April has sucked royally thus far, and I haven't felt very funny (as opposed to not being funny and thinking I am). So I'm celebrating National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week the way they used to do summer television: With a re-run.)


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One stressful thing about being a dispatcher is that when the phone rings it could be anything. Many of us play Dispatch Bingo. A UFO report? A herd of cattle blocking the roadway? Lunch, interrupted? A couple arguing over who gets custody of their dog? That's a row--bingo!

For some dispatchers this is one of the perks of the job: the challenge and ( Read more... )

As a firefighter, I studied building construction a lot. Sadly, this gave me no skills in actually building a structure, although I can tell you why a lot of them fall down ( Read more... )

 We're getting a new radio system in our dispatch center, and the guy training us on it claims we could use it at home, on a laptop ( Read more... )

It’s the family fight season

And Uncle Ted is coming ‘round

He gets so drunk that he falls to the ground

When old Teddy gets into town

He’ll be going to the jailhouse now

(He’ll be going to the jailhouse now)


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 Hey, I almost forgot: December 13th marked my thirtieth anniversary working in Noble County Government!

It's complicated, because I spent the first few years working in the Noble County Jail, and thus can honestly say I spent time in jail. After that I moved to dispatch, which is now it's own department: Noble County Communications.


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 Every five years I do nothing to honor National Public Safety Telecommunications Week, so I'm reprinting this from 2017. Hah! No, I'm not taking the week off, I'm just working on a novel, instead. There's a fire truck in it.

In 1991, after an unfortunate encounter with a teething baby, a Congressman from Delaware became the very first person to ( Read more... )

 I don't know if anyone who's not in the emergency services will fully appreciate this, but what the heck. I wrote some new lyrics to the Christmas song "Deck the Halls", and it's dedicated to all the emergency telecommunicators out there--including those who, like me, still call themselves 911 dispatchers.

I just hit my 29th anniversary on the ( Read more... )

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National Emergency Telecommunicators Week is this week. It's a tough time for emergency services this year, so I figured I should write something original, to talk about the times we live in.

But I didn't, so part of this is an update to a blog I wrote in 2017. (I wonder if anyone would have noticed? Too late.)

In 1991, after an unfortunate ( Read more... )