Monday

"One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast... a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.”

Ed Abbey (I think)

Friday Funnies

OK, here is why you should not expect "docile" wild animals to stay that way & why you should worry about what someone else did to piss off that bison before you got there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3ubCxi9T_E

Really, people, they don't like to be slapped.

Oh, and I updated my facebook as to how happy I was that spring was finally here. Then the sun came up - it's snowing again.

Let it...oh...

The calendar may read 22 March, but spring is a fickle friend here in Yellowstone. Lloyd will be bouncing off the walls, no doubt, with all the white stuff coming down, but the poor plow crew will be back-clearing roads (and I will have to wait even longer for admin access - there are buildings out there I need to check!). Worse still, getting into the backcountry this year is going to be crazy - I doubt some areas will be clear until mid-July. Sigh. Maybe I'm just ready for the winter to be over. I miss the smells of spring.

WE ALL PASSED!!!

We had our practical exam to qualify for the National Register of EMT's (NREMT) on Saturday. Despite a horrible sinus headache, I managed to make it on time and get through the day. Best news - ALL OF US PASSED! Everyone worked really hard, so this was a big deal. Next step - computer-based written test in Bozeman (not sure when I'm going to be able to do this one, but want to do it soon before I forget all this...)

When I pass that portion, then I can get registered in Montana & in the park.

the winter blahs

Just another day in paradise - new snow of a few inches in the GMGM, but the sun is shining so there's a good chance of melt later.

Took the first of three final exams in my First Responder class last night - the whole class passed! Hooray! We're getting together Friday night in Bob's garage to study for the practical portion. That test will happen Saturday. After that we can register for the NREMT computer-based adaptive test in Bozeman. Then the real work begins. Learning how to drive the ambulance, learn how the Mammoth folks work. Dealing with the summer season. Seeing how I deal with a real emergency...it will be interesting.

Boss is away at a conference this week, so we are getting a lot done here in the office (lol) - just trying to get ahead of the curve before summer, or if they decide to shut the government down.

The plow trucks are making fabulous headway through the park. Bob says that they are having to cut very little ice. We continue to get storms, though, so keeping those roads clear is going to be a continuous chore. Roads aren't yet open for admin travel, so some of those buildings will have to wait to be GPS'ed.

Feel like I'm coming down with something, but other than that just a regular old week here in wonderland.

tsunami info - our friends in American Samoa should be fine...

Pacific nations evacuate coastal areas

Updated 10 minutes ago

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii has reduced the number of countries on its tsunami warning for the Pacific Basin following Friday's 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan.

It lists Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, French Polynesia, Pitcairn and Antarctica.

Several other Pacific states were initially on the list, as was New Zealand and Australia, but have since been removed.

The centre says sea level readings confirm that a tsunami has been generated which could cause widespread damage.

Samoa media report the tsunami warning there has been lifted and there had been no reports of inundation.

In American Samoa, officials said a 40cm surge was recorded in Pago Pago Harbour at 4am on Saturday and a 50cm surge an hour later.

The authorities in New Caledonia have lifted the tsunami alert for the territory and for Wallis and Futuna.

In Tonga, thousands of people in the capital Nuku'alofa sought refuge at the King's residence, which is on elevated land.

Radio Tonga was reporting shortly before 6am (NZT) that the marine office had not yet reported any significant wave activity.

The government of Kiribati called off its tsunami warning on Saturday morning just minutes before the wave was due to arrive.

In Nauru, a 20cm wave has been recorded, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said.

Radio reports from French Polynesia say tsunami waves reached 30 metres inland on the island of Ua Pou in the Marquesas Islands, but caused no serious damage. An official says the wave measured about 50cm.

Reports from Tahiti say at waves inundated beachfront gardens at the Papenoo surf beach.

Northern Marianas, Guam

Thousands of residents in low-lying areas on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota in the Northern Marianas were evacuated to higher ground.

However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre reports that initial readings showed waves of only 66 centimetres hit Saipan.

Radio New Zealand International's correspondent in Saipan says people had filled up their cars with petrol and stocked up at grocery stores but everyone kept calm, and there was little evidence of panic.

The authorities on the United States island territory of Guam in the western Pacific also ordered the evacuation of low-lying areas.

