#also have to look for a cohost and make a server for it as well blarghhh

[voidlace]

one last doodle before i disappear but a peek for a future project i am hoping to do as soon as im done with this thumbnail art and the script

[liquidstar]

im going to ask here bc i have more followers

cohost is going down and im trying to find a good alternative for it (obviously not tumblr, bc, well im already here and i want a separate social media that can be more personal)

i want a place where i can privately share my wips with my close friends, as well as more personal life stuff that i wouldnt share on here. its so important that the account can be fully 100% private- no one who i dont approve as a follower should be able to find it or see it. i dont want a lot of my writing+art to go public before im ready for it to, and i also dont want irls to find me.

BUT because im sharing wips, it cant be a twitter clone with a character small limit. i tried mastodon servers with huge character limits (like 5000) but then the issue became every reply someone makes shows up on your main feed. which doesnt work for me. there was a toggle for this but it didnt actually work to turn off the reply spam drowning out actual posts- it all just becomes noise and gives me a headache

webpages like neocities wont work bc i wanna use it as a social media (i also want to see my friends posts and writing), not a webpage! also idek if you can make those actually private

and... in theory facebook actually works for character limit+comment reasons buuuut its just kinda too public. i know you can make a private account but it seems to connect to everything you do anyway and i just cant trust it to not recommend me as a friend to my mom and completely and utterly out me.

a small microblogging site like cohost was perfect and fit everything i was looking for. now that its going down, yeah, ill probably have to make do with something else, but nothing else really seems to fit what im looking for.

if all else fails i can make a more private tumblr blog but... thats just kinda not what i want. i want a separate site for me and all my friends. turning back to tumblr feels like going backwards

[copperbadge]

Have we found a tumblr replacement yet? Apparently the latest “live” shenanigans were the thing that it took to break me. I’m not trying to stir shit, I’m just mostly here for you and a couple other blogs, so I’m going wherever you go.

I wish, but unfortunately not so far. I mean, I've talked a little about how I'd like to find one but there aren't really any viable ones right now, and there may not be a fandom mass-migration for years still. I'm more likely to follow the crowd than blaze a trail in this case, so it may be some time. For now my only real tactic is to simply not engage with staff or support at Tumblr in any way, and accept the changes as gradual steps towards the site's demise with as much serenity as I can muster.

I've already accidentally opened Tumblr Live twice while trying to navigate the app, which I'm sure is intentional, given I've now suddenly opened Tumblr Live twice since its inception instead of Zero. Relatedly, I would love to see them redirect that passion into making the "Mute Notifications" button actually work, but mine is not to reason why.

Anyway. There are options available, like obviously there are other social media platforms, but none have quite the combination of "easy to use" and "has a lot of people on it" and "Offers the same functionality" (photo and video hosting, an app, etc) even with an "ease of use" and "functionality" that are as crap as Tumblr's.

For example, Dreamwidth is great, but it's a Livejournal code fork so it's a very different format from Tumblr, more labor-intensive to make and share posts (no reblog function, image embedding can get a bit complicated, etc). CoHost is new and very promising but a bit of a ghost town right now -- I'm there and I've had a bunch of people find me there but still exponentially less than are on Tumblr. Pillowfort I still need to re-investigate; I'm there as well but it's been a while since I looked in, and I was struggling with the functionality previously. I had a look at Mastodon, but as positive as decentralized servers could be for the future of social media, I actively dislike the idea, and it also seems difficult to set up and complex to maintain. Discord is....there, and a lot of fandom stuff has shifted there, but its structure is very different and it's also decentralized, and also I hate it passionately and refuse to use it, so that's a no-go for me, though I suspect it's where fandom might end up.

If you're struggling with accessing tumblr directly, you might consider feeding the blogs you follow to an RSS reader -- I know people who do that and find it pretty functional, because then if they want to comment they can just pop open the specific post and deal with it directly. I don't know how much you know about RSS and I don't have the energy to fully explain it right now, but NetVibes is a pretty decent free RSS reader and it's what I use for certain blogs outside of Tumblr.

In any case, if I do find a place, or if I see the migration beginning, I'll sound the alarm :) In the meantime I'm still reading through my tumblr, stashing away posts to save off when I leave, even if that'll be a while.

[rin-and-jade]

hello, cohost of a relatively newly discovered system here, i just saw a post you made in response to new system ask, and i was curious about how we would go about developing an innerworld.

i am led to believe we have aphantasia, so we cant "picture" anything in our head so i dont know if that prevents us from having a headspace/innerworld. i know some systems just dont have a headspace (a roommate of mine has DID and she has told us that she does not have a headspace, and she cannot communicate with her sysmates outside a discord server)

anyways, i was just curious if there would be a way for us to try devloping an innerworld or not after reading that post. ty

I can be of help to you, but this will heavily depend on yourselves as im here only capable of sharing what might work, from my own experiences.

To understand what makes innerworld an innerworld, by simple means,, it is a place that is reconstructed by senses mentally, vision (mental images) is one of them. You see where this is going.. right?

What if you try it by theory, i know you can't imagine, but im sure you know what it'll be like correct? For first advice, a small but functional innerworld will do because navigating in a big one whilst being 'blind' does not spark joy. Ok so, let's start the steps:

Using your other senses (tactile and hearing) as advantage: How do you want your floors,, is it solid, warm to touch and smooth? That could be porcelain. Straight ridges, un-even textures and cool to touch? That could be wood planks. Fluffy, scruffy texture and it damps noises? That could be carpet/rug floors. Now how do you want your walls,, is it wallpaper patterns you can feel by tactile? Maybe you want it the regular way that is painted smoothly? How thick or thin do you want it to be, enough to produce an echo from a knock or nothing at all? The rest then lies on personalization like furnitures and decorations,, i bet you can do this yourself. Also recommend you by practicing with little things for now and work from there, to bigger things.

