PERSPECTIVE

In the immortal words of Anton Ego, "You serve me what you dare and I'll offer you some perspective."

This is the view from where my friend suffered a medical emergency that resulted in his heart stopping and CPR being required. Most people would look at that view of a fire station with an Ambulance and Engine in it and say,"Man there's not much better place to be if something is going to happen." And here is where they are wrong.

If the normal response is to dial 911 and wait for professional help, the dispatcher must get information about what the call is about and where it is then tone out the appropriate resources. They then have to get to their vehicles, locate not only where the location is but in this case, how to get through a secured construction site to get best access to the patient. THAT TAKES TIME! What if the engine and ambulance were out on other calls? It happens, multiple time a day.
Yesterday, the people around him when he went down, stood up and took immediate action. They did what they could with the knowledge and training they had to make sure that when professional help arrived, there was as viable of a patient for them to work on as possible.

We aren't talking curing cancer by yourself in the field. We are talking simple, PROVEN, life saving efforts that dramatically increase a persons chances of survival and recovery. And your willingness to step up and use them.

We do not have control over wither the Where or the When knobs, we do, however, have absolute control over the "How am I going to react" knob. All I ask is that you work to make that knob turn a notch higher than where it is now. If that is just getting it off of 0, so be it. Ultimately, most will not choose to make theirs go all the way to 11 and become a Firefighter or Paramedic, or LEO, or Soldier, or Dispatcher. Knowing CPR, how to use an AED, and how to control serious bleeding takes mere hours to initially learn and very little practice time to stay in shape. The flip side, is that can make all the difference of if a person lives or dies within the next 5 minutes or less.

How about we work on getting your HOW knob to at least turn up to a 4? Learn CPR, Learn how to use an AED, Learn "Stop The Bleed."

The life you save may not be important to you at the moment, but I bet they are important to somebody!



EDIT TO ADD: My friend called the job site this morning to talk! THAT is the difference between someone standing there knowing CPR and doing and people standing around waiting for 911 to respond.

I GOT NEW SOCKS

In all seriousness, as of 11:45 local, The George H W Bush Combat Development Complex is officially a thing and I was there for the groundbreaking. This effort of Texas A&M University and the Army Futures Command resulted in a Cooperative Agreement to develop a part of the RELLIS campus at Texas A&M. With the support of the State of Texas the Complex is a reality. This will speed up the path of getting state of the art technology into the hands of front line warfighters as usable technology and I get to play a tiny part in it.

Any of you who knew or knew of George H W Bush, know that he had an affinity for fancy socks. Towards the end, he could always be seen rolling around in his wheelchair with fancy socks on full display. Well, as part of the celebration of this man and what he stood for, the takeaways from the groundbreaking and naming ceremony included a pair of custom fancy socks commemorating the Bush Combat Development Complex.

Good Things

All good things must come to an end. And so does mine this weekend. I end 13 fantastic fun filled years at the Oran W Nicks Low Speed Wind Tunnel. However, I'm not really completely leaving. I am just jumping up in speed. From MACH 0.3 to MACH 5.0+, I'm moving next door through the Hypersonics lab to the Aerospace Laboratory for Lasers, Electromagnetics, and Optics with the building code named The Alamo. Finally getting back full circle to using my degree in Laser ElectroOptics while building upon my experiences in the Wind Tunnel World. I enter this with equal parts excitement and terror, This is such an incredible opportunity to attack new challenges and be part of the teams that develop new and exciting laser diagnostic techniques. The application of these in various tunnels and innovative ways just make it all the more exciting. Besides, <LEGO GUY VOICE> LASERS <LEGO GUY VOICE>! No sharks involved, unless the Navy wants to pony up some research funding, then we'll talk.

Foxy Loxy

This has to be the best picture of the little red fox we have in the area. Now if only I could catch a picture of the Cougar. And shoot the damn coyotes that are tearing up the calves.

I wanna go fast Ma!

Dark Star Air Racing brought one of their L-39's by KCLL along with the team and I was fortunate enough to be able to give them a tour of the Wind Tunnel before they headed off onto campus for tours ending up back at the airport to host the Aggie Women in Engineering chapter for a meet and greet. What a great bunch of folks.

It's not like I'm into Plane Stalking or anything. But, I did manage to get a few good shots during arrival.

Then it was back to the daily grind of testing.

That's All Brother over AggieLand

Awesome shot, caught this C-47 "That's All Brother" that led the Normandy Invasion flights doing a flyover past the clock tower at Texas A&M this afternoon. Was across the street in front of Kleberg BLDG and heard something. Took a minute to spot it because it was behind the building.

Oh Deer! New Year!

So last week was a LONG week that started the week before. When I got home from work Friday I all but collapsed and stayed that way until midday Saturday. I was physically and emotionally drained. Today, I finally had the energy up to go outside and survey the damage from the last couple days of wind. Not terrible. While out, we went by each game cam and pulled cards since they had been last checked at the beginning of the month/year. Please to make note, the left edge of the picture above is about 12 feet from the window of the guest bedroom/library. We don't put out corn or feed or anything this year. Especially wiht how thick the acorns are. There are two to five does bedded down in this corner of the yard almost nightly.

As I said, no feed but lots of acorns. We've got deer in the cameras every day. Anything form a single doe to a herd of them. Middle of the day, middle of the night.

They're out there wandering through.

Including one funky unicorn.

As far as damage form the storms, we had 43MPH gust with a 24 hour period that averaged in the lower 30MPH range for the entire time. Lost, well had come loose, two panels of tin on the roof of the barn. One managed to remove itself from the structure and the other was still hanging on but flapping and about to go. Lots of branches down and some large ones at that, but, no complete trees down that we could see. Granted it's warmed up to 32 and the chill factor is still in the low 20's with the continued wind so I have no intention of going out searching for trees.
Instead, Kelli and I will stay in and bake some fresh bread. Kinda like we did with cookies over the holidays. Vacuum pack (partial vacuum and seal) and freeze and the mini loafs will keep just fine. Just like the cookies.

Maybe at some point it will be warm enough and dry enough to get out onto the range and do some shooting. Right now our range is unusable because it is pretty much swampland along with good amounts of pasture.

Lights Out!

Started Monday at "Long before O'dark thirty" with the electrical contractors, the Utilities and Energy Services folks for the University and the FAA to shut down power to everything the feeds through our parking area so it could all be switched to generator power. We'll be on Gensets for a week while the contractors build a new slab and pull in a new underground feed for a new switchbank and relocated transformers. Then we switch back to line power and they remove all of the overhead lines from our area to make way for a new two story building. that will sit pretty much everywhere in the picture above. Mostly everything went right. A couple of hickups highlighted things for us and for the airport to have a closer look at.

Zombie Thriller Apaacolypse NOT

So this was me last weekend. Paul Martin held his annual Preparedness Conference at KRTraining and this year, Kelli and I were invited to talk Chainsaw Safety. We are planning a class on safety and use but that will be an all day thing or at least half a day. We had an hour. So we did our level best to get as much information out to the students about safety, choosing a saw, accessories, and some very basic techniques for disaster situations. Such as cutting your way out or back in from/to your home.

There were presentations on the years outlook, preparedness medicine, fitness, Kubaton use, and checklists for preppers. Not a single bad one among them and that was just day 1. So much great information