Screaming, Flying Chicken

Many, many years ago, I worked as a security officer at a department store. On one afternoon, while prowling the store with my partner, Jason, looking for shoplifters, another employee jokingly tossed a play ball at us from another aisle. There was some playful banter about how we would "get him back", but all in good fun. Or so it seemed at the time. From that point on, for a period of weeks, 'Jon' (the poor guy who had dared challenge us...) received a varied assortment of items from all directions, at any time. But he never saw who was doing it. He knew it was us, but since he never saw us, he couldn't really be sure. Being undercover security officers, Jason & I knew how to disappear quickly and quietly, so that Jon never actually saw anything at all. It wasn't very long before Jon began to exhibit signs of what could be mistaken for PTSD.

The final straw was reached when one afternoon, Jason and I spotted Jon hard at work in the sporting goods department, putting fishing lures on their hooks for display. Jason had earlier picked up a toy chicken, which when squeezed crowed very loudly "Cock-a-doodle-doo!!!" This particular toy was poorly made, so it took a second or two for the screeching to start once it had been squeezed. Once we observed Jon to be concentrating hard at matching the fishing lures to the correct location, we positioned ourselves in the nearby men's clothing department, and Jason let it fly. It was a beautiful flight, forever etched in my mind. The now-ballistic chicken reached the apex of its flight path just as the screeching "Cock-a-doodle-dooooo" started. Jon turned to look for the source of the awful noise just in time to turn his face squarely into the path of the chicken, which terminated its twenty foot flight right on his forehead. Once again, he never saw who had launched this latest assault upon his dignity. But he knew. We had been back in the sanctity of our office for just a couple of minutes before Jon came banging on our door. But since he never saw us, he couldn't even be sure if we were working that day. (Our schedules were varied, and never posted) We didn't answer, leaving him to question his sanity.

A few hours later, Jason was out walking through the store when Jon confronted him. Jon was all red, sweating, and breathing as though he had just ran a marathon. He said "Do you want me to quit? Because thats what I'll do, right now! I can't handle it any more. I think I'm going to quit right now!" Jason was able to keep Jon from quitting, which would have made us feel even more guilty than we did at the moment.

This incident happened over a decade ago, but was brought back to mind yesterday morning as I unwrapped a gift from my sister. Had these been on the market 10 years ago, Jon might have ended up in the hospital under heavy sedation. The accuracy and distance attainable from these is uncanny.

This thing screeches with a "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" as soon as you launch it. It was a good gag gift, made all the better because it reminded me of that story.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. Before changing jobs last summer, I would have taken it to work & gotten a lot of mileage out of it there, but the people at my new workplace would never appreciate it. Maybe I'll use it as a punishment motivational tool for my kids.

Thanks sis!

The tale of the potato cannon...

I have been arrested just one time in my life thus far, and I plan to keep it that way.
About 10 years ago, I was arrested for firing a home made potato cannon.
My friend Aaron had come over one afternoon with the plans for a home built cannon which would shoot a potato a few hundred feet. We decided to build not one, but two guns using the plans. After all, we figured that this thing would be so cool that we would end up fighting over who got to keep it.