Map it out: after determining which fits best, this is where the floor plan is arranged, you might want to draw it out physically (or use apps/webs its ok), from arial, or from side, or in 3d,, anything works. This will help you keep the world consistent as you can't see, as well as serving as a map to navigate around. I also have aphantasia where i can barely see anything as it fleets away so fast (i believe its in a spectrum, i saw it), leaving me having to navigate by touching the walls and guess the floor and temperature (i think windows make rooms feel hotter and in this case my living room has a big balcony). Do not over do the items as it can block your walking route leading to unnecessary bumps, if you want shelves or something hanged above, place them in a reasonable spot because bumping to it by forehead or elses is annoying.. i changed the height of my hanged shelf at the end and it never happen again. Especially if you don't have the innate 'gps' to navigate around.

Teamwork makes dreamwork: I assure you that you don't want to do this alone.. why not share some ideas of what the fronting room should 'look' like, or what the communal place should,, this is honestly done to make everyone feel at ease living in it, as well as sharing the work. You CAN do this yourself but it feels overwhelming and could lead to a burn out.. anyway, it'll take a while to properly build a world, so don't feel bad if its still going to be on progress for months,, no worlds are made perfectly in one try. Incase if you want to remodel the world to a new one at future, just repeat the steps.

Hope this serves you as an insight, this has definitely work for me, and i am not 100% sure it could for you, though, you still learn a few things from here. If you feel like giving up or see this as too much work there is no shame,, and so, i wish you the best luck.

- j

[elysianmadness]

I'm seriously considering moving my main platform from this site due to the Predstrogen ban. It's far from the first time they've banned a trans woman for nothing, and it's far from the last time that they're going to. Matt is having a meltdown in the DMs of countless people because they called him out on his transphobic, hypocritical bullshit.

Overall, he's just a filthy transphobic manchild who threw a tantrum because people rightfully called him out for lying, misgendering, harassing, threatening, and defaming a trans woman because she made a joke about car hammer explosions or whatever (which wasn't even the stated reason she got banned, Matt just pulled it out of his ass when the sexual content excuse was debunked).

On a somewhat unrelated note, Tumblr really is just hostile to NSFW content, ngl. I'm getting pretty tired of dealing with puritanical bullshit.

I have a FetLife account but I'm gonna keep that one relatively private and low profile. If I know you well then I might give it out to you.

My Discord is @/elysianmadness, anyone here can add just let me know who you are. I'm considering making a sapphic exclusive ageplay server since I haven't really seen any.

My Pillowfort is also @elysianmadness though I'm worried that the site is going to shut down in the next couple months due to lack of funding.

I'm considering Cohost, but I've heard some things about bad moderation so I'm not sure if I'll make an account there. I'll look into this one more.

I'm probably gonna migrate a lot of my stuff to Aethy once my account gets approved because it's highly NSFW and kink-friendly.

I'm on Bluesky! I don't really post there at all, but I lurk sometimes since it's basically Twitter but the hate speech problem isn't as bad.

I'll think more on this tomorrow, and if anybody has good alternatives, do let me know! Regardless I'll still be on here, maybe just not as active once I find a platform that I click with.

[firefighterkingdom]

#6 Pt 1: Bernalillo County Helicopter Rescue Operations – Lt. David Lujan

Welcome to Episode 6 of FireFighter Kingdom. This episode is Part 1 of our interview with Lt. David Lujan of the Bernalillo County Helicopter Rescue. David Lujan has server for almost 14 years in the fire service and is also as the Public Information Officer (PIO) for Bernalillo County Fire Department.

David discusses many topics in his roles as PIO, and how his unit and department operates as an asset across multiple agencies and collaborations in the state and beyond. Including some great stories on rescues, training, 22 push up challenge and more! This is a great episode with a great guest that you don’t want to miss.

Robert Sanchez: Hey, we’re back at Firefighter Kingdom. How are you doing, Dave Lujan? I have Dave Lujan as a guest. He’s on the MASU team for Bernalillo County Fire. We also have Vince Trujillo here, our cohost, and always can’t thank Vince enough for setting up everything for us, and he’s the man behind the scenes. How you doing Vince?

Vince Trujillo: Hey everybody, thanks for having me on. So happy to be here with Firefighter Kingdom. We have David Lujan, great guest today, he’s going to be talking a little bit about paramedic, some rescue and helicopter stuff. So, this is really exciting for the common layman, which I’m kind of here for just listening to support the Firefighter Kingdom and what’s going on. But hey, for all you listeners out there, if you’re new to the podcast or if you’re new to our channel, please subscribe to our iTunes. You can go and search for Firefighter Kingdom on iTunes. We’re also on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, please go ahead and subscribe, share with someone you know, and we’ll be seeing you on the next one too.

Robert Sanchez: Thanks Vince, we’ll be talking to Vince a little later, and it’s the man with the plan right there that makes everything happen behind the scenes. Dave, man, it’s been a long time. Tell me a little about yourself, how long you’ve been in Bernalillo County Fire Department.

David Lujan: Yeah. Hey, first off, I just want to say Robert, Vince, thank you guys so much for having us out or having me out to talk about our program here. Again, it’s truly an honor. Obviously, you and I have had a long ongoing, really long friendship. I consider you a friend, a professional colleague, so it’s been really great, and Vince it’s very nice to get to meet you. So, super excited to be here and to talk about our program. So, yeah, your initial question how long have I been with Bernalillo County? So, I’m just completed 13 years, coming up on to my 14th years. So, yeah, it’s really flown by. I started in 2008, and here we are. I can’t believe how quick it’s gone; it feels like I just got out of the academy.

Robert Sanchez: Nice man, it’s nice to see you and talk to you. You are a true friend and a colleague, and I look up to you in respect just all the things you accomplished in the department in your career. It kind of seems like whatever assignment is thrown at you, you give it 100%, you make sure it’s done, and that’s what I respect about you. That’s why you’re on the show, I just think that you’re a good asset to the firefighting community, good asset to the public, and thank you for being on the show. It’s an honor to have you.

Robert Sanchez: We were just talking and you and I just got off shift last night, and you were telling me about… I know there was a wild land fire there in Valencia County, and you were working as a PIO there on that fire. I know they also utilize the helicopter, the MASU helicopter, and what did they do? I know they were working, I just was curious to see what their tasks were. What were they assigned to do on their fire?

David Lujan: Yeah, just your initial statement there, Robert, thank you for the kind words brother. Just been truly blessed to be part of a great organization and blessed with favor and opportunity within the department. So, I definitely just want to give credit where credit is due, and being a man of faith as well, I feel that God has a hand in everything.

