I am the first one to say that I don’t work for a living.
Or that I am nothing more then a glorified babysitter.
Mind you, I, unlike the children who do the same job, have insurance, retirement benefits and also do not need a ride home from the creepy father figure who always volunteers to take me home when he and his wife get home and he has to much to drink … sorry … hehe I am cracking up right now at that one but only because it is sick’ish and I am sleep deprived!

Back to I don’t do anything at work …
I sit around and, well, I baby-sit a bunch of grown men doing things like, watching TV, sleeping and when the weather is nice they might do yard work.
I know all of my little babysitters out there are so happy because there is hope for them to get a chance to stay in the field they love!!!
Some times though, just every once and awhile mind you, I actually do something.
Not often though mind you, otherwise I would have to find some other work!
We as corrections officers play it off like our job isn’t to bad.
And honestly most of the time where I work it isn’t.
Then again there are other camps that are crazy.
Fighting every day, and also just the people who are crazy!
We have both physically and mentally impaired inmates.
Elderly, youth and my favorite group of people the ones who are on drugs or going through detox.

So, back to the point I guess.
But first …
We have special teams in the prison system that have a special job.
They are called the CERT teams.
They are basically SWAT but without guns … ok some of them have shotguns but they shoot rubber bullets and wooden dowels.
When ever something goes wrong, we send in the CERT team … we then sit back and giggle as we watch them march in saying how silly they look … then we watch them do there thing and our jaws might drop a little … then they march back out and we all stand back and try to look away because we don’t want to make eye contact with these evil sadist's!

Well, Friday night the CERT teams got activated to go to an institution for a problem.
Then there back ups got called out to go to another camp for another problem.
Then we had another problem at another camp … and most of the help was already on the road.
So who did they call?
ME!
They knew that I could single handedly go and take care of the problem!!!
Yea right … I was a warm body who doesn’t have children and/or a life.

So I get a call 15 minutes before I was supposed to go home from my LT. and he said they needed my help … so me being the man I am decided to go … not because of loyalty, but the overtime pay of course!
No it also did not have anything to do with La Wife having plans to go out with her friends and I was going to be home all alone with the dog crying into some sparkling water wishing I had friends and a life!
I met up with 11 other people who where also picked to go on this mission and we got all of our gear, jumped in a van and drove away on a short little 2+ hour drive.
Once we arrived we where informed of what the mission was.
Another prison got a phone call that 2 inmates where planning on escaping … no big deal right Osceola County Florida has it happen all of the time … I know low blow but some of you smirked and you know it!
No, this camp has some bad guys in it and they don’t need to be getting out.
The other part to the phone call warning was that they had guns.
We all know that guns are bad.
In a prison it’s really bad though.
If a gun is on a compound it can very quickly turn into, well the old saying ‘like shooting fish in a barrel.’

It was so strange to be a part of this.
It either had to be bad or they must have been really desperate!
We all knew it had to be bad, I mean they pulled me and I am the worst babysitter around!
We all joked around laughing and playing, then we got hit with what was going on.
To say somber and silence is an understatement.
People who do nothing but joke around and cut people off in conversations left and right started raising there hands to ask questions.
Groups started forming automatically with senior officers moving around and grabbing up new officers pulling them into the folds.
Younger officers being forced to talk and say what was on there minds for the reasons of helping them to realize the realizations of what was going on, and also to get input from a new mind into this type of situation.
It was kind of strange because I got pulled into one group because of my experience and time with the department, then I was pulled by a few other officers who knew me because they knew I had the time but not so much the experience.
It helped the situation knowing that my coworkers knew me, knew I was reliable, but also respected that this wasn’t my field of experience per say.
We got all of the information, figured out what all we had to do, how we where going to do it, when and what to expect.
After everyone had the plan down they made us all sit down for about ½ an hour and the joking started right back up.
Some would say it was like a split personality switch.
Now that I have been in it though it was more of a tension breaker and a way to let the stress out and get to know the new faces with us.
We had people from all over Central Florida after all and most of us had never meet, let alone been threw anything like this with each other before.
That being said, in a situation like this any joke is fair game, disrespect didn’t exist, sexual harassment … well things got said that in any other situation would have gotten people fired … but not right then.
The feeling of comradery was so intense.
We became a family at that moment if only for the few hours it was going to take to take care of this problem.
Personal differences got thrown out the window, grudges didn’t exists, and you knew the person next to you that you just meet a ½ hour earlier would have your back.

So my group got the confinement cells.
That group is the group of prisoners who have been bad and need to be separated form the rest of the population.
These are the guys who could have done anything from back talking an officer, to trying to beat up an officer.
So, we had no clue who or what we where going to deal with in each cell … I know FUN!
We did what we had to do, found what we could and luckily had no situations.
We found some stuff, nothing to special.
We did not find any weapons though.
So, after all of the inmate living areas where searched we got to go home.
We got home at 2am.
The next group left out to go back at 6am to finish the searches of the other buildings out there.

So to my fellow corrections officers …
We are the group who only get the bad press.
We tend to be the lowest form of law informant … mind you most of the others not only can’t do it, but also will not even try our jobs … afraid to play law man without your guns???
The group who is looked down on because we are abusing peoples children.
We are looked at as the scum of the world on a lot of different fronts.
We are also the group that watches the people no one else wants to.
We are the group who walk into a cell with 100+ inmates of all sorts of crimes with only our minds and bodies as a defense.
We are the people who although trained to use weapons, don’t get to use them when we need them most.
We are the ones who are so understaffed that if and/or when things go south it is almost 30+ to 1 … in the inmates favor.
We all know that I am supper ninja and can take 30 inmates at one time, but some of my brothers and sisters in this uniform might not be to par … so those odds are kind of scary …
We don’t get the respect we should, or have earned, but we know that what we do is important.