We set off for the local hardware store to purchase the ABS drain pipe, fittings, and gas grill ignitor needed. We assembled the two cannons quickly, and waited all afternoon for the cement to harden. That evening we felt we were ready for testing.
We started off simply shooting paper towels out of the guns, just to make sure that there were no leaks from the combustion chamber, and spent a fair amount of time trying various propellants. (For the record, starting fluid works much better than hairspray...)
Before long we had graduated to firing actual potatos. We were launching the flaming spuds straight up in the air, and laughing as they splattered on the street. Our friend Mike had joined us in the festivities, simply to watch. There was a gratifying "shhhhhhhthunk" sound generated each time a gun was fired.
For reasons he has never fully explained, Aaron launched a potato at a near horizontal angle, down the street we were standing on. The potato blazed gloriously down the street, and it crossed the intersection a half-block down going what seemed like Mach 9, just as a police car pulled into the intersection. It missed the front windshield by no more than 6 inches.
Lights now flashing, the police car wasted no time zipping up the half block to where we were. The officer jumps out of his car, and with a puzzled expression on his face asks "Ted?" While Officer Don Grothe was still standing there with a disbelieving look on his face, another police car comes around the corner and pulls up right behind the first car. Not missing a beat, Officer Eric Knutzen jumps out and with the same puzzled expression says "Oh no! Is that Ted?"
By this time I am walking over to Officer Grothe, who is sharing a look with officer Knutzen that I interpret to mean "Oh shit!". I said sheepishly "Hi guys. Sorry about that." Officer Grothe turns back to me and says "We've got a bit of a problem. Come over here and talk with me", then motioned me to follow him to the sidewalk. At that moment, another police car comes around the corner, lights and siren wailing. Officer Grothe said "THATs the problem." Officer Knutzen had grabbed Aaron, and had taken him over to the sidewalk to talk as the third officer jumped out of his car, grabbed Mike, and started frisking him for non-existent weapons.
Officer Grothe points that out and informs me that while this other officer was new to the department, he was a 15 year veteran of a rural sheriff's department & anxious to prove his worth to the supervisors in his new department.
"After my car was almost hit with that potato & I saw the three of you standing here, I called for backup because I didn't know what I was up against. Eric was coming to back me up when that other guy radioed in that he was close and would come as well."
I knew Officers Grothe and Knutzen fairly well because at the time, Aaron and I worked as security officers at a local department store. During the course of catching shoplifters, going to court, etc. we got to know a large number of officers pretty well. I had been on 'ride alongs' with Officer Grothe, and I had spent an entire day with officer Knutzen at a trial just a couple of weeks earlier, where we had been 'excluded' from the court proceedings - which meant we had to sit in the hall so we couldn't hear the testimony of other witnesses.
Officer Grothe was at this point almost talking to himself. He was saying "If it was anybody else, I wouldn't think twice about charging them... but I'm not going to charge these guys... how am I going to get away with not citing them while HE's here... but these guys are my freinds... but if it was anybody else..." I interrupted this internal argument by saying "Don, I don't want to get you in trouble. We screwed up, and we'll just have to take the consequences. Cite us like you would someone else. I won't hold it against you."
So, Officer Grothe wrote Aaron and I both citations for "discharge of a BB gun, slingshot, or other flipper device within city limits", which is a violation of city code.
A few weeks later, we appeared in court for our arraignment. City Prosecutor Steve Schreiner noticed me, and came over saying "Hey Ted, I didn't know that we had any of your cases on the docket today..." I said "Look at your arraignment schedule, Steve."
His mouth dropped open. After explaining what had happened, Prosecutor Schreiner offered Aaron and I a plea deal. In exchange for a guilty plea, the class B misdemeanor we had been charged with would be dropped to 'disorderly conduct', an infraction. (An infraction is the lowest level of criminal offense in Utah, on par with Jaywalking.)
As the arraignment proceeded, Aaron was called up first because his last name is first alphabetically, but Prosecutor Schreiner asked the judge if he could hear both cases together, then motioned for me to come up to the podium.
Prosecutor Schreiner explained the plea agreement to Judge Stott. (Judge Stott presided over the shoplifting trial I mentioned before, and I'm sure that he recognized me.) Judge Stott then asked Aaron and I if we agreed to the plea deal. After we both said "yes", Judge Stott then asked me HOW we built the cannons. After explaining the technical details, Judge Stott asked "Why would you do such a thing?" I said sheepishly "To see if we could, your honor." Judge Stott chuckled, then ordered that our pleas were to be held in abeyance. If we did not have any further criminal charges within three months, the charges would be dismissed.

Aaron and I each had to write lengthy letters to the Peace Officer Standards and Training Council explaining these arrests before either of us was allowed into the Police Academy, not too long after this incident.


Post Script: Telling this story makes me just a little bit sad now, as Don Grothe passed away after an accident while fishing on August 24th, 2005. RIP Don

The Rand-Aid

Yesterday I had an experience which took me back almost a decade and a half.
When I was in high school, I worked at a local grocery store bagging groceries and stocking shelves.
There were two men who worked there at the time named Randy and Roger. They were mentally impaired brothers who worked there full time bagging groceries, mopping floors, and other general tasks. They functioned at about a 12 year old level, so they were capable of quite a bit of work, as long as they had sufficient supervision.
These guys were incredible workers. They worked harder than just about any other employees.

