I did not know that

Last weekend I took the Oregon ACES class, a somewhat intensive course for amateur radio operators in emergency response. Unlike most such training, this one has a fairly rigorous hands-on component. More about that later.

Of the things that I learned that stand out, an odd one is this:

Everyone knows the "Mayday" for emergencies. Fewer are aware that it is from the French m'aidez, "help me."

What I did not know was that there are two other "levels" of emergency calls:

In order of priority, mayday is the internationally recognized distress call that is used as preface in VHF radio transmissions only in situations in which there is an immediate danger of loss of life or the vessel itself. This includes when a boat is sinking, there’s a fire in the engine room, or someone on board is unconscious or experiencing a serious injury or illness.

Pan-pan is the international urgency signal that is used as a preface to a VHF transmission when the safety of a person or the boat is in serious jeopardy but no immediate danger exists, but it could escalate into a mayday situation. For example, pan-pan is used in situations in which the boat has a slow leak or the engines are disabled and the boat is drifting toward a rocky shore.

Sécurité is a safety signal used as a preface to announce a navigation safety message. This may be an approaching storm, a navigation light failure, a submerged log in a harbor entrance or military gunnery practice in the area.

Source.  Which has further information that is supposed to be included in a proper SOS message.

Hopefully, news you can't, and never can, use...

Earworm, Have You Met Harvey? Edition

For my friends in Texas, those I've met, and those I've yet to meet.

Stay safe.

Further on Men's Depression

As a follow-up to my previous post (Don't do it), which was inspired by Charlie Martin's article Bob Owens' Suicide, Dr. Helen Smith ("The InstaWife") has a related piece up, Men's Depression is Different | Dr. Helen.

When I heard about Bob Owens, I was heartbroken. Because as a psychologist, I know how much pain this man must have felt to have killed himself when he had two beautiful daughters. I have listened to men talk about these painful feelings for years, and I know that there is a good chance that some men will decide to do something differently than take their own life in the end. Some will not. What makes the difference? Someone who notices, cares and combats the distorted thoughts with the right words, therapy or both. Sometimes a difference can be made by changing an aspect of a person's life in one area or helping others to understand what a depressed boy or man looks like, or feels like.

One client I had was a young man who was extremely depressed. His tests showed his depression at over the 90th percentile but the teachers at his school had no idea. They thought that depressed people sat home and ate chocolate or seemed sad, not irritable and ill-natured like this kid. I explained to them the symptoms of male depression and it helped them understand that irritability, anger and defensiveness were part of this kids's depression. Once they understood what to watch for in this teen, we were able to work as a team with the school, his family and peers to help him to decrease his depression which in turn led to less anger and irritability and more success in school and at home.

Middle-aged and older men have a different set of problems but the solution is still the same: we must understand that men in our society get depressed, that the symptoms are often different than women's and that these men are deserving of our compassion, care, and medical intervention that needs to be tailored to men's issues and concerns and provided in ways that they can accept.

(Emphasis added.)

Look, just because you haven't won fame and fortune or medals doesn't mean you're a failure.

But in a society that hands out trophies for simply showing up, it can seem like it.

Worse, the values that we used to accept without hardly thinking are increasingly under attack. A man's word is his bond, a mans home is his castle...

Speak your mind, say your piece in disagreement with the Progressive narrative and riots break out.

Hell, the mere presence of a man, especially a middle aged white man, is enough to cause social justice warriors to start shrieking like air raid sirens. (Is "air raid sirens" a triggering phrase?)

 I'll close with this break down of suicide stats in Dr. Helen's article:

We say that there is a suicide crisis in our country but what we really need to address more in depth is male suicide. Men are 4-5 times more likely to take their lives. At the time I wrote my book, Men on Strike, the latest suicide statistics showed that of the 38,364 people who killed themselves in 2010, 30,277 were men. This is unacceptable. Bob Owens death is unacceptable. And face it, our biased, sexist society overlooks men's suicides because it is mainly white men who kill themselves. Some barbaric people even celebrate this fact.

Don't do it

So, at one time one of my favorite songs was the theme song to M*A*SH,  which, of course, is entitled "Suicide is painless." Nice song.

Evil sentiment.

You might end your own pain, but you just transfer it to those who care about you.

Instapundit » Blog Archive » PAY ATTENTION: Men’s Depression Is Subtle. But It Can Kill….