Robert Sanchez: Absolutely.

David Lujan: He’s definitely been able to influence everything that I do. So, I’m very grateful for that, but back to your question there about the fire we had yesterday in Valencia County. Yeah, approximately about 1700 hours, 5:00 PM, our fire control dispatch reached out us and asked if we could provide some resources out to a big Bosque fire in the Valencia County area. So, we ended up sending out five units to that area, and my job as the PIO is to go where incidents are occurring. And because we did have some resources out there, I just wanted to see what was going on, and to see if they needed any assistance from the public information side.

David Lujan: So, we got a great relationship with the media, the local media here, all the newscasts. When they call, we try to be able to answer and give them the information they need. So, upon arriving, made contact with our crews and spoke with the incident commander, saw what was going on, and multiple agencies were on that fire yesterday, not just including Bernalillo County Fire. Albuquerque Fire was on there, Valencia County, BLM, State Forestry, New Mexico State Forestry. And again, just a multitude of agencies, I’m not naming all of them.

David Lujan: But one of the big resources on there was the aviation component, and there was actually two helicopters on there, one of them being the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office Metro One. And that’s the program that we’re part of, and essentially, when it comes to this program, the Metro Air Support Unit Program, it really has three missions. One of those missions being law enforcement, because again, it is a sheriff’s department entity. The second mission being available for fire bucket operations, and that’s exactly what it got requested for yesterday.

David Lujan: So, our pilot who’s also an undersheriff. We have two pilots that are attached to that unit out there, and one of them being the undersheriff of the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department, and one of our sergeants, Sergeant Fred Beers was on that aircraft yesterday, and they conducted a multitude of fire bucket drops on there. So, definitely we’re a great resource for the resources on the ground, and again, it’s just one of our mission platforms, so we were glad that we were able to be able to assist at moment’s notice.

Robert Sanchez: That’s great, and I think it’s working with the other agencies, I think we’re blessed here in New Mexico especially in the metro area, it seems like we work great with the other agencies. And just to complement the agencies, we have the sheriff’s department and the MASU team, which you’re a part of on the aviation side, doing bucket drops. And I’ve had, actually, the opportunity to actually do training with you guys and actually see them do bucket drops and the aircraft in action during wildland fire. So, they do a great job man, they’re well trained and they do a great job for the community, and that’s a great asset that, that has.

Robert Sanchez: So, I keep mentioning MASU. What’s the acronym for MASU? What is it?

David Lujan: Yeah, so the term MASU, again, it’s something that we utilize. It’s an acronym that we throw around a lot, and what it stands for is the Metro Air Support Unit. And just to get a little bit of backstory on that, just to be 100% clear that the air assets, there’s a total of three air assets that are associated with the Metro Air Support Unit. We have an AStar, which is a B350 platform. We also have a 1970s, Vietnam era UH-1 Huey, and we have a fixed wing Cessna.

David Lujan: I feel kind of bad right now, I can’t remember the other specific call numbers on them, but again, three air assets, and those resources 100% belong to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s office. So, when you hear the term MASU, that’s exactly what we’re referring to. It’s a sheriff’s department resource, and back in 2014, the Bernalillo County Fire Department was approached by the sheriff’s department and said that they wanted to put together a search and rescue team with hoist capabilities. And we can go into that later, but whenever we reference the fire department as far as being associated with the MASU team, we have another name and it’s the Air Rescue Taskforce.

David Lujan: But whenever you hear the term MASU, it is very specific to the sheriff’s department, but it’s kind of an umbrella. We all fall underneath that. So, whenever we reference to say, “Hey, I’m part of the MASU program,” there’s some subcategories underneath that.

Robert Sanchez: Sure. Yeah, like I said, I’ve had the unique opportunity to see you guys in action, and the great job you guys do. We’ve all done rappelling and stuff like that in the fire department, but I just don’t know if I’m going to be hanging out of a helicopter rappelling or getting hoisted.

David Lujan: Neither did I.

Robert Sanchez: I was just thinking last night, I was thinking about coming to this podcast. I was thinking what training do you guys have to even go through? Is there certifications or a certain amount of hours that you have to get trained to actually get hoisted off the aircraft or rappel or doing rescues?

David Lujan: Yeah. No, Robert, that’s a great question, and there’s no easy answer to it. It’s basically continued to grow and more requirements and things have definitely been added as we’ve continued in this program. But just like I stated earlier, we were approached back in 2014 to essentially provide five paramedics available that were already certified ALS capabilities, were medics that were running out on the streets, and we had a large group of qualified personnel that were in our fire department that were very interested in getting into this program.

David Lujan: So, they ended up selecting five, and I was one of the fortunate ones to be selected in that initial group of paramedics that got selected. At that time the only requirement was that you had a minimum of at least three years as a working paramedic out in the field, and we were going to go through a training with a third-party agency called Priority 1. They specialized in training people how to do hoist rescues and patient packaging out in the austere environment, and it was about a seven-day course that we took every day for eight hours, just learning the basics of it.

David Lujan: But with a program like this and having the techniques associated with it. It’s not something that’s just learned over a seven-day period of time. It’s something that’s trained for many years, so that’s how the initial training started. But with these types of skills they’re perishable skills, so you’ve got to keep them up, you’ve got to continue to keep working on them. What’s required of our paramedics and what we call our tactical flight officers and our sheriff’s deputies and our pilots is we have a minimum of two training days a month that are consisted anywhere between four and eight hours.

David Lujan: And then every month we also have a safety meeting that’s associated with some kind of break out session to just go over different types of techniques that we may be utilizing on the aircraft or on the ground, or techniques that we’re seeing at other ground agencies that we’re working with. Just to truly talk about safety and things that we could get better at. And then at least once a year we do what we call an annual refresher, and we go out for another seven days. We’re hitting this stuff hard, we’re practicing all of our hoist training, our short haul capabilities, rappel out of the helicopter. Again, this is all new techniques that we’ve added over the years of the program, and we’re coming into our seventh year. So, March of 2021 will be seven years of the establishment of this collaboration with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department and the Bernalillo County Fire Department and the search and rescue aspect of it.