When cutting open boxes & stocking shelves, getting a cut was an inevitable experience. On those not so infrequent occasions, Randy would not go get a band-aid. That would mean stopping what he was doing and going to find one in the first aid kit.
Instead, Randy would fold a paper towel into a small square to cover the wound, then use masking tape (from the pocket of his apron) to wrap around the wound which held the paper towel in place.
Before long, this was dubbed a Rand-Aid™.

After sustaining a cut yesterday, I found that I had run out of band-aids in the first aid kit I keep in my truck.
But I did have tissues & scotch tape...

A Place Where Cell Phones Don't Belong

Among the many perils of cell phones being ubiquitous is the ability for completely clueless people to use them in a place where they have no business. The one place where people use them which makes my skin crawl is in the bathroom/locker room. I don't care who you are talking to, I don't care how important it is, YOU AREN'T THAT IMPORTANT! If you were really that important, you would be talking to the person face to face. You would have been driven to the meeting in your limo, or the person on the other end would have been brought to you. But it's not that important, is it? You could have stood outside the door while you finished your conversation about sales figures, or you could have told your employee that you would have to get back to them in a few minutes.

But you didn't. You instead took your conversation, on speakerphone even, into a locker room filled with sweaty, ugly, naked hairy men & walked around like you were a King. Who cares if the people on the other end of the call hear that old fat guy grunting from the toilet around the corner. You are important!

I've decided that from now on, whenever I encounter this sort of thing, I'm going to simulate the most awful 'bathroom noise' accompanied by a near-screaming grunt. That should be pleasant for Mr. Important.

The great Linux Switch

While I am far from a genius, I consider myself to be an intelligent guy. (Yes, I know that I'm so humble.) Despite this, my attempts to use Linux have made me feel like a complete idiot.
Most of my posts have related in one way or another to my second job as a Constable. I've devoted very few words to the job where I spend the vast majority of my time, as a QA Engineer for a software company. There, I write and run complex tests on a variety of proprietary client-server systems my company produces. I manage our build processes, I write code to do automated tests, and I write a fair number of complex scripts. Most of all, I enjoy finding a bug and tracking it down to a specific peice of code. Its very much like detective work on a different level.
I find these things interesting, challenging, and intellectually stimulating. However, I fear that the average joe could care less about these things & would rather read about adventures (or the lack thereof).
That being said, I do know a fair amount about computers. I build them, I fix them for freinds, I have become the family tech support guy. I can close my eyes and walk my step-mother through a system restore, I can help my wife diagnose problems in my home wireless network, I can help my son build his web pages.
I do have a glaring hole in my computer knowledge, and that lies with Linux.
I am constantly bombarded with advertisements, articles, rants, and raves proclaiming how easy it is to make the switch to Linux from Windows. Most of my Linux experience has been administering servers through a command line interface, so I am an utter novice when it comes to the desktop environments, but I wanted to see how easy it is for myself.
I began this experiment by installing Fedora Core 4 on a spare hard drive for my laptop. After the better part of three days of upgrades, installing packages, and other sundry tasks, I still had a laptop that I could not even play a simple MP3 on. Further research tells me that Red Hat purposely leaves out support for many things I take for granted due to their devotion to open License Agreements. Thats noble, but doesn't do me a damn bit of good. When I ask questions from the "Robust Open Source Community", I'm told that I should quit being lazy and RTFM. I'm glad that they were so helpful. I pulled the tray containing the Fedora hard drive out, slid my Windows hard drive back in, and didn't think much about it for the next six months.
A half year later, I started reading about Ubuntu. It is supposed to be very user freindly, even to the point of being "Linux for Dummies". I ordered a CD and installed it on the formerly Fedora hard drive.
This is getting to be quite a long post, so I'll hit the highlights:
- no sound card support.
- crazy mouse pointers traced to a bug with my particular laptop and a PS/2 mouse.
- unable to update, even after following 3 different sets of instructions.
While the Ubuntu was much easier for many of the tasks I tried, there is no way that I can recommend it to people I know. It still just has too many shortcomings.
Maybe I'll pull the old hard drive back out in six months...