Link goes here: Bob Owens' Suicide

I never met Bob Owens.  I dropped comments at one or the other of his blogs over the years, but so far as I know he never knew who I am.

Nevertheless, we in the gun blogging and gun rights' communities have lost one of our own.

The sad thing is, I was discussing this matter the other day with a peer and colleague and friend at work, who was concerned about one of her crew. I suppose she expected me to pull some magic solution out of my ass, since he is also a retired NCO. I'm sure she was disappointed when I came up blank.

Bob Owens' Suicide

This is a man's depression.

It starts subtly, covertly. It creeps in on little cat feet.

It isn't a feeling of sadness. You're irritable, irascible, short-tempered. Often, you feel unusually tired, often achy -- it feels like you have a bit of a cold, or maybe the flu. You're not hungry, or you're hungry but nothing tastes good, nothing is appealing.

You start having trouble sleeping. Either you can't get to sleep, or you get to sleep but wake up at 3 a.m., and can't get back to sleep. Either way, you lie awake, and your thoughts start going to dark places -- replaying humiliations from your past, or fantasizing trouble in your future.

Of course, now that you're missing sleep, you're even more tired, more cranky. People start to wonder what's wrong, but they don't ask because it's not the sort of thing one does; and you know something is wrong, but you don't talk about it because you've been taught since childhood that men just pull up their socks and get on with life. Besides, it's not like anyone can do anything -- you just need to gut it out. No one said you were going to be happy all the time.

Go read the whole thing. And look out for the signs, if your buddy, your brother, your husband father co-worker neighbor whoever is showing the signs.

He may not know what is wrong.  The problem is especially acute in "macho" fields like the military, law enforcement, construction, and so forth.

I'll close with a quote of the final paragraph of Charlie Martins' essay:

If this sounds familiar, if you see yourself in this description, you may be depressed, and yes, you can be depressed and not realize it. This is a depression screener; it doesn't take long. If you're thinking those dark thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is there, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, at 800-273-8255. They understand, it's completely anonymous, and you don't have to be suicidal to call them. And if you're of a mind to, there is a GoFundMe for Bob Owens' wife and kids.

GOAL Post 2017-2

This week's GOAL Post is posted a day late because I was too tired to post it when I got home from work this morning.

As usual, I have made minor formatting changes for ease of reading on the blog.

***

FROM: GOAL WA (Joe Waldron, jwaldron@halcyon.com )

TO: undisclosed recipients

SENT: Fri 1/13/2017 5:32 PM

SUBJECT: GOAL Post 2017-2

GOAL Post 2017-2, Legislative Update from Olympia13 January 2017

• GUN RIGHTS RALLY
• NO CUT-OFF CALENDAR YET
• GUN BILLS FILED
• PUBLIC HEARING SCHEDULED
• GOAL POST LATE NEXT WEEK

A gun rights rally was conducted by the Gun Rights Coalition on the Capitol Campus this morning, with more than 100 activists braving frigid weather to attend. That appears to be a far better turnout that the group that attended the Attorney General’s gun control event a while back. But that’s no surprise – once you light a fire under gun owners – usually by threatening them with draconian legislation, they rise up and let their voices be heard.

Representatives of both political parties attended and spoke to the crowd, with Rep. Matt Shea (R-4) telling the audience he would file a bill to reverse the effect of I-594, the universal background check initiative passed two years ago. Two years must elapse before the legislature can amend an initiative.

“Cut-off dates” are those dates established at the beginning of a session by which bills must clear certain hurdles. As a general rule, bills that do not pass that particular gate are considered dead for the session, although exceptions can be made. At this point the 2017 Regular Session cut-off dates have not been adopted.

SB 5050, by Sen. David Frockt (D-46) is Attorney General Ferguson’s bill banning the possession and sale of so-called “assault weapons".
SB5073 by Sen. John McCoy (D-38) implements recommendations from a joint legislative task force regarding the use of force by police officers.
HB1100, by Rep. Brian Blake (D-19) requires the Department of Licensing to mail a renewal notice to concealed pistol license holders 90 days before the date of expiration.
HB1122, by Rep. Ruth Kagi (D-22) provides up to felony penalties for failure to secure firearms and introduces the new term “community endangerment.
HB1134, by Rep. Strom Peterson (D-21) is the House counterpart to SB 5050, the Attorney General’s assault weapon ban bill.
HB 1181, by Rep. Brian Blake (D-19) would prohibit the Department of Licensing from retaining records of handguns purchased at retail or reported to the state by Federal Firearms Licensees.
HB 1190, by Rep. Matt Shea (R-4) is essentially a simpler and more straightforward version of HB 1181.