Robert Sanchez: Nice. I might be biased, I work for Bernalillo County, but I can see the complement that the fire department and the sheriff’s department working together offer to Bernalillo County. I think it’s a great asset.

David Lujan: Yeah, it’s actually one of the few organizations throughout the United States that operates that way. There’s a couple other agencies that, to be honest with you, they actually modeled after what we did, and it just makes sense. You have two great public safety resources under one umbrella, which is Bernalillo County. Why not collaborate them? So, again, the sheriff’s department provides the helicopters to include the pilots, tactical flight officers, hoist operators, and the fire department provides the paramedics that have the medical skills and the hoisting and the ground support and things of that sort.

David Lujan: We’ve worked with multiple agencies just outside of Bernalillo County, volunteer agencies, and we just recently over the last three years have been working with the UNM School of Medicine Reach and Treat Team, which has now been actually brought onto our team as part of the air support unit.

Robert Sanchez: Nice, so they’re physicians?

David Lujan: Yeah. No, they’re a phenomenal organization, and here in our backyard at the University of New Mexico, they offer a program through the School of Medicine, and it’s International Diploma in Mountain Medicine. There’s very few education agencies or organizations that offer a program like that, and it’s actually accredited through ICAR, and ICAR stands for International Commission of Alpine Rescue.

David Lujan: Just in the past we were doing these hoist rescues, and we were actually finding ourselves working with these individuals on the ground. They bring such a high level of technical type rescue and their capabilities, and they’re out there actually teaching people all over the world about the importance of mountain rescue and search and rescue and how to be prepared. We said, “Why are we not working with them on a regular basis?” So, a relationship was fostered, Jason Williams who’s the director of that program, phenomenal individual. His dad actually has a lot of very strong ties with Bernalillo County Fire Department in the volunteer days.

David Lujan: So, it was just a great working relationship right off the bat. I really want to give credit to him to help foster that relationship, and essentially it started off as doing some training and stuff together to the point where now try actually part of the air crew, and any time we get a mission we’re reaching out to them so that they can either come fly with us on the mission or we actually have ground support teams going in. But one of your questions was asking are they physicians? Yes, there is physicians on the team. So, at a minimum everybody’s at the paramedic license, and then we do have physicians that are actually on team that fly with us.

Robert Sanchez: Nice, very good. So, as far as EMS goes, we have paramedics, we have physicians. So, the capabilities is basically the same thing that would be in the back of a rescue or an ambulance. It’s basically an ambulance or a rescue in the air. Is that correct?

David Lujan: Yeah. No, definitely, that’s definitely a correct statement. One thing that we do try to identify is we do have these capabilities of providing ALS interventions and care whether it’s in the aircraft or whether it’s on the ground. But what our goal is, is that this resource especially from the search and rescue aspect of it is designed to try to get people out of the austere environment, and what does that mean? That means that either ground crews are going to have a delayed time trying to get these individuals because of where they’re located, or they’re just out in an area where nobody can find them.

David Lujan: We utilize this resource to potentially find them in the air, and if we have the ability to get in and get them out quickly, that’s our primary objective. Now, can we provide the medical services that are needed? Absolutely, but we try not to do that if we don’t have to. If it’s a critical situation, and we need to provide those interventions, we absolutely do it. But we like to say that our bread and butter is extracting individuals out of the austere environment, and then getting them to definitive care quickly. We can go through that whole… If you’ve had any training in EMS or medical field, they talk about that golden hour, and our job is to try to get these individuals, especially if they’re critical or hurt, back to some definitive care within that golden hour. Having this air resource definitely gives us the ability to do that.

Robert Sanchez: Sure. That’s great for the public in Bernalillo County for sure.

David Lujan: Oh, absolutely.

Robert Sanchez: It’s not only Bernalillo County, it’s the surrounding area. Do you guys even go out of state at all?

David Lujan: Yeah. No, Robert that’s a great question. So, when we started this program, yes, the resource was through Bernalillo County, but again, the sheriff’s department have had these air assets for quite some time. And even from a law enforcement side of things and even from a fire bucket operations things, they were going outside Bernalillo County to surrounding agencies or surrounding counties, and doing this stuff for the State of New Mexico. And then when we brought and the search and rescue aspect of it, yes, we are absolutely a resource for the State of New Mexico.

We haven’t gone out of state yet, but we have done a multitude of rescues outside of Bernalillo County. Stuff in Taos, out in Silver City area, Socorro County, again, Valencia County, Santa Fe County. So, we’ve been utilized by a multitude of agencies throughout the State of New Mexico. And the closest that we came to going outside of the state was actually on the Texas-New Mexico state borderline that was out in southern New Mexico and Colorado. We ended up not flying that mission, but just goes to show that the word is out that we’re a resource, and we want to continue to promote that. And I hope even through this podcast people who are listening just know that this resource is a resource for the State of New Mexico.

So, we encourage anybody if they need to utilize us, go through their dispatch center. Have them notify Bernalillo County dispatch center and make a request for air support. Again, with three aircraft, we can do a multitude of different things. So, it just really depends on which aircraft we have up at that time, or if there are any down for maintenance. And how we’re going to decide which aircraft to use, and which technique we’re going to use for whatever the situation may be.

Robert Sanchez: All right, so I wasn’t even aware you guys did that many counties outside of Bernalillo County. It’s really the whole State of New Mexico. Say last year, what was the number of rescues you guys did in just the State of New Mexico?

David Lujan: That’s a great question Robert. I brought these… Sometimes I forget to just… I don’t have them ingrained in my head, and the reason for it is because we are being utilized so much. So, last year in 2019, we had a total of 48 requests for service, and that’s not just within Bernalillo County. That’s throughout State of New Mexico, neighboring counties.

Part of what these numbers are is we had what we call confirmed coordinates from the air. What that means is that whatever agency it may be, whether it’s ground support crews or a different county calls us and they say, “Hey, we have an individual that we think they’re here.” They give us some coordinates, we go fly over those coordinates, and we’re able to confirm those coordinates and say, “Hey, yes, we’ve spotted this subject. This is where they’re at. The coordinates that you gave us are correct.” Or, “Hey, the coordinates you gave us were not correct, but we did find them. Here’s the updated coordinates.”