Assertiveness and wearing the wrong shirt...

I don't often get caught off guard while working my second job, but once in a while someone speaks to me so brazenly, intentionally or not, that I am truely taken aback.
Last night was one of those times. After I rang the doorbell at one house where I was trying to deliver a court order, a woman opened the door and said "I'm not interested!" as she picked up a parcel from the porch. I replied "Excuse me?" The woman said "I am not interested in whatever you have!" as she waved at my clipboard. Perplexed, I responded "So you aren't interested in the fact that I am a Constable and I am here with court papers?" She looked up, her jaw dropped just a fraction of a second before her hands covered her mouth, and after regaining her composure she said "Oh my gosh! I am so sorry! I thought you were with the dish network!"
Apparently, some sales reps from Dish Network have been out working that particular neighborhood pretty hard. She said that she had been deluged with salesmen over the last few weeks, with three coming within the last few days. They have for the most part been wearing light colored polo shirts with ID's hanging from their necks. I had just happened to wear a light colored uniform shirt and when she saw that in combination with my badge hanging from my neck, she assumed that I was just another salesman. (To be fair, the sun was right at my back...)
I gave her the papers I had for her, and we chatted for a few minutes. She kept apologizing, and I kept reassuring her that I was not upset. I did however give her a few tips on dealing with solicitors in the future.
From now on I'm sticking with Blue or Black uniform shirts in that area.

"I serve dead people..."

As I was thinking about the topic of this post, I came to the realization that nearly all of my work-related posts are about my part time job as a County Constable. I started to ponder that, and quickly came to the realization that not much noteworthy happens to a QA Engineer, while Constables do tend to end up being involved in the weird on a more frequent basis than you might imagine.

Back to the topic of the post, last night I had yet another opportunity to try to serve someone a legal paper after they have departed this life. It wasn't intentional. It just so happens that when people expire, they often leave loose ends that at some point do need to be tied up. In last night's example, a woman had been killed in a car accident about one month ago. Not knowing this, a company which held a judgment against her obtained a court order for her to appear and answer questions about her income.

This is nothing out of the ordinary. Contrary to popular belief, there is no crack team that jumps to action notifying the world when someone dies. Processes go on as usual until something happens to make various entities aware of a death - be it a family member returning a bill, a phone call from someone, or even a Constable trying to serve a court order. Even more shocking for many is that despite its status as a quasi-governmental agency, a Constable's office does not do extensive background checking on each individual they are tasked to serve. There is simply not enough manpower, and even if there were, it would be impractical to waste it in that manner. It is a far more efficient thing to just deal with anomalies as they come on a case by case basis.

That being said, there is still something sad about remaining family having to tell a Constable standing on their front porch that the person who is subject to the order in their hands has passed away. I can only imagine that they must wonder "Why didn't they already know this?"

After such incidents, the remaining procedure is pretty straightforward. After verifying that the person is indeed dead (You would be surprised at the lies people will perpetuate to avoid going to court...), the plaintiff in the case is notified and most of the time that is where it ends. Unless there was a huge amount of money involved, very few would try to collect from a deceased person's estate. It is instead written off, and the costs passed along to the consumer.

This doesn't happen often. I've worked as a Constable for seven years, and I've only had to deal with this a handful of times. Most of the time, a gentle apology for disturbing the surviving family is all that's needed. However, there have been two times where the survivors have gotten upset, and in both cases I've become quite upset myself. A large HMO that operates most of the hospitals in the area in which I live used to be very active in pursuing payments for their services, even to the point of filing lots of lawsuits over these medical bills. Not once, but TWICE I have been sent out to serve one of these summonses only to find that the defendant died while in the care of the hospital. It seems to me that maybe they should have had a check box somewhere on the billing form that said "PATIENT DECEASED - DO NOT SUE."

Now the really weird stuff involves serving someone in a coma, or otherwise mentally incapacitated. But I'll leave that for another day.