Never Going to be the Polished Professional Type

Slept in for Sunday. Or least didn’t get up in any hurry. Read awhile. Played cards with my Mom for about an hour, still haven’t gotten dressed and it is already after noon. The Queen would not approve.

Now I have K.D. Lang on the CD player. Mom says none of the US people in the Florida trailer park would believe K.D. Lang wasn’t a man when they saw her at the Olympics this year. Maybe she sounds like a very young boy but she sounds much more like a woman, however she dresses.
Not much else going on today. I have mystery allergies. Resisting taking any allergy pills. Surely it will go away, any hour now.
I want to work on my directory today. Should also login at BOTW and add links I have found for that one too. Need to write for the network with Deanna, I am a couple of months behind on that one.
Zack wants to hear the web radio show I did with Bev for Elemental Musings. At least I don’t think I said anything I wouldn’t want him to hear. I am never going to be the polished professional type though.

Public Safety Communications

I’m looking into the 911 Operator course. It will start in February at the Georgian College in Orillia. These are some links I found tonight which I want to save. Kind of interesting to find so much out there. I didn’t expect to find anything much at all.

Proven Ways – designs and provides quality training and consulting in Emergency Services Communications. PROVEN WAYS has partnered with Ontario Colleges to offer students the opportunity to become certified as a “PUBLIC SAFETY COMMUNICATIONS PROFESSIONAL”. This full service communications course is designed to fit everyone from people interested in becoming communicators to senior communications operators. These courses are all best practices in areas of dispatch, call taking, 9-1-1 and advanced CRITICAL CALL MANAGEMENT subjects.

Note : Proven Ways is the business offering the course I am taking through Georgian College. I cut and pasted the above description from their site, that’s why it has the extra large punctuation.

Ontario Fire Communicators Association –  Fire Communicators are those responsible for the processing of requests for emergency and non-emergency assistance received via 911 lines, administration lines, the radio system or direct contact with the public. We work closely with Communicators from Police, EMS and other services to provide rapid, effective responses. We take our role in Public and Responder Safety most seriously, and continue to seek ways to enhance professionalism and our levels of service. The occupation of Fire Communicator is indeed a proud one, the vital link between the public and the emergency service response.

The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials- International .
The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials – Canada – The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, Canada, Inc. is a voluntary, not-for-profit organization dedicated to the enhancement of public safety communications. It serves the people who supply, install and operate the Emergency Communications Systems used around the Country from coast to coast to coast. Members come from every type of public safety organization in the country, including 9-1-1, police, fire and emergency medical services as well as emergency management, disaster planning and federal search and rescue personnel. Job postings for Canadians.


National Emergency Number Association
NENA (National Emergency Number Assoication) Ontario NENA is an association that brings together a vast community of people who work diligently to make the 9-1-1 system what it is today. It is a group in which to generate ideas, share information and plan the the future of systems and services that keep the public safe. NENA is made up of individuals from Police, Fire and Ambulance agencies as well other interested parties who work together to make sure that the system works and keeps working well into the future. Includes job postings for Ontario.

The Evil Eye of Rogers Cable

P1080416

Rogers is gone! I’m back to using Bell for the Internet again and it is faster, again. This is some of the Rogers stuff I pulled out from the back of the phone, computer and TV. The technician came and only took the boxes and TV remotes. Even he didn’t want to mess with that snake nest of cables and wires. I did though. Now I can plug in my radio again. Missed having it when Rogers took over every last plug in my power bars (2 of them). Now I could plug in several radios if I really wanted to. Nice to have Rogers gone and not feel so caught by all their cables in my room. I took this photo cause that last box was weird. It had no source of power, all the plugs and cables were disconnected yet that last evil eye from Rogers gleamed for hours and hours. I gave up checking it when I went to bed. In the morning it was finally out.

Bye bye Rogers. Don’t ever darken my door again!

Dragging a Corpse Around for Fun

I give the impression of a living person quite well. But I’m actually brain dead. I picked up something not very nice from my little nieces when babysitting and helping with the birthday for the 4 year old on the weekend. Now the back of my head is sliding down my neck, or I wish it would so I could get rid of this dragging head ache. Not that I’m whining, much.