Essentially, we’re an eye in the sky for them just to confirm that, “Hey, when you’re sending your ground crews in there, you’re going in the right direction.” Because there’s nothing worse than sending a group of individuals to go try to rescue somebody, and they’re going in the wrong direction-

Robert Sanchez: They can’t find them.

David Lujan: Right, or they can’t find them. And the problem with that is… I don’t want to be specific to anybody, but when why put more people out in a mountain in the austere environment, I don’t care even if they’re a rescuer, they become more at risk from potential injury. And now we just don’t have one person we’re looking for, we’re potentially going to be assisting with more people that are out in the field that could potentially get injured.

So, finding those coordinates and making sure that we can verify those coordinates is really, really a strong resource. Last year we did that 11 times, and that means we didn’t land, we just confirmed where they were at, and then we guided ground crews into them. And then we had a total of seven hoist rescues, and then we landed four times and rescued people. So, any time that we go into any type of mission, and they’re out in the austere environment, and we’re thinking that we may try to hoist these individuals out or short haul them out, our first contingency is we try to find a place to land because there’s inherent risks that are associated with any of those. And if we can mitigate those risks by just landing and potentially walking to where the patient is, and maybe that’s a half mile, a mile away, and we can do that safely, we’re going to do that.

We ended up doing that four times last year, and then we had three fire bucket operations. So, these were big fires that our resources were called to that we conducted bucket drops. And then one of the other things that we do, it kind of goes in line with confirming coordinates is depending on the time of day and how long the resources are going to take to get there on the ground, we fly over and we actually drop care packages down to them. First thing is it just lets those individuals know that, “Hey, I may be out there, and I’m confirmed that I’m lost, but somebody has eyes on me.” We know that we’re sending resources to you.

Robert Sanchez: It gives them that comfort.

David Lujan: Exactly, it gives them that comfort like, “Somebody’s coming for me.” And then when you can throw down a care package that has some water, some food, a little bit of shelter, something to keep them warm, a signaling mirror, it gives them a little bit more peace of mind that, “I’m going to be okay. They’re sending people in here to get us.”

Robert Sanchez: I’ve heard of the care package, I wasn’t aware of what’s in them, so that’s good to know. One thing I was talking to another firefighter a couple of weeks ago and just talking about being on the mountains, especially the Sandia Mountains, how big it is, and just the weather change from the bottom to the top. You don’t realize, even in the summer months, you could actually get hypothermia, right?

David Lujan: Absolutely, people could suffer hypothermia in the mid of summer, absolutely. People have heard this term before, if you live in New Mexico, if you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes because it changes. And that’s in the normal environment, so when you start getting into the mountainous terrain, and again, the Mecca that we have here in Bernalillo County with Sandia Mountains with all these established trails, these beautiful sites, our beautiful city that sits in the valley. People are utilizing these trails all the time.

But what we find a lot is that these people go up into these areas and they don’t have the proper footing, they don’t have the proper clothing, and really, they don’t go prepared. They don’t take enough water, some people don’t even take water at all, which it’s a little bit baffling that people would even do that, but they do. But we’ve seen people just go in, in a T-shirt and shorts because when they started down on the ground it was nice and warm, and as they’re moving up those mountains they’re sweating, they’re getting hot. And then maybe an hour into their hike, the clouds start rolling or weather just changes. The next thing you know, we see a temperature drop of 20 degrees in some of those areas. So, yeah.

Robert Sanchez: So, it is possible to get hypothermia.

David Lujan: Absolutely.

Robert Sanchez: It’s hard to believe, you start climbing a mountain at 90 degrees whatever, especially if you’re not prepared, you’re in flip-flops, you’re in shorts, you have your dog with you, you don’t have no snacks. And then you get up there and it starts getting cold, it starts getting dark. I think that’s one thing, if the public listens to this podcast, they understand that you should go enjoy the outdoors. It’s peaceful, it’s good to clear your mind, but also remember it could be dangerous.

David Lujan: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. We encourage people, please go out. Use these amenities that, in my opinion these are God gifts. You go out, like you said, to just… There’s a term that’s called like nature therapy, and sometimes it’s just going out, walking, even if you’re having a conversation with somebody or nobody at all, it’s a form of therapy just being out in those environments. So, we 100% encourage people to do that. We also do encourage them to be prepared and understand where they’re going and the necessary items that they would need to hit some of these trails. And again, we can talk more specifics about that later, but yeah, we want people to go out there and do those things.

Robert Sanchez: Good. Well, that’s very good. That’s what I want about this podcast, it’s firefighters, it’s for the community, just to get the word out. But I know I was talking to you the other day, like I said, it’s always a pleasure talking to you. Tell me, do you all assist law enforcement also? You guys are on the aircraft for law enforcement also, and you were telling me about a situation where you were on the chase where there was actually a shooting, and you saw, actually, an individual get shot, is that correct? By law enforcement. So, that was crazy, I didn’t realize you guys were actually on the aircraft during law enforcement operations.

David Lujan: Yeah, that is true. So, last year we worked with our management to get them to understand the importance. The way we’re currently operating, let me back up a little bit. We had a paramedic or an officer staged at a station, and any time that a mission came in, we would essentially divert those individuals from their station to go out to the hangar where we have the aircraft set up, and they would go out on the mission from there. The problem we were finding with that is just our skids off the ground time, our time to get on station was averaging between 45 minutes to an hour. And again, one of our goals was to try to assist in that golden hour period, especially if somebody’s critical.

So, what was decided by the air support unit and management was we need to have somebody up there full-time. So, we actually have a full-time, what we call rescue specialist up there five days out of the week, and then also on call when necessary. But in doing that, we don’t get search and rescue calls every day, we don’t get fire bucket calls every day, but what we do get called every day is for law enforcement and patrols. And our deputies do a phenomenal job, our police officers in Albuquerque do a phenomenal job, and we’re another resource for them over the City of Albuquerque.

