment on my life or manager, who’s great. And reads this.)
- If you call 999 and say you have itchy teeth, don’t be surprised if you get a less than helpful response. Equally, if your waters have broken, but you’re not having contractions and it’s Black Friday, don’t expect to get anything other than a cursory taxi ride, possibly even in the back of the RRV. Sorry, it’s Black Friday.
- On a scale of 1-10, a pain score of “7” is not “kinda sore”. If you can blow your nose with that hand, it’s not a 7. You’re not getting morphine. Live with it.
- If you build a toilet, make sure there’s enough room in the cubicle for the door to open/close without the user having to stand on the toilet itself.
- An RRV is not a taxi. Don’t try hailing it. You will get laughed at.
- Don’t be drunk and belligerent around an off-duty policeman. You will end up worse off.
Hope you all have a merry Christmas and all that.
Weather / Tywydd
Cloudy and overcast with outbreaks of rain and drizzle and widespread hill fog. The rain heavy and persistent at times with occasional torrential downpours expected. It will also be very windy with severe gales or storm force winds at higher levels.
That’s what the weather report said about tonight. So I shouldn’t really have been surprised when I heard a pager go off not long after being in base. It was Dai’s – he gets messages from the Bridgend team as well since he lives in Bridgend. They’d just been asked to attend a search down on the Gower. Huw looked at Dai and whilst Huw got his kit to change into, Dai started repacking the Landrover after Saturday’s callout. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I grabbed my kit and got changed myself. Just as I was finishing, another pager went off and Huw called out. “This is it, then.”
Rushing out o the car I grabbed my rucksack and quickly got my boots on. Getting the first response Landrover ready, I ended up driving and Huw jumped into the passenger seat. Heading out of base, blue lights flashing, we headed up the lane. A quick note – if an emergency vehicle is trying to pull out of a side road with blue lights flashing and sirens blaring, let it out. Don’t just drive on in front of it. I mean, it’s not like we’re in a hurry to get somewhere. Bloody idiot.
With the joy of the weather, driving became very interesting. The heads of the valleys road was particularly wet with huge amounts of surface water and one hell of a gusty crosswind. It was definitely a challenge. We rapidly got down to the M4 and started heading west, towards the Gower…when the pagers went off with a standdown. Confirmed by radio with the police, we found that the Coastguard had found the lady in question and we turned off the blues, took the next exit and drove back in a rather more sedate manner.
The rest of the evening was taken up with a debrief on Saturday and it was good to hear from the ambulance service, the hospital and from the helicopter praise for the professionalism of our work with the casualty.
Oh one other announcement we had tonight. On Saturday, Brecon team has it’s Christmas party. Oh, so does Bridgend. So half of South Wales’ mountain rescuers will be drunk. Don’t say it. Just don’t. There’s an unwritten rule that this Saturday night Central Beacons team will be sober. Just in case.
Last night I was lucky enough to spend some time riding along with a Paramedic from Caerphilly in the Rapid Response Vehicle (RRV) answering calls in Caerphilly.
The RRV is basically a Paramedic on his own in a car with some lifesaving equipment. They’re sent to only the most urgent of calls and their purpose is to get there quick and provide life-saving treatment early on. Caerphilly ambulance station is all but closed now and the Ambulance guys are mostly based out of the fire station next door. As a result I saw a friend whom I hadn’t seen in quite some time when he left the team to become a fireman.
We had about six calls during the evening. At least two of them were calls that I, without the benefit of the extra kit the RRV carries, would have assumed them to be heart attacks. It was a fascinating insight into critical care at the sharp end including some excellent tuition on ECG analysis.
After a late finish last night, I was looking forward to a relaxing day today. My central heating boiler’s died – the pilot light won’t stay lit, so after boiling some water to clean dishes, we headed upstairs to build the wardrobes that I recently acquired. It was about that point that the pager went off. *sigh*
We were placed on standby for a callout in the Neuadd valley, so I quickly got changed and as I headed up to base, the pager messages came out indicating that we were on. As I approached base, I saw Alpha heading off down the road, but the main doors were still open. I headed down to base to find Huw there who indicated I should take Echo, the second Landrover in case we needed more vehicles. I headed off up the road and as I approached control at the pumphouse, I was quickly tasked to take a crew up to the gap. We had an adult and four children on the slopes of Pen Y Fan, one of the children had an injured leg.
On our way up the Roman Road we could hear the first hill party as they approached the casualty. With the initial assessment of the casualty came a request for a helicopter – obviously all was not right here. After dropping the first crew off at the gap, I headed back down to pick up another. By the time I got back up, my Landrover was lovely and warm and as 169 came in to pick up the one lad, the other three had been walked back to our location. We piled them into our Landrover and gave them some hot Ribena to warm them up. Eventually I took them down to control where an ambulance was waiting for them. Their group leader joined them shortly after and they were taken off to Prince Charles to get checked over. We did get a “well done” back from the hospital via the Ambulance services, which was nice. From my limited information I understand there was an open fracture of the leg involved and since the young man had spent some time being carried out on our stretcher, we had quite a lot of cleaning to do once we got back to base where we had to disinfect anything that had blood on it.
I just hope tomorrow’s going to be quieter…
I’ve been back responding with the First Responders this week. It’s good to be back with the medical side and although we had a quiet night last night, tonight’s been different. Three calls, two toddlers and an elderly lady. A very, very busy night for the ambulance service, we spent a lot of time with the RRV for the area, Richard, who’s a great chap and is happy to take the time to explain to both myself and Dilwyn the details of everything he did.
Both children we had were ‘sphincter-clenching moments’ when the call came through. Both had ‘breathing difficulties’ – a technical term that can mean anything from a bit of a wheeze all the way through to blocked airway. An 11-month old and a 2-year old both had breathing difficulties and from what Richard said, there’s been quite a few of these recently. Certainly the poor father in the last call had been ill all week. So yeah, there seems to be a bit of a bug going around.
Although, you ask any healthcare professional. There’s always a bug going around…