I’m having a lot of fun and adventure with the communications here too. Last week I was offline due to a modem being fried. I changed to Rogers. Now I have everything possible hooked up in my bedroom with wires and cables all over the fricking desk and floor space and even running right in front of the TV screen. I don’t think it is right that I am paying $150 a month for this fricking mess. I hate the clutter.

Also, I do not see how the phone line was working before Rogers arrived and by the time they left only one phone jack works in the whole flipping house! Of course it is the phone jack in my bedroom. I started with two power bars which let me have space for the computer and TV and radio to be hooked up here. Extra space was there so I didn’t feel I was sitting in the middle of a fire hazard. Now, it is so plugged up wtih stuff that I had to move my radio and not have it at all. That is just not right. Bloody Rogers.

Now I have to phone and bitch, Bitch I mean – with a capital B. That is not easy for me. I’m nice. I am understanding. I don’t bitch.

So unfair. I have to be up at dawn to see if I can get into a workshop which was already booked up. If someone doesn’t show up I can attend. But I feel dreadful and don’t even want to move my dead brain and body into the shower.

On the bright side… I did get WordGrrls.com pulled together, mostly. I just want to do something else with the blog skin. Need to figure out the code to convert blog skins to the code for b2evolution . Or just customize one of the skins I’ve already found and test driven. I am liking b2e though. I think it is not hugely different from working with Blogger once you get over the different dashboard look.

Must drag my corpse into the shower now.

Give A Comment to One Young Woman in the World

Girl on Radio :

Have you ever got that feeling that there’s just no point in complaining anymore? I got that today and it just shows that I’m getting worse. I guess I’ll just have to keep trying until I get somewhere eventually. No one seems to understand me, no one seems to want to talk to me anymore. I feel like I have no life, nobody in the world to talk to, no one that feels this pain like I do .

We can’t solve the problems of the world, or even one young woman, but we can make someone ( this young woman ) feel she is not so alone in an uncaring world. Give a little comment. You don’t need to say much. It’s not like visiting someone in the hospital or attending a funeral. You don’t have to be especially clever, sympathetic or empathetic. Just give a comment to show her she is not alone in the world. All you really need to say is “I’m here” if you have nothing else to say.

Online Marketing to Old Rules Won't Work

Let go of some of your old marketing ideas. Look around you, smell the coffee. This is the Internet and the format is not the same as offline.

In the past bludgeon-them-till-they-scream marketing may have worked. Out of one hundred telemarketing calls you may have caught someone on the right day and gotten them to sign up for your service. That won’t work for email. It is too easy to delete it, unread and thus, unheard. Even auto deleted, untouched by human hand or eye.

Standard marketing will not work online because people online are being flooded with the stuff every day and in just about every way someone has thought up. The past several years of marketing online with constant onslaughts of spam have trained people how to not look at ads on websites. Think of the last site you were on. What ads did you look at, do you remember anything about them?

There are more ads and ad schemes online than on any other media. In one hour of time online looking at websites, checking email or using forums you will encounter easily double the amount of ads you would if you were watching TV, reading a magazine or listening to the radio. Read a book, that is one way to get away from ads (except for other books).

So the marketing plan online is ineffective and needs to be revamped. It may work on that thousand and first person to view your ad or be attacked by your marketing campaign to flood a social network. Meanwhile, what about that thousand people you just annoyed? There has to be a better way. Something more effective for your cost and your time and your energy.

I don’t have the magic answer or the magic beans or the goose that lays golden eggs. But, I do know the old methods which are still being used are just turning the Internet into a wasteland. It’s getting harder to find something to read versus something to ignore. Someone is going to come up with the marketing plan that works. Why can’t it be you?

Instead of trying to get other bloggers to trade meaningless links with you and instead of trying to get everyone on a social network as your fake friend – come up with something new. The time it takes to find a better way will win you far more than clinging to the old ways. Be an entrepreneur instead of a follower.