So, what we do is we’re up there in the air, we’re also another eye in the sky to assist the tactical flight officers and the pilot. And in the event that we need to divert to a mission right away, we don’t have to go back to the airport to pick one of us to go. We have all of our gear with us, and we immediately go on our mission. But sometimes we don’t get those missions, so in doing that, we’ve done pursuits with vehicles, and I said, yeah, we actually had one where our police officers were involved in a officer-involved shooting. We actually caught all that on film, and we were in the back and it was…

Talk about a new insight and appreciation for what our other side of public safety does, which is law enforcement, and the situations that they got put in, and we see that firsthand. Normally from the fire department stand we don’t go into the scene until it’s all been cleared by them, they truly protect us. But just seeing what they had to deal with and react so quickly, it was eye-opening. Even for somebody who’s in public safety and already has a good understanding of what they do, but to just see it like that, yeah, it was pretty crazy for us.

Robert Sanchez: Yeah, I could see. So, if there was ever a time where the unfortunate situation where an officer or a deputy, they’re injured or they got shot, you could actually land the helicopter and give them medical attention immediately because there’s probably a helicopter physician on the aircraft. Is that correct?

David Lujan: Yeah. That’s correct, yeah. Normally, on the law enforcement patrols it’s typically more of the paramedics from the fire department side. Our physicians and our reach and treat personnel typically go more on the search and rescue, a little bit more critical type missions. But yeah, you’re absolutely right. If we had the ability to land at that location and render medical aid, we could immediately do that. We carry our medical gear with us on the helicopter during these patrols, and we’ve actually done that before. There was an individual at the shooting range, and we were doing patrol over there. We were able to land, apply a tourniquet, and save this individual.

And I’m going to make sure I give credit where credit’s due. It actually wasn’t one of the medics that was on at that time. It was one of the tactical flight officer who was an EMT at the time, he’s an intermediate. So, we told him, “You kind of stole our thunder man.” But if he wouldn’t have done that, this individual could have easily bled out. So, it just, again, just shows the resource capability.

Robert Sanchez: That’s a good resource and a tool for even probably not just for law enforcement. It can be for civilians or nobody that needs immediate attention. You can actually land the helicopter, and so, that’s a great resource. I’m sure you remember utilizing the helicopter to remember veterans. We did that push-up challenge, the 22-push-up challenge, and that was pretty cool. We had the aircraft involved, in fact, when we put this podcast on our YouTube channel, we’ll play that video, we think they’d like to see that.

It was actually law enforcement and fire department from Bernalillo County doing push-ups, 22 push-ups because that’s what represents almost 22, unfortunately, veterans commit suicide a day. But it was cool to do that filming, have the helicopter come in, and with your leadership you actually took control of that doing the push-up challenge, and that was a great opportunity. So, I want to put that in our podcast just to show the community, and also throw some other videos up there, the good rescues you guys have, maybe some bucket drops and stuff like that.

David Lujan: Yeah. No, we definitely, we can make sure to get all that out and specific to us doing that commercial there, it was definitely more of a public relations type of event. I talked earlier about the three missions we have, the first one being law enforcement, second one being fire bucket operations, and the third one being search and rescue. Well, there’s technically a fourth one, and that’s the public relations. We want especially the citizens of Bernalillo County to understand that this is their resource, and if we can be at some of these events, we want to be at these events to just show the public what the resource is, what our capabilities are, and just to educate them as much as we can.

Yeah, that push-up challenge was a lot of fun man. It was really great to be able to just showcase. I think the big thing for me was obviously what the cause was for, right? We were there to really identify the serious issue when it comes to our veterans with PTSD. We know even on the law enforcement side and the fire department side, that’s stuff that we struggle with as well. So, it was a very good parallel as well for us to be able to identify with what our veterans are going through.

And then secondly it was great to see the two organizations that are providing this resource, which was the sheriff’s department and the fire department come together to put out this PSA. And then it’s just extremely fun when you guys look at the video there, us being able to just show what some of our rescue techniques are and capabilities. And actually, rappelling out of the helicopter, that’s what we did there on scene, we rappelled, took our equipment off, and went and started doing push-ups there. I’m not going to lie, it was fun. We got called out by our neighboring station with Albuquerque Fire, it’s an amazing department, a lot of great men and women that work for there. And they called us out to do that push-up challenge.

So, I think what was fun about us is we rose to the challenge. We said, “Those guys put out a great video, man. What can we do to try to supersede that?” So, just a little friendly competition there.

Robert Sanchez: And you know how we roll, man, we overdid it.

David Lujan: Oh, absolutely. Let’s bring the helicopter, let’s bring the sheriff’s department, let’s bring anybody we can. Special thanks to Laura Cunningham who definitely-

Robert Sanchez: Oh, she was great.

David Lujan: She was the mind craft behind that, and when we told her all the resources we can make available, she just said, “Oh, we have to do this.” So, I really want to give a lot of credit to her because she made that video great.

Robert Sanchez: Oh, absolutely. She’s a-

David Lujan: You and I worked on getting the resources together, but she was the brainchild behind that.

Robert Sanchez: She was, and she’s done a lot for fire in commercials and videos and stuff. There’s a commercial she did, a firefighter commercial, I think it was a PSA. She did a couple for us, did a great job, and you were actually on one of those PSAs.

David Lujan: Yeah, that’s how I met Laura. I was part of one of the very first ones we put out, and she was great to work with.

Robert Sanchez: Maybe we can actually throw that PSA on YouTube to show your pretty mug to everybody.

David Lujan: Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks bro. That’s a matter of opinion, but I’ll take it bro, I’ll take it.

Robert Sanchez: Yeah, we’ll put that PSA on there, but just going back to the International Association of Firefighters, she won an award for one of the best PSAs that year. I think it was, I want to say 2017 if I’m not mistaken.

David Lujan: Yeah, that sounds about right.

Robert Sanchez: She won an award, so it was great.

David Lujan: Yeah, she was awesome. She was great to work with. I hope we get an opportunity to work with her again. She’s a lot of fun, and she’s a master of her craft. She’s in the right place, she’s doing the right thing, so it’s a blessing to work with her man.

Robert Sanchez: Absolutely. 

