Still waiting
ICBC finally called my wife today while I was at work. Apparently, there are 25 cars ahead of us in the queue for adjustment, so we get to wait our turn. It doesn’t help that the other person hasn’t made a claim yet.
I went in to dispute the ticket that I got out of the deal (failure to yield to oncoming traffic). I then returned home and made my statement for about the hundredth time, this time to ICBC. I think the incentive to avoid accidents (besides pain) is the amount of paperwork generated for it!
Anyway, it’s back to the waiting game. I’m back to work, but on light duties and restricted PT. And still no car replacement or repairs.
Kissing the Airbag
So I got a letter from ICBC, telling me that it’s time to renew my car insurance. They note that, with my 15 years of safe driving, I get a 47% discount on next year’s insurance.
I celebrated this fact by getting into an almost-head-on collision. I was making a left turn, the other car went straight through the intersection. We both swerved. We hit. I stopped, they went flying.
I’m OK. A bit of bruising from my seat belt and airbag. Nothing broken or cracked, no apparent internal injuries. The other driver was waiting on tests when I was discharged from hospital.
Now I’m waiting to hear on the results. I made my ICBC claim last night, and am waiting to hear from the adjustor. I’ve talked to the police (they were at the accident site) and been to the hospital. I went to work this morning (CF rules say I need to see a military doctor after I see a civilian doctor). The doc gave me three days off work – today (the day I had to go in and see him) and the weekend. Back to see him again Monday to see if I need any more work restrictions.
The doc also told me that, by Monday, I’ll be cursing and screaming, as the real pain should settle in 
Not something I’m looking forward to.
Remains of my Car
Double Duty
One fun thing about military life is the duty watch.
Basically, every military installation is constantly manned; during non-working hours they have a certain minimum manning level which must be maintained. These required positions are for security, safety, and command.
For Canadian warships, at least of the class I’m on (Halifax-class CPF), the following positions are required:
- Officer of the Day, reporting directly to the Captain, is in command of the ship whenever the Captain is not on board. He is responsible for the overall safety of the ship, and is generally in the hot seat if anything goes wrong.
- Duty Coxswain. The supervisor of the duty watch, and in charge of all NCMs in the Coxswain’s absence. Taken from senior members who have “graduated” from Quartermaster.
- Duty Technician. Responsible for the technical status of the ship. If anything changes with the machinery, he’s the first to be told. He’s supposed to be able to fix most commonplace problems, or else know who to contact. Taken from senior members who have “graduated” from MCR watchkeepers.
- Quartermaster. Responsible for controlling access to the ship. The QM stands at the brow, or bridge onto the ship, checks IDs, and generally ensures that people who shouldn’t get onboard don’t. He’s also generally the first point of contact for anyone coming onboard for work, or messages from other ships. Taken from non-engineering trades.
- MCR Watchkeeper. Monitors all the machinery states and alarms. Generally, if the onboard systems detect any problem, he’s the first one to know. On the Halifax-class CPF, the MCR is the one place onboard that is always manned, whether the ship is alongside or at sea. Watchkeepers are taken from engineering trades.
Everyone on duty is also responsible for responding to emergencies, including fighting fires or floods, rescuing unexpected swimmers1, clearing casualties2, etc.
Since I’m a member of the CSE department, I’m considered an engineering trade, thus an MCR watchkeeper when I’m duty. This means that, when I’m duty, I spend 12 hours of the day in the MCR monitoring status boards and listening for alarms.
Occasionally, instead of a normal “wakey-wakey” on the PA system, we get a fire or flood alarm. This is generally caused when the Sea Training section comes onboard with their clipboards and smoke machines to make sure we’re paying attention. I’ve been fortunate enough, so far, to not have this wakeup.
Duty watches are scheduled to give us as much time as possible between duties. The time between depends on the number of people available, taking into account the number of people posted onboard, those on training, those on leave, etc. Currently that gives us a rotation of a couple weeks (more or less). However, it’s possible to trade watches with another member.
I was duty on Friday. Which means that I’m onboard from 7:00 Friday morning until 8:00 Saturday morning. Then, because I didn’t look at the calendar closely enough before agreeing, I’ve taken a duty watch on Monday. The two ends of a weekend, I get to spend away from my family. Not as bad as being at sea for months on end, but still a pain in the ass.
Emergency Stations – Fire
Anyone in BC, and probably many people across Canada (I don’t know how far the news has spread) knows about the wildfires in the BC mainland. Well, the message came down, and my ship is standing by to send bodies to assist. A number of our crew are now on 72-hour standby.
I, however, am not one of them. My last PT test resulted in a failure, disqualifying me for “physically intensive activities”, which includes forest-fire fighting. If, however, the members get called up, I will be taking over some responsibilities onboard. I will probably be standing more duty watches, to cover for people going out of town. It sucks, but at least I get to go home at the end of a 24-hour duty (rather than a 30-day firefight).