Residents were told to move to ground at least 15 metres above sea level and 30 metres inland.

Copyright © 2011, Radio New Zealand

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/70401/pacific-nations-evacuate-coastal-areas

so I've been real tired lately

But hey, what else is new? Right?

Work, grad school, EMS classes, trying to work out on a regular basis - I should be tired.

But, then again not this tired.

Blood work = anemia + hypothyroidism (the latter is a given, since they nuked my thyroid)

So I'm not crazy after all.

More pills.

Should have more energy and not feel like sleeping through every weekend.

Yay!

Hire more feds to shrink the deficit

No, really. You should read this.

Read the full article here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2011/1103.gravois.html

...

he average voter may imagine federal bureaucracies as overstaffed, full of people leaning on their rakes and sharpening their pencils. But the truth is, most agencies are, if anything, understaffed. The government has grown tremendously in its spending and scope since the 1960s, and the population of the nation has grown by a margin of 100 million people, but the size of the federal workforce has remained remarkably static at about 2 million. Since coming into office two years ago, the Obama administration has bumped up staff levels by about 100,000, in part through “in-sourcing”—bringing back into the civil service inherently governmental work that had been farmed out to contractors. If this leads to better management, it could well mean a stanching of some of the cost overruns and regulatory failures that have been causing the government to bleed red ink. Today’s mindless demands for austerity, however, could reverse this trend.

This is not to say that there aren’t big bureaucratic reforms that need to be made that could lead to people losing their jobs. Many agencies, for instance, exhibit excessive layering in their management ranks (think job titles that start with “deputy-” or “under-”). And if Congress and the administration could agree to lift some of the outdated procedural requirements and redundant reporting demands that are the bane of the average civil servant’s life, it might be possible for agencies to fulfill their mission as well or better with fewer people.

But reforms like this almost never happen. Instead, what you usually get are demands like what we’re now seeing in Congress for across-the-board cuts in the workforce. This is often accomplished through attrition and incentives for early retirement. But the people most likely to walk away in those cases are the ones most confident of their ability to land a job in the private sector—in other words, often the best employees. Another method is to leave decisions about cutting up to the leaders of the agencies themselves. But as some veterans of Reinventing Government learned, that can have the effect of simply consolidating inertia in the managerial ranks. “Headquarters isn’t ever gonna cut itself,” says John Kamensky. “Headquarters cuts field.”

Ideally, the White House ought to be able to keep agencies from playing such games. But just as agencies lack the manpower and expertise to oversee their contractors, the White House strains to oversee the rest of government. The Office of Management and Budget is meant to be the eyes and ears of the executive branch. But with its staff of about 500, it is simply incapable of knowing what’s working and what’s not out in the labyrinths of the federal bureaucracy.

The paradox, then, is this: if the aim is to reform the civil service in order to put a lid on federal spending, what we really need are targeted increases in the federal workforce. A wise first move would be to double the size of the OMB. More and better staff at revenue-producing agencies like the IRS would also make sense. The SEC will need a big boost in personnel in order to fulfill the new demands of last year’s financial reform legislation, which wisely calls for the agency to oversee derivatives trading and other potentially destabilizing aspects of the financial world. And our best hope for controlling the burgeoning costs of Medicare and Medicaid—the biggest drivers of long-term federal deficits—lies in new, yet-to-be staffed bureaucracies whose founding is authorized in last year’s health care reform law.

But of course, Republicans have not only vowed to block funding for the financial and health reform laws, they’re also making demands to cut the federal workforce by as much as 15 percent—all in the spirit of so-called fiscal responsibility. “The idea that we’re somehow going to balance the budget by cutting the workforce is absurd,” says John Palguta of the Partnership for Public Service. It’s absurd for a number of reasons, but the biggest one is that, in today’s government, cutting civil servants is bound to prove an exceedingly expensive way to be thrifty.

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I find myself thinking

Yep. I was thinking today.

I was thinking about the great friends I have, and this crazy place that brought us together. I think about E, and Em, and Kendra, and Doug, and Troy, Nit, Urk, Nick, Shannon, Julia, and all the others who have scattered to the wind over the years.

I miss them all and wish them well.