Vince: Hey everybody, thanks for listening. This is the end of Part 1 interview with David Lujan of the Bernalillo County Helicopter Rescue and we’re gonna be continuing in the next episode with even more interesting stuff, more great information and continuing on with this great guest and great topic that we are talking about, including going into that crazy online video that we all saw, maybe not too long ago by helicopter rescue of 74 years old woman in Arizona, were she was kind of spinning out of control that got a lot airplay and David Lujan has a very interesting perspective on that kinda set the record a little bit so stay tune for that.

If you like this episode please hit the like button, share it and also subscribe and we’ll see you in the next episode of FireFighter Kingdom. Take care!

The post #6 Pt 1: Bernalillo County Helicopter Rescue Operations – Lt. David Lujan appeared first on The FireFighter Kingdom Podcast.

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[aurimeanswind]

Your Greatest Gaming Binges & ExtraLife 2017—Sunday Chats (11-5-17)

There is a lot going on. And I mean a lot. Behind the scenes. In front of the scenes. All in preparation for this coming weekend, where we and my team of internet friends from all over the Continental United States will be participating in ExtraLife 2017, an event I have participated in for seven years, and this will be my eighth. 

First, some context.

I tell this story every year, so I apologize if its trite to you, but its the truth. In 2009 I was diagnosed with a more ethereal-type disease called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It plagued my life for about seven months, causing me to be homeschooled during my Junior Year of High School, drop all of my Advanced Placement classes, and stop seeing my friends for weeks on end. It through off my college plan. It ruined my life. It made me miserable and unhappy. And I lost hope until I started seeing a specialist, Dr. Rowe, at John Hopkin’s Medical Center in Baltimore Maryland. With physical therapy, medication, and exercise, I was able to finish my Junior year of High School, and live a normal life until I relapsed in my Senior Year of High School, and had to retread old ground again, more frustrated, and more determined this time.

In 2012 i fell into a deep depression. Scared, alone, and as I slowly coiled up into my room and stopped seeing my friends, going to school, going to work, or doing anything, I had no one to turn to. Until I reached out to Dr. Rowe. He was a Chronic Fatigue specialist, but I remembered part of CFS is depression, something that I didn’t have to experience at the time. He gave me the depression test that I had passed with flying colors every other time I had seen him, and, stunned at the change, helped me start a path on a better and less mental-illness-plagued life without depression.

Every year, my team donates to John Hopkin’s Medical Center. It’s a place that irrevocably changed my life. It gave me hope when I had none, and set me on a better, healthier path. This is my way to give back.

So join us, this coming Saturday starting at 12pm Eastern Standard Time, at http://twitch.tv/IrrationalPassions, and donate to a cause that has helped me and countless others. All the details of who is coming, what we’re doing, and what you can do to help are or will be live soon at http://IrrationalPassions.com/ExtraLife.

Thank you, for all your support, and I hope to see you there helping us stay up and keeping us jolly.

It’s also with massive pride that I can fully announce that Greg Miller, Gen Miller, and Joey Takagami will be joining us from San Francisco California, and Greg is bringing Portillo too! Check out this video Roger Pokorny and I made to convince him to come:

I’m excited to see you all there, in spirit, for our wacky shenanigans!

Now... I onto the entrée.

Your Greatest Gaming Binges

Today, as is now customary for the first Sunday of each month, I asked YOU ALL a question, and it was about the most intense gaming marathons you all have gone on. Specifically single-session, and specifically why.

Now, I’ll say, full disclosure, you should always remember to consume the average amount of calories, vitamins, and minerals in your diet everyday, and take care of yourself: sleep when you need to, drink plenty of water, and listen to the recommendations of the FDA and USDA (here in the states) to better understand what your body needs, to live a better, and more fulfilling life. But I aside from the self-destructive aspects of binging gaming sessions, I love a game that gets its hooks in you so hard that you just can’t. Stop. Playing.

I have had countless 12-hour+ gaming sessions that have left me bleary-eyed, but still bushy tailed from the amazing stories that have come from them, and with a year like this year, I think there are many out there from this year alone. I wanted to hear your stories!

First, one of mine.

Danganronpa 1. Boy oh boy. I think I’ve infamously talked about it at this point. But when that came out I was so incredibly obsessed with it. It was all I played for days, and I’d roll out of bed, grab my Vita, and keep playing, until I rolled into bed, played until I felt asleep, rinse and repeat. It was an incredible few days of gaming, and it was what got me back into visual novels.

Now, to the audience!

See, I love the classic gaming sessions. I think that was a totally different era of playing games too. Hearing times of people playing Street Fighter 2 and just going were the best. And shoutout to Super Techmo Bowl, because that game is fucking rad.

I can’t get into Minecraft, but I like the multiplayer love. Scott, Evan and Tony, my cohosts on IP, helped run a big Minecraft Server for over a year. The stories to come out of those play sessions are magnificent, and I was into the jolly cooperation.

MGS4 is fucking crazy. Luckily there is plenty of movie time to go get snacks in that game. I think I beat that game in three or so sessions, so I get it.

BUT HELL YEAH JAK 3 AND SLY COOPER. Those games are so rad. Well deserving of massive play sessions. I remember going out and buying Red/Blue 3D glasses because I rented Sly 3 from GameFly and didn’t get them. I ended up steeling them out of a display box in a Blockbuster (DON’T TELL ANYONE) so i could have the cool Sly Cooper branded ones.

But boy. Jak 3 in one day. That’s a tall ask.

See, I wish I played MGS at all in the era of when you only played one game because it’s all you had. I only ever really experimented with multiple play throughs when it came to MGS4, and that was still a ton of fun, but I wish I could have done it with something like MGS2 or 3.

The different styles of play are what make those games so hard to put down too, even though I just played the same way the whole time. Like a loser.

Get a better game Plankfan, because I can’t do this Garden Warfare bullshit.

Kidding, but yeah I think of the multiplayer bingers, Overwatch has taken the cake, and that’s the most class-based of all, considering each character is their own cup of tea.

Very much so! Game rhythm is super important to how hard you can binge it. Especially with single player stuff. Like, Rocket League has tons of ups and downs and variety therein, so the rhythm is changing all the time. Single player games need a good loop, and facing off against the next villain really pulls you through Akrham Asylum. Especially with the Metroidvania-esque format.