Infant Medication
Since the day he was born, my son has spent alot of time in the hospital emergency room, usually with something to do with his breathing. Every time, we were told some variation of “his lungs are still developing” or “it’s a viral infection, we can’t do anything, go home and wait it out”.
At one point in this series of visits, we happened to see an actual pediatrician who happened to be working that night. He was concerned enough to book us a follow-up visit at his office. This time, after much poking and prodding, we were told that he has an underdeveloped trachea, which is apparently not uncommon, although very scary when he coughs until he can’t draw breath.
At that time, he also booked a follow-up to the follow-up. This took place earlier this week.
Now, we have appointments with an ENT1 specialist and a cardiologist. In the meantime, he’s now on a puffer twice a day and nose drops once a day, which in a roundabout way leads to the title of this post.
One of the hardest things for a parent to do is deliberately do something that makes their baby cry. We now have to do that three times a day – a puffer mask at 8 AM and PM, and nose drops at noon. He’s gotten used to them now, he doesn’t cry but he still fights having the mask on for 5 breaths. I hope that I won’t have to do it after the next follow-up, but I think he’s going to have asthma.
On a brighter note, he’s standing himself up (with support) most days, babbling up a storm, and crawling absolutely everywhere. And everywhere he goes, he studies absolutely everything that he can. My future geek 
Free Followers?
I recently tried a couple “free followers” services on Twitter. I came back later, and my timeline was filled with tweets from people I know that I didn’t follow. It turns out that you get more followers by the system automatically following others on your behalf. Also, I made a tweet every two hours advertising one of the services, drowning out my own tweets.
Maybe I should have thought it all the way through; obviously there was some way that they had to fulfill their advertised numbers, but WTF? From now on, I’m staying with the old-fashioned way of following and getting followers – find something related to my own interests.
Return to Work
Well, I’ve finally returned to work after 9 months off. I guess the theory is that, by now, the baby will sleep through the night (LOL) so that I’ll be refreshed and ready to work in the morning.
Obviously, “they” have never had children.
Other than the lack of sleep, my first week back to work has been OK. Nothing spectacular, but not a total bomb. Morning PT is a pain in the ass, but it always is. Also in the arms, legs, etc.
The general work schedule is almost up to normal, although the rest of the ship is on a rotating summer leave period. Once the rest of the ship gets back to work, I’m sure the stresses of “help desk” will come back.
Music Recovery
Somehow, I managed to screw up my music collection.
I was experimenting with recovering data from a semi-fried USB stick. Then, with it still plugged in, I tried to sync my iPod music using MediaMonkey.
Little did I realize, all my drive letters had been mixed up.
The computer thinks that the USB stick is my F: drive (which contains the music), my music drive is G: (which is my iPod), and my iPod is H:. So it tries to copy non-existent music from the stick to the hard drive.
This wouldn’t be a problem, but for some reason that probably made sense at the time, I configured MM to automatically erase files on the destination that aren’t in the sync list. Unfortunately, this includes all the music in my collection which doesn’t exist in the empty USB-stick sync list.
Fortunately, I realized that it was taking a long time erasing files, so I was able to cancel it. Then I fumbled around for a recovery tool, which I found (eventually) in Recuva. So I’ve managed to (almost) get everything back; only 342 files (out of an original 20763) need to be recovered by other means. That’s about 1.6% loss; it could have been much worse.
Countdown to Work
Well, my parental leave is almost up. One week from now, I will be getting ready for my first day back on ship. I don’t know what kind of schedule we have coming up, nor would I publish it here if I did – I respect OPSEC.
I do know that it will be a bit of a shock. I’ve had almost nine months off work, spending time with the family and bonding with my newborn. He’s getting huge now. I’ve been here for several milestones in his life, but I’m not looking forward to missing milestones as I go out to sea. I’d love to hear his first words or see him take his first step, but I’ve already been here for his first haircut, his crawling, his first trip to emergency, and some rather insane babbling All-in-all it’s been a good time, yet all too short as these times often are.
Dawn of the Dinosaurs
I took the family today to see the new Ice Age movie at the local cheap theatre. Well, local to our current location, anyway. Being the cheap theatre, it didn’t have the 3-D effects, but since I was with a baby, I didn’t want to pay double for my tickets, and still have to leave the theatre whenever the young one got fussy.
Even with having to duck out every now and then, I thought the movie was good, as did my family. It wasn’t a kids-only movie; there was some subtlety in it to keep adults entertained, as well as in-your-face animated action for the entire family. However, if you’re not using the 3-D glasses, there’s nothing in it that I found especially required the big screen. If it hadn’t been in the cheap theatre (and us on vacation with a little looseness in the budget), it would have been a rental.