Did something dumb today.

[Ljohnsaw]

Doc, will I ever play the piano again?

No, it goes like "Doc, will I still be able to be a concert pianist?" - "Yes, says the doc".  "That'd be great since I can't play now." ;)

[doc henderson]

looks to be only an 8 penny.  it can always be worse.  it looked lie it hit the joint, but if not, that is great.  we would do an x-ray cause we are the ED and after you see us, we become responsible for much of what could go wrong.  i have seen several with a board on the point side of the nail.  usually the crew cuts a 2 foot section out of the stud wall and it comes with.  Nothing really magic about the ED (cause then it would be free) except we have drugs.  most carpenter woodworkers, just want it done so they can go back to work.  a puncture wound is much more likely to get infect cause it puts inoculum deem int the tissue that quickly heals over.  Dogs are bad bite but big canines.  Cat bites are worse due to the pin prick size of their canine teeth.  the worse animal bite from an infection point of view is human.  We often have to borrow tools from maintenance to pull out nails from the board, or cut it if there is room.  and yes, the patient in the joke usually says, "good I always wanted to play the piano".  

[Southside]

If you choose to deal with it at home, mix Lidocaine with the LA-200 for infection prevention.  If you have the second one in your fridge you will have the first, trust me you don't want the LA straight.  

[Nebraska]

Yes it burns a bit....

[sawguy21]

Years ago I worked in an rv plant. The guys on the line had disabled the safety on the nail guns until one spiked his foot to the floor. As I recall the EMT cut the nail under his foot and had it removed at the hospital. I lost a finger tip to a table saw on that job but that's another story.

[caveman]

the worse animal bite from an infection point of view is human.

A little over 30 years ago, while I was interning at a nearby middle school, I was bitten on the forearm while breaking up a fight.  They insisted that I go see a doctor and get a tetanus shot since the bite broke the skin.  I'll give him credit for his tenacity and persistence, he bit down for a good while.
 
Now for the rest of the story (Paul Harvey).  I had the little fellow wrapped up when the large (6'3"), strong, black assistant principal arrived at the scene.  I offered to take the student wherever they wanted him to go, which I assumed was an office.  The AP asked me to release the student.  I suggested that he ensure he had a firm grip on him and again, told him that I would take the student.  After three times, I released the student to the AP.  The AP had him for about a half a second until he pulled free and ran away.  As he was running away and entering the school, he knocked down a female teacher and broke her arm.

But wait, there's more.  The student's parents accused me of abusing their kid and I was subpoenaed to show up to court during the summer.  They never showed up and nothing became of it.  The following year, I was teaching at the Polk Juvenile Detention Center.  One day, this cocky, long-haired blonde kid walked into class with the rest of the juvenile felons awaiting their day in court.  It was him.  When he recognized me, he sat down without saying a word and continued to do so for the remainder of his time there.  He was briefly in my class a few years later when I was teaching in a high school.  I suspected he turned out okay, but then decided to do a county jail search before hitting post.  He has been arrested 30 times in Polk County for a variety of offenses ranging from kidnapping, assault, drug trafficking, hit and run with death or bodily injury and a host of others.  I assume some of the long breaks between arrests he may have been staying in Raiford.

I have heard and read that gator bites are bad about getting infected due to the rotten meat that they eat and the multiple punctures left by their teeth.

[firefighter ontheside]

A couple days ago I was getting my camper ready to take to Branson MO for a week.  At one point I was gonna unplug the shore line and put it in the truck, but then realized I needed to wait til  I put the slides in first.  Fast forward an hour or so and I put the slides in and then decided to pull the camper out of the carport so I could load bicycles on it.  My son was watching me pull out and I could see in the mirror that something caught his attention.  Well, remember that shore line that I hadn't unplugged yet?  Sure enough I ripped it out of the shed where it plugs in.  Luckily it only broke the little plastic cover plate in the box where it plugs in.  Didn't hurt the cord or the camper, which were my biggest concerns.  I will fix that when I get back.  For the mean time I turned off the breaker that feeds the 50a receptacle.