I’m curious to what you thought of it, ultimately, because I like that game a great deal, but nothing in Deus Ex really blew me away. I think it was just a very good “one of those” with no unique hooks really. I know a lot of people have different feelings about that, but any immersive sim really makes me never want to put it down, so I get it.

You should do the same with Dishonored 2, because it’s v good.

FUCK YEAH.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of those games I spent 14 hours straight playing during ExtraLife 2010 and never looked back on. I love it. I could play that game all day.

Oh my god yes. Just like the Minecraft love I love this too. And the loop of that is great.

I have never really had a LAN party for anything, but ExtraLife is the closest I’ve come to that. I really like the loop of all that too. I played Halo 2 with my brother and his friends when I was younger and it was a blast. Boy... This sounds like it’d still be rad today.

Another Arkham game. I really jive with this one too, but City has just enough Open World in it to keep me fully immersed. I started playing that game after a midnight launch and just didn’t stop. It’s the same idea of wanting to see the next villain, especially after Freeze shows up. Whoooooo boy.

Oh boy. My recent trip back to Skyrim has brought me back here, because good lord do I just want to grab everything everywhere forever. And my inventory limit simply does not agree with my life choices on that front.

I think Skyrim was the game that got me to break away from my completionist tendencies too, because It’s just a game that I don’t think would be fun to fully complete after a while. It’d just burn thin too soon.

Hell yeah! That’s a game I played a ton of when I first started it. I think my second session with that game was somewhere around eight hours, but then Zelda came out and I just stopped. I want to finish that game before the end of the year, if anything to see the story through, but those open world games just bring the most out of all of us.

BRING IT BACK.

BRING IT BACK.

BRING IT BACK.

Bloodborne is just so incredible. I love just letting myself go in that world too, because that truly is a game I could sit down with for an entire ExtraLife. I know it wasn’t your cup of tea, but I love it. The same has been true of all my other Souls experiences, because those are games that get their hooks in and just don’t let go. I think those are the games best suited to playing across multiple sessions too, since some time away is usually what you need to get past a boss you’re stuck on.

The ultimate binge game: The Witcher 3. That’s a game that I couldn't really podcast with either, because every snippet of every conversation was just so compelling for me. But of course, the monster dens and boss fights were where the podcasts came in anyway. Boy. What a fucking game.

Thank you all for writing in your answers! I hope folks still like this format, and I’m excited to do more of these. Been thinking of ways to spice up Sunday Chats going forward, and while I have some soft ideas in the pipeline, we’ll see what I ultimately end up on.

As I said last week, I currently have no intention of doing a Sunday Chats next week as it’ll be as we wrap on ExtraLife 2017, and I’ll preferably be dead. But we’ll see! Just don’t expect one, and certainly won’t be taking questions.

Regardless, I’d love it if you tuned in next week, Saturday, starting at Noon Eastern Time, to watch us play games and do dumb stuff!

http://twitch.tv/irrationalpassions

Be there

And keep it real.

[toomanysinks]

Expanse, which offers real-time visibility into the ways its customers’ digital assets aren’t safe, has raised $70 million in new funding

Expanse, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based company that helps its clients understand and monitor what it calls their “global internet attack surface,” has received a $70 million vote of confidence from its earlier backers, as well as some notable individual investors.

Previous investor TPG Growth led the Series C round, with participation from other earlier investors that include NEA, IVP and Founders Fund. But the company also drew checks directly from Founders Fund cofounder Peter Thiel, Michael Dell, Former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, media entrepreneur Arianna Huffington, and Turner Enterprise CEO Taylor Glover.

What they find so interesting about Expanse, which was formerly known as Qadium? Its traction, for starters. It turns out that when you start indexing global internet protocol addresses before everyone else — meaning the numerical labels assigned to each device connected to a computer network — it’s hard for competitors to catch up.

Indeed, numerous big organizations, including CVS and PayPal are among others that now use the company’s software-as-a-service to help manage their far flung digital assets connected to the public internet. According to cofounder and CEO Tim Junio, Expanse has been tripling its sales year over year —  and quadrupling the terms of its contracts. Toward that end, he says it now has more than 10 customers that have signed up for $1 million-plus contracts. “VCs like to look at how long it takes to go from $1 million to $10 million in [annual recurring revenue].  It took us 22 months,” he says, “about as fast as [the now-public cloud-storage company] Box.”

Much of that revenue is also coming from U.S. federal agencies, including the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy,  the U.S. Air Force, along with the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Department of Energy, which collectively account for more than $100 million in contracts with Expanse, it says.

Asked if Thiel – – who advised Donald Trump leading up to his election as president, and whose former chief of staff, Michael Kratsios, is now the country’s chief technology officer — has played a role in making introductions, Junio says that all of Expanse’s investors have helped in making customer introductions and pours water on any suggestion that Thiel has done special favors for the company.

Meanwhile, though the company is known for its work in helping customers identify security risks they don’t know about on their networks —  like an IoT device that hasn’t been patched —  it’s now going after adjacent problems that are bigger-spend problems, including looking at its customers’ critical suppliers to sure that they aren’t introducing vulnerabilities, including across their commercial cloud providers and cohosting facilities.

Eventually, it’s easy to see a day when Expanse sells some of the aggregated data it’s seeing, perhaps on a sector by sector basis, though Junio says that Expanse “isn’t going in that direction” currently.  For now, he says, the biggest trend that’s driving the business today is the digital transformation of every type of company, which is resulting in plenty of insecurity.  As more businesses move to the cloud, they can be sure that employees — their own or acquired through mergers — won’t always know or follow policies, and that they’ll move information where they should not, including onto unsecured web servers in some instances.

It’s a trend with no end sight, too, which goes a long way in explaining the momentum of Expanse. Already, the company has 150 employees across offices in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., New York, and Atlanta. With its newest round – –  a sum that brings Expanse’s total funding to $135 million altogether —  the plan is partly to move into new international markets, behind the countries where it’s operating, including the U.K., Canada, Australia, and Japan.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/09/expanse-which-offers-real-time-visibility-into-the-ways-its-customers-digital-assets-arent-safe-has-raised-70-million-in-new-funding/