Reaching to our friends at Tech Rescue. Your response makes us proud. We're with you in the mourning.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007
This is unbelieveable!!
Check out this video of a news broadcast from a Fox station in St. Louis.
I couldn't believe it when I saw it.
Governor Corzine Follow Up
Here is a follow-up story from the New York Times, printed today, to the story I posted earlier.
In the Spotlight, the Politics of Buckling Up
As constituents and public officials wished Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey a full recovery from his injuries in a car accident, many were shaking their heads that someone who is so smart, and has so much to lose, would put himself at risk by apparently not wearing a seat belt.
Such was the surprise that the issue became an instant corollary to the main news that Mr. Corzine had been so seriously injured, with multiple broken bones, that he needs help breathing from a ventilator and faces months of rehabilitation.
In interviews and on the Web, people in New Jersey and from around the country expressed incredulity over the state police superintendent’s statement that the governor routinely refused to wear a seat belt. Some accused the Democratic governor of hypocrisy, even arrogance. A few called for his resignation.
Many said that if it turns out that Mr. Corzine was not wearing a seat belt when the crash occurred, he should receive a citation for violating the state’s mandatory seat belt law. The fines are $20 and court costs are $26 per violation. Others wondered why the state trooper driving the car did not insist that he wear one.
“What is he thinking?” asked Marsha McMillan, 22, a worker at a store in the Hamilton Mall in Mays Landing, N.J., several miles from the crash site. “It’s almost bizarre. I bet even the strangest of rappers and punk rockers wear seat belts.”
Comments in a similar vein appeared on popular political blogs and local Web sites, like Baristanet.com in Montclair, N.J., as well as the reader forums of several local newspapers.
Jon Rantzman, 67, of Walnut Creek, Calif., who posted a critical comment on the Empire Zone blog of The New York Times Web site, said in a phone interview: “A governor, any governor, should be a role model, not a scofflaw. How can we pass a law and fine the citizens of New Jersey for not doing something” that the governor “gets away with”?
Safety organizations, in the meantime, cited the severity of Mr. Corzine’s injuries as further evidence of the importance of seat belts.
“It’s unfortunate and tragic and another very high-profile reminder that we still have a ways to go to convince some people to wear their belts,” said John Ulczycki, executive director of transportation safety at the National Safety Council.
Even though New Jersey may be perceived as a dangerous place to drive, traffic statistics tell a different story.
According to figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the number of traffic fatalities in New Jersey is well below the national average. And a record-high 90 percent of drivers and front-seat passengers in New Jersey wore seat belts in 2006, the eighth-highest rate in the country. (The state of Washington is No. 1, at 96 percent.)
Statistics show that 46 percent of passenger vehicle deaths in New Jersey in 2005 involved people who were not wearing seat belts, according to state police records.
While mandatory seat belt laws were strenuously opposed in many quarters when states first started enacting them in the mid-1980s, they are now so much a part of the culture that even toddlers know to buckle up before a car starts moving.
So what might cause Governor Corzine and the others to break the law in such a risky way?
“Even the worst nervous Nellie in the world has some glimmer of a sense of invulnerability, and all of us have some of that,” said Dr. Tony Stern, a psychiatrist in Westchester County, who admits he does not wear a seat belt “100 percent of the time” himself. “And someone who is a doer and an alpha male and a multimillionaire is going to have more than the average sense of invincibility.”
The former governor of New York, Mario M. Cuomo, said in a phone interview yesterday that he, like Mr. Corzine, preferred to sit in the front seat. And while he initially found seat belts somewhat uncomfortable, he said he wore them out of a sense of duty, given the fact that he had signed the nation’s first mandatory seat belt law in 1984.
“I remember the violent opposition it received,” Mr. Cuomo said. “People didn’t like the idea of being forced to strap themselves in. When we adopted the seat belt law, it was the most unpopular thing I had done as governor.”
In New Jersey, which passed its own law shortly afterward, the use of seat belts has been on the rise. The rate was 74 percent in 2000, when New Jersey made the law stricter, allowing police officers to pull over vehicles to issue seat belt citations. Previously, they could issue such citations only if the car had been pulled over for a separate offense.
