Things you see at 4:00 am

Like many of my friends I work nights and thus I have the misfortune of being awake for a lot more hours than most people and get time to think and write accodingly. These are just reflections on the curent state of everything I have an opinion about.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Hitler's Gun...

Tonight at work two of our patrollers got an arrest on a CCW charge. This is where the story begins about 15 minutes later I get a call from one of them, Hey says they are having trouble identifying the gun, and if anyone would know that it is it would be me. The first clue he gave me was that it looked like something that Hilter would have used. Then he told me it was chambered in 9mm. Ok he just narrowed it down to two guns in my mind the Luger or a P-38 Walther (there was an outside chance that it could have been a .32 that the Nazi's had; a friend of mines grandfather brought one back from Germany it had the eagle/swastika stamp on it.) So the next question I asked him was what does the slide look like because without actually seeing it this would give me the best possible answer he said it looked like a normal slide. I would him without seeing it I would have to guess that it was a Walther P-38 or a clone there of. He relayed this to the officer they were talking to and I heard in the background, "So that is what the P-38 means on the side." A few minutes later I got a picture text message from my co-worker definitely a P-38. Here are two links to pics of the respective guns, Luger and Walther notice the similarity in the general look of the two (Imagine you don't know anything about guns if you have to) you can see the reason that I asked about the slide. I felt kind of proud that I Identified a firearm over the phone for CPD then I realized that if they didn't think I was the resident gun nut before I secured my status this time. Here is a link to what I believe my friends Grandfather brought back from Germany with him Kommer model 4.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Random thoughts

First: If you have a near death experience does that the Grim Reaper has a near you experience, if so is he as shaken up about the whole thing as you are?

Second: Why is coolant in cars commonly referred to Anti freeze? (I actually know the answer to this but it sounded good anyway)

Third: Do you remember the questions in elementary math class about two trains that are 200 miles apart traveling at different speeds etc. Why the hell should we care, if they want me to solve math put it in the standard form, don't wrap it in a !@#$ word puzzle, I mean seriously you have kids that can barely divide with a calculator to help them.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Walking the beat.

Tonight as I was walking my normal beat some thoughts were going through my mind about work and how things have been going. I finally received a promotion that I felt had been long overdue back in November, and as I have settled into my new role I realize that I kind of miss my old one.
Let me first explain things in a manner that should make it easy for people to understand what my jobs were. Everyone starts out as a private, the position I was at was Sergeant. Now I am the equivalent of a lieutenant. I spent the majority of my time with the organization as a Sergeant. This included training the new people and an mundane paperwork. The training is what I really miss the most, It never bothered me when someone I trained got promoted to be my equal because to me it was a source of personal pride it meant that my training had served them well. One of the people I trained Is happy to tell everyone they work with that everything they learned about being a sergeant they learned from me, this same individual once gave me the best compliment I have received on the job todate and that was "Lee is like my dad here, he has taught me almost everything and really looked after me." Another one of my trainee's has also paid me a great compliment by asking me to be in his wedding when I asked him why he wanted me he said, "Because you have really helped me along at work and outside of it and I really appreciate it." I realized that I like taking an interest in the new people and taking them under my wing because some one did it for me and I wouldn't be the person I am today if it hadn't been for that individual.

Being a lieutenant doesn't offer me as many opportunities to train the new people anymore, and I miss it. But we have decided to hire 4 new people so hopefully I will get a chance to work with them and teach a few more fresh recruits the way to walk the beat like I do.

Insomnia can do strange things to a man

From time to time I suffer from a touch of insomnia, whenever it happens I always have certain random thoughts that get into my head and I can't get rid of them. The first thought is one that has been driving me mad for weeks, how does the M-1 Garand feed? I have tried looking at them online but for the life of me I just can't figure out how the little clip pops out and bullets get fed. Thought number two, how is it possible for me to forget where I placed my house keys but be able to remember almost the whole Black Eyed Peas song "My Hump" when I don't even listen to or particularly care for their music. Oh well just some random thoughts before a larger post.