 @caveman I used to love to listen to Paul Harvey.  "Good day"

[Old Greenhorn]

One of our ambulance drivers was notorious for grabbing the ambulance for a call and not pulling the landline out I one time pulled into a call and as I walked up the driveway I picked up and coiled the cord and handed it to her. ;D (This was before the autoeject sockets.) I fixed a lot of wall outlets in the bay because of her and bought the sockets for the rig 3 at a time..
 Once we got a new rig with autoeject we learned they didn't work EVERY time. Those were expensive to repair/replace.
 This is still better than the engine driver that grabbed a truck for a working fire but didn't unplug the airline keeping the brakes up. He got a half mile down the road until the compressor he was dragging finally snapped off the airline and the brake locked up when the system was out of air from the open leak. So there he was, stuck with a big working fire and all he could do was listen on the radio. :D ;D

[Crusarius]

the difference between a rookie and a seasoned veteran. 

Seasoned veterans wake up when the tones go off, go take a leak then head to the call.

Rookies are always looking for a quiet corner to relieve themselves.

does that little extra time it takes to be effective really change the outcome that much? the answer NO!!!!!


Just like I tell all my racing buddies that say they need to drive faster. I say you can't win if you don't finish. Take a little more time to get there in one piece.

[firefighter ontheside]

Tom, I can't count the number of times we have pullled out of the bays and the auto-eject didn't eject.  I have replaced countless cord ends.  We have short pig tails plugged in between the long cord hanging from the ceiling and the truck, but even that doesn't always help.  We have never kept air hoses connected to out trucks.  We have jockey pumps on all of our trucks to make sure the air is always sufficient to release the brakes.

I often will take a leak before going to my truck.  I kind of judge the nature of the call and how much I need to go at the time to decide.

[Old Greenhorn]

The short cord idea is a great one, and if I was still in the service I would start making them up tomorrow. It didn't take long for me to get into the 'take a leak first' frame of mind. I expanded that to include drinking a bottle of water on my way to the station for those wee hours calls. It helped clear my mind. Getting there safe was always more important than getting there fast. I had that conversation with so many probies I could do it in my sleep, and often did. ;D The irony always struck me that the probie can't do much when he/she does get there without an experienced member to work with, so what is their rush? When I was an engine captain and responded to my smaller local house for the engine, I always pulled the cord and hose, but that cord hung from a recoil thing on the ceiling and it would hang low enough that it could get caught on the handrail around the hose deck. Twice I was fixing that dang recoil thing at 3 or 4am so I could get back in bed before work.
 

[Peter Drouin]

I spent 10 years of the FD. Part of our training was to unplug the truck. :

[Crusarius]

we always had members that insisted on getting their really fast. I cannot tell you how many times I pulled in jumped out of my car to get in the truck and the truck drove off as I was grabbing my gear running towards it.

I was one of only 8 smokedivers and they left me like that more times than I could count.

[Old Greenhorn]

Every organization has members whose brain works slower than their bodies. Hopefully it can be trained out of them before disciplinary methods are required. I di have to go all the way once and lead the dismissal of one member who refused to get it. He left us no choice. One volunteer doing stupid stuff reflects on the entire service and we can't have that.

 We still have an assistant chief that acts like a 16 year old going to his first fire, still, after 20 years. He was one of the deciding factors for my retirement. He put me in a bad spot because he wasn't doing his job. Still hasn't changed much from what I hear on the radio.

 Years ago, before we had a dedicated rescue truck, we kept our swiftwater gear packed up by size with a complete kit in each gear bag. When dispatched for those calls we would have to grab the gear from the ready room and throw them on the unit we were taking. SO the first arriving members at the station needed to do that. We had a 30 minute response time to most of those calls anyway, which made us 3rd due out of the 4 departments with swiftwater teams. Many was the time I would arrive at the station and see several members already in the truck waving for me to hurry up. As I'd climb in the truck and ask if they grabbed the gear, they all realized nobody had gotten it on the truck. When you get excited and stop thinking, that's when things go wrong. Chief Billy Goldfedder calls it "NTS" (Non thinking syndrome) and has a whole class on it with case studies.