About half the states now have the stricter form of the law, and organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a nonprofit group, are pushing for the rest to follow suit.
It is not clear whether the governor will get ticketed. New Jersey State Police officers have the discretion not to issue citations for seat-belt violations.
New Jersey’s Seat Belt Law applies to drivers, all passengers between 8 and 18, and all front-seat passengers. The law makes the driver responsible for proper seat belt use only by those younger than 18.
Few people interviewed suggested that Governor Corzine would suffer any lasting political consequences.
“Whenever there is a tragedy like this, I think whether it hurts or helps in the long run has a lot to do with how the victim handles it,” said Peter J. Woolley, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University. “Corzine could become an apologist and a spokesman for traffic safety and seat belt use.”
NJ Governor Injured
The following story has been in the news these past couple days in the Tri-State area. Thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Corzine. Reposted from the New York Times.
New Jersey Governor Is Injured in Car Crash
CAMDEN, N.J., April 12 — Gov. Jon S. Corzine underwent surgery on Thursday night after a car accident in which he broke his left leg, sternum, collarbone, six ribs on each side and a lower vertebra, state police and other government officials said. He was in critical but stable condition at midnight, sedated and on a breathing tube.
Mr. Corzine was in the front passenger seat when his state police vehicle swerved to avoid an apparently out-of-control driver on the Garden State Parkway and hit a guardrail. He was flown by helicopter to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where he received seven units of blood and a metal rod in his leg during a two-hour operation that ended about 11:30 p.m.
“He has what we call multisystemic injuries,” Robert F. Ostrum, Cooper’s director of orthopedic trauma, who led the surgical team, said in a midnight briefing for reporters here. “Injuries to his chest, lungs, to his legs, and he lost a significant amount of blood.” Asked whether Mr. Corzine was lucky to be alive, Dr. Ostrum said: “Yes.”
Mr. Corzine is scheduled for two more operations, Saturday and Monday, to clean up the wounds, Dr. Ostrum said, adding that it would be “days to weeks” until he was lucid enough to conduct state business, and three to six months before he could get around fairly well. Though the governor sustained a cut on his forehead, Dr. Ostrum said a CAT scan showed no brain injury.
Richard J. Codey, the State Senate president and a Democrat like Mr. Corzine, stepped in as acting governor during the surgery, and is expected to remain in charge as long as Mr. Corzine is hospitalized.
The state trooper who was driving the Chevrolet Tahoe that was carrying Mr. Corzine was flown separately to Cooper, and asked that no information about his condition be released. Samantha Gordon, an assistant to the governor who often travels with him, was also hurt in the accident but walked into the Camden hospital unassisted shortly before 8 p.m.
After delivering a speech to the New Jersey Conference of Mayors at the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, Mr. Corzine was on his way to Drumthwacket, the governor’s mansion in Princeton, for a meeting between the Rutgers women’s basketball team and Don Imus, the talk-show host who was fired on Thursday for making a racist and sexist remark about the players.
In a 9 p.m. news conference at the hospital here, Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said that a red pickup truck entered the highway “erratically from the shoulder,” causing a white Dodge Ram pickup truck to swerve left. The governor’s driver, State Trooper Robert Rasinski, swerved to avoid the white truck, but hit it, and then slid into the guardrail, with the impact on the passenger side.
Colonel Fuentes said neither weather nor speed appeared to be a factor. He said Trooper Rasinski did “an excellent job handling the situation, considering that a car swerved into his path.”
The driver of the white truck stopped, he said, but the red truck did not, adding that state police will be examining cameras on the highway in hopes of identifying the red truck.
Governor Corzine was traveling, as he normally does, in a two-car caravan. Officials said the two troopers in the car following Mr. Corzine stopped to care for him rather than chase the red truck.
Mr. Fuentes said he was unsure whether Mr. Corzine was wearing a seatbelt; he often does not.
James Freund, a volunteer emergency medical technician, said he happened upon the scene and saw Governor Corzine, his glasses off, pulled from the car head first on an board used to immobilize the spine. “The only thing you could verbally hear from him was that he was moaning,” Mr. Freund said. “It looked like the car made a direct impact on the left guard rail and kind of hopped over it.”