So, I just want to say, to my fellow officers out there who might have happened across this silly little Blog …

Thanks you all!

So over at Barsnstripes.net I posted a few things that confuse me.
I have posted them here before, you know like how a concrete boat can float and some other things too.
One I didn’t mention there because I figured I would save it for over here is.
Drum Roll please ….
Why did the US government send out a letter telling us that the Census was going to be being mailed to us soon?
There are presumed 120,000,000 houses in America back in 2001.
In the Orlando area there are about 900 apartments complexes with how many apartments in each?
How about all of the mobile home parks around the world?
We are talking about Hundreds of Millions of residents across America.
So, lets take some stupid pull out of my bum numbers and say that they are official numbers but God knows I think I am shooting so low it isn’t even funny.

120,000,000 houses
240,000,000 apartments (Remember New York City only has apartments and townhouses)
60,000,000 mobile homes (Sure, why not the South has a lot of them, right?)
_________
420,000,000 Sure, that’s a nice number right?

OK, so that’s a lot of homes to mail stuff to!
Lets take it a few steps further shall we before we figure out costs for this?
Let’s throw in envelopes, we will say 1 cent each for easy math thinking that the government got a good deal while knowing better?
Can’t forget paper, we will go with 1 cent again but this time we are throwing in the ink cost to that as well to try and make it all work out.
So for envelope, paper and ink it‘s about $8,400,000
We can’t forget the stamps though …
.42 cents for a stamp that’s another $176,400,000
That’s roughly $184,800,000, we will round up to $185,000,000

So we just spent One Hundred and Eighty Five Million Dollars to tell all of us that in a weeks time we will be getting another piece of mail.
Um, how and why did we just let this happen?

Here is another fun fact!
A Gold Bar in Fort Knox weighs ruffle 27.5 pounds.
That means 440 ounces each …
Gold goes for $1,125 an ounce … so each bar is worth $495,000
That’s 373 and 3/4 bars of gold?
That's 10,278 pounds of gold
Also known as 4.58 Metric Tons, or 5.13 Standard Tons of gold.

So, my math might be off because I am still ½ asleep and math is not my strong point, but yea that’s government for you, just throwing money away like we have plenty.
That’s not even including the manpower costs to mail all of this out …

Just throwing this out there for you all.
Talk to you all next week.

Friday I started under my new supervisors.
I was given a stupid project that was pointless in a lot of ways because it will just have to be redone in about 2 weeks once they realize it shouldn’t have been done in the first place the way they asked to have it done.
This project had me outside all day standing, crouching and walking for over 6+ hours with no place to sit down, eat or even get a drink.
I got a wonderful sunburn and at the end of the shift once I finally got to sit down my supervisor came over looked down at my feet, kicked a small rock and said I needed to work over and pull a double.
This was my first day … all I want to know is what in the world I did to deserve this?

So, that was my Friday … Thursday was fun though.
I had to go recertify and practice beating people up all day.
Wednesday and Tuesday I got to train my replacement.
Monday, well I took it off … I knew it was going to be a stressful week.

So, lets pick up the warm and tingly feeling shall we?
Wednesday I got an e-mail from my old Blog site saying someone has posted a message.
Here is what it said “Enjoy reading your Blog....how the hell u made something so mundane interesting enough to keep reading about it is a mystery....you are a great writer that is clever and funny....keep up the good work!!”
I don’t know who posted it, or how to get back to them.
So, thanks random person who made my day a little brighter!
It doesn’t seem like a lot, but that made my day!
It was in reference to a Blog I wrote about my Hotels.com experience when I left my wife to spend a fun filled weekend with Kermit in Atlanta … wow, when I put it that way it doesn’t sound so good does it?

So that made me think, I don’t write that way anymore.
The few of you who read this know I jump subject’s in strange ways but over the last few months I haven’t really pushed the issue of making sure that every few seconds, or minutes for my slower readers, you might giggle.
How can I fix this?
My mind just hasn’t been in the same place over the last few months?
I could post fun pictures like I used to, but I think I have found every thing funny on the web … I know I need to look harder don’t I.

Speaking of searching the web, I have a coworker who only uses the web to better himself.
Looking up how to be a better farmer and things to try and help him understand his kids.
He says that the internet is for education, but purely it is much more for our entertainment.
I just don’t get his mind set?
I mean other then when people like me decide what we have to say is important enough to take up space on the web and ruin it for others that is, the web is for FUN!!!
See an attempt at humor that just missed … well to me anyway you all are the sadistic people who might just get it and smile a little …

So, let me tell you all something, there is all kinds of stuff on the web.
All kinds of fun and funny stuff.
But as some of you know, I try and keep this site at a low PG rating.
That isn’t as easy as one might think to do though.
I mean I am sure that my sister doesn’t let her children read this, but if she did I don’t want them running off to a web dictionary site searching up things I am talking about and finding out about the sick real world we live in.
Why tarnish the innocence any sooner then we have to after all?
Do we really want our younger generation learning the truth about crime in the world?

Or about how adults sometimes dress up and play pretend sometimes too?