Billy Goldfeder - And the Beat Goes On - Fire Training - YouTube

By the way, the full version of that speech is available on a DVD and makes a great training film for any department. I bought a copy for myself, but I think I donated it to the department. I met the Chief once or twice when he came around to run seminars. A smart guy. He even complimented the moustache I had at that time. Given his broom, I think I actually blushed.

[Old Greenhorn]

Hello, my name is Tom, and I did something dumb today.
[group]: "Hi Tom"

So it was gonna be hot today and I really did not want to mill, but there is this rush order (apparently a miscalculation on somebody else's part does create an emergency on my part, who knew?). So I went down to start early (hang the neighbors) and get at least half of it done. I started at 8, Bill and Mike were already an hour into doing other work. I knocked out the 2x6's first, as they needed that first, all 10'. Lousy log (we are trying to use up and clear out junk) and I spent more time on it than I should have to get exactly the yield I needed from one log. I was pretty proud of myself on that one, for a junk log. Then I needed to cut 50 4/4 boards. Another junk log. I managed to get a 12" x something cant which I could then spit into two 6" cants and get a good yield out of 'junk'. I was tickled and got 18 1x6's  out of that crappy log, pretty good, I was getting cocky. But as I put the last one on the stack, I had a thought. So I checked my cut list. I was supposed to be cutting 1 x8's, not 6's. ARRRRGGGGHHHH!
With the next two logs i got 28 1x8's and was out of logs on the deck and about out of sweat too. I marked the next logs to stage and called it a day, very disappointed in myself and the time I wasted. The log, eh, it was junk anyway, but fuel and blades, plus my lost time, right? Who said education was cheap? And I already thought I learned this lesson a while ago. Guess I needed a refresher class. :D Now I need to find something to make that needs 1x6's. ;D

[rusticretreater]

That's more of a mistake than something dumb. But who am I to judge?

[Old Greenhorn]

Well, I'm not one to argue but 'mistake' sounds like something you can blame on somebody else. No this one was completely on me, and I called myself some pretty terrible things. :D I deserved it. "Did something incredibly stupid" is more accurate. ;D
 Any boss that I have ever worked for knows that they needn't chastise me for such transgressions, I do it to myself much faster and to greater depth than they ever could. One manager I worked for told me that if I treated the guys under me the way I treated myself, they would all quit. ;D

[WV Sawmiller]

   Just tell Bill that crappy log would not make 1X8s but look at the purdy stack of 1X6s you salvaged from it. ;)

[Crusarius]

at least you checked before delivering!!!

[WV Sawmiller]

   Another option is to smudge the cut list where the 1x8s are listed and tell Bill you could not read it at first and next time he better be sure to give you a clean, legible cut list to work from because you aren't going to put up with that any more! ;D

[Old Greenhorn]

Well you get pints for creativity, but my cut list is in a spreadsheet on my phone. He texts me the list and I put it in the spread sheet to get it in the queue.
 Nobody to blame but me, doing otherwise would be a waste of energy and time. Just suck it up, take the hit, and move on. I wear big boy pants these days. ;D

[WDH]

Obviously Howard is good at obfuscation.  

[Magicman]

Danny, you are very perspicacious. 

[Old Greenhorn]

Yes, often I read his posts and think I am in the prescience of greatness. OK, well, sometimes...Actually once...I think.

Me? I prefer the direct method. 'I screwed up, let's move on.'

[WDH]

That is admirable, Tom.  I know many people where getting them to admit guilt is like trying to pine the tail on the donkey while blindfolded and drunk on scuppernong wine that has not aged too long  .