Mr. Freund said that he saw the injured trooper give the thumbs-up sign to a fellow trooper, and that a swarm of firefighters and some 30 law enforcement officers, “looking like C.I.A. agents, dressed in black, with earpieces coming out,” surrounded the scene. He said the helicopter arrived at 6:25 p.m.
“It was obviously someone important,” he added. “I was assuming there was a fatality.”
New Jersey faces a $2 billion budget deficit that Mr. Corzine must close by July 1, and questions have been raised about the fiscal and legal soundness of the state’s accounting of its troubled pension system. He has been criticized by Republicans and others for failing to disclose the extent of his financial gifts to a former companion who is also the head of the state’s largest union. And all of this is taking place at a time when federal prosecutors have subpoenaed records from the governor’s office, and legislative offices, as part of a broad inquiry into Trenton’s often-murky budgetary practices.
More immediately, he was scheduled to leave Saturday for a five-day trade mission to Israel, his second international trip since becoming governor last year.
Dr. Ostrum, the surgeon, said the governor’s most severe injury was an open femur fracture, in two places, that pierced the skin. Surgeons used the longest rod and longest screws they had to repair the bone, and it still was not quite long enough for the 6-foot-3 governor. “Governor Corzine has a very long leg,” he said. “He’s got a significant rehab ahead of him,” he added,” but “there is no risk that he will lose his leg.”
Despite the seriousness of the injuries, Mr. Corzine’s pulse and blood pressure remained stable, Dr. Ostrum said, adding that he was lucid and talking to doctors when he arrived at the hospital. The doctor described the broken vertebra as “a nothing fracture,” and said he would give the governor a sling “for comfort” to heal the collarbone. The broken ribs and sternum were what necessitated the breathing tube.
The accident occurred at Mile Marker 44.5 in Galloway Township on the parkway’s northbound lanes, about five miles north of the Atlantic City Expressway. At Drumthwacket, the Rutgers team, which made it to the N.C.A.A. championship game but lost to Tennessee, arrived at 7:45 p.m. expecting to see the governor. Mr. Imus had arrived earlier by limousine. Half a dozen news reporters and photographers waited outside, and a news helicopter flew overhead.
They spent three hours in Drumthwacket’s library, departing shortly before 11 p.m., without commenting on their meeting.
Friday, April 13, 2007
National Registry
Aside from DTs National Registry woes, I don't have to jump through nearly as many hoops to get my certification. In fact, I don't have to jump through any at all. As a New York State provider, we are a "Non-Registry" state, which is great because it means my certification lasts for three years instead of two, and I don't have to deal with an external bureaucracy (NYS DOH is actually pretty good). Unfortunately, it also means that should I want to work in another state, I'm pretty much screwed. So I finally bit the bullet and (having done a recert class in the past year) decided to do the paperwork and pay the fees to get registered. Thus... today I had the fun (really!) experience of taking the computerized written exam, and hopefully, in a few days I'll know if I'll be allowed to prepend the letters "NR" to the front of my "EMT-B."
Thursday, April 12, 2007
The Future Lies at Your Feet
I accepted a job working for the government of the State of New York... the paperwork should be arriving in the mail any day now. All those lovely I-9s and W-2s and Health Insurance Enrollment forms. Not to mention a union membership in PEF.
Meanwhile, I already know where my office will be. Here's a photo courtesy of the Wired NY website:
Yes... that's Ground Zero in the foreground...
Spoke too soon!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Spring in New York!
The best part about Spring in New York, aside from the warm weather, sunny skies, and overall more pleasant aura: flu season is over! At last a hiatus from running calls for runny noses and general malaise!
Of course, Spring also means the start of allergy season, bringing.... calls for runny noses and general malaise.
Woe is me!
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Paramedic
So I've resolved to enroll myself in a paramedic class, or as they say here in New York: AEMT-P. (One step above AEMT-CCT, followed by EMT-I, EMT-B, and CFR).
I got a job working for the State of New York as a Junior Engineer when I graduate in about a month, so hopefully, starting September, I'll be going to school at St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Center in Downtown Manhattan doing the evening -P class.
Wish me luck, and I'll keep you updated!
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