HB 1100, requiring the Department of Licensing to mail renewal notices to CPL holders 90 days prior to expiration will be discussed in a public hearing in House Judiciary at 10:00 a.m. on 17 January.

Next week’s edition of the GOAL Post will likely come out on Saturday or Sunday evening as I will be working the annual SHOT (Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trades) show in Las Vegas next week.

BILL STATUS:

NRA Responds to The Emperor's Speech

Well,that's annoying

Desktop was upgrading to Windows 10 as I left for work today.

Apparently, the upgrade went fine, except that, when we open Outlook now, any emails that had been left in an inbox (instead of being moved to a folder) have disappeared.

I can see the folders for the individual accounts in Windows Explorer, but Outlook says there are no emails for any of the .MSN accounts.(GMail, yes; MSN, no.)

Grr.

A Good Guy Needs Help

You will no doubt have heard that yet another beta male crawled out of his Mama's basement long enough yesterday to try for his 15 minutes of fame down in Roseberg, OR.

Since the campus of Umpqua Community College is a Designated Victimization Zone he managed to rack up a fairly significant score before the local constabulary cleansed him from the gene pool.

One of his victims, Chris Mintz, is an Army vet who reacted to the threat by charging it in an effort to save others. Chris survived, but he was shot seven times and is in the hospital.

A Go Fund Me page has been set up to help pay for his medical care and also to support his family while he is recovering: Chris Mintz - UCC Shooting Survivor by Derek Bourgeois - GoFundMe.

Speaking of the weather...

ARES/RACES Volunteers Face Fire Threat While Supporting Emergency Communication

UPDATED 2015-08-27 1620 UTC] The North-Central Washington town of Republic touts “air you can’t see” on its website. That’s not the case today. Wildfires in the US Northwest have not only hampered the air quality and visibility, but led to a Level 2 evacuation order in the Ferry County community of about 1000 residents. That could rise to Level 3. Amateur Radio volunteers in Ferry County have been on the front lines of the wildfire emergency there. In Republic, a combination of Ferry County Search and Rescue (SAR), Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), and ARES/RACES volunteers have been supporting communication for a shelter housing some 4 dozen evacuees — with more to come, according to Ferry County ARES Emergency Coordinator and RACES Radio Officer Sam Jenkins, WA7EC.

Every fifth Saturday -- that is, every time a month has a fifth Saturday, which is about quarterly -- there is an emergency communications drill. ARES and RACES groups across Washington State will staff Emergency Operations Centers, Fire Stations, etc, and and the like, and follow some scenario or exercise design.

Tomorrow's drill (in which I will not be participating, thanks to some overtime) looks to be complicated by the fact that many of the Emergency Operations Centers and Fire Stations and Et Cetera are going to be busy dealing with forest fires.

With any luck, it will rain enough to end these fires.

In the meantime, 73, OM...

Need networking advice

I have the following devices connected to the ethernet ports on the modem/wireless router:

• Desktop Computer
• TV
• Satellite Box

I want to add the following devices to the network:

• Printer
• Blue-Ray Player
• Networked Attached Storage

Simply adding an 8 port switch didn't work.  I couldn't find anything in the modem/router's software that addressed adding a switch. The plan is to purchase a modem, and a router, and return the modem we got from the Internet provider.  (Renting the thing is a pittance, monthly, but it adds up.  The upside is, if it doesn't work they'll replace it.)

Before we switched to Windows 7 I had a freeware networking app that handled all this, but 7 wasn't supported, and since then it is hit or miss whether the laptop will see the printer on the wifi, even if the desktop is "awake." However, if the printer is attached to the router via ethernet,the laptops won't print at all, even if the "see" the printer.  Same thing if the printer is plugged into the switch, which is plugged into the modem/router.

It would be really nice if I could configure it so that the Android devices could print, and access files stored on the NAS, as well.

Any advice?

Thanks!

UPDATE:  Modem is an Actiontec Q1000.  Provider says bridging is only supported for commercial accounts.  Sounds like I need a new modem and wireless route,r which was the plan anyway.