There is apparently a public meeting coming up on the 1st at NW Buffalo Community Center at 7pm to discuss litter in Riverside and Buffalo, and how to stop it. Since I will be unable to attend the meeting, I shall air my comments here.
First of all, Buffalo needs to take an interest in actively keeping its streets clean and tidy. That includes repairing damaged roadsigns and streetlights. If the city leaves hunks of streetlights laying on the ground, and refuses to fix up their street side fixtures, then why should people care about picking up their own garbage? Obviously the city is giving an impression that the city itself doesn’t care about leaving garbage and broken items laying around.
Secondly, In order to reduce litter, we need public garbage bins. And not just plastic totes. One program which worked well in Toronto is OMG Media’s combined garbage / recycling bin, which also made money from ad’s placed on the side of them. The money from the ad’s paid for the cost of maintaining the bins, and also put extra revenue into the cities funds. OMG Media (read: not the city) would service the bins themselves, removing the waste, and cleaning them. Sadly I think OMG Media got bought out by someone else, perhaps Astral Media Group. As far as I am aware, the bins are still around and still being serviced.
I have been out walking here in Riverside and ended up with some garbage I had to throw out. I looked around, and could never find a public garbage bin. I rarely see any maintained public garbage bins. I think if we give people the option of street side bins, people might actually use them.
As an aside to that, I know that there are some fears of bins being used to hide bombs… Seriously people, are you that scared of terrorists? If so, then the terrorists have obviously done their job and succeeded in terrifying you. If a terrorist wants to bomb something, they will bomb it. They won’t look at it and say “hey, there is no garbage bin, I can’t hide my bomb there… I think I will move on”. So the excuse that garbage bins are good for hiding bombs and therefore we should not install them, is full of shit. Lets see… Do we want cleaner streets? Or do we want to make it slightly harder for a terrorist to hide a bomb, that – chances are – will never happen here in Buffalo in any of our lifetimes.
I was thinking about the old group I used to run called COVERT. Basically we did Fire Police duties. Road Closures, Traffic Control, First Response, etc… We were quite successful for a privately funded and operated volunteer response group. At the time we were by no means official. But to the police on scene, it did not really matter. We knew what we were doing, and in some cases we even taught the officers various things about traffic control that they did not know previously.
What I mean by us being successful, is that we generally always had work. In 2004 alone, between the months of January and June, we had a total of 58 calls. 30 of which were traffic accidents, 13 of which were structure fires. We generally maintained a steady pace of calls every year. Sadly however we did not record a call list prior to 2004.
The above is a map of our general coverage area. Generally from the Aurora or Vandorf staging areas we could get anywhere within the square in about 10 to 20 minutes. If it would take us longer then 10 minutes to get somewhere, we usually didn’t bother responding unless there was a special request for ‘traffic control’. We would only respond to Structure Fires or Fatal MVC’s outside of the 10 minute mark, because it is very likely that the road will need closing for extended periods of time. Often units already on scene are more then happy to turn over an extended Road Closure over to us.
This 12 Mile by 14 Mile area was the area we were most familiar with. Within this area there was a population of about 200,000 residents. On average there would be 12 to 16 regular (not including Detectives, and Traffic units) Police units within our area on any given night split between 4 Districts. 1 District, 2 District, 4 District and 5 District. We also had a total of 10 firehalls within our area, 2 of which were volunteer. Stations 3-4, 4-1, 4-2, 4-3, 4-4, 5-2, 7-7, 8-1, 8-2, 8-4.
A good local Buffalo/Niagara example of the area we covered would be basically central Niagara County. As shown on the map below.
We earned a hearty respect within the police service. If we arrived on a scene first we were mostly always kept in place until the scene was cleared. If we arrived on scene, and officers were already on scene, most of the time, if there was a need for traffic control, they would pass that off to us. It was rare that an officer would refuse our help, if indeed our help would of made things easier.
It is often a lot harder here in WNY. Most of the time, even as an official volunteer, the police will not accept your assistance – even if there is a need for help. That being said, I have had luck with Buffalo Police. They seem to be fairly receptive. Suburban town police departments however, I suppose see many volunteers, as most of the towns around Buffalo are volunteer. And of course I imagine the Police Departments impression of volunteers has been jaded by volunteer firefighters who really do not know that their doing.
Having been away from ‘the action’ for so long, I will have to admit that I am a bit rusty. But hopefully some more training and exposure to various scenes will get me back in the swing of things.
I must agree with whoever made this image. I also must agree with bikerbernie. I would like to see a bunch of 40 something year old men screaming for 17 year old girls… Guess what… The police WOULD be called. That is how much of a double standard there is.
And while we are on the subject of Twilight… I am shocked at how popular the series is. The intellectual quality of Twilight is no where near that of Harry Potter, or even the Superman series. Heck I think the Venture Brothers is more intellectual then Twilight. Is society really getting this dumb? Cheap predictable thrills apparently somehow engage the interests of many people these days. What ever happened to thinking about something? I think Twilight is just one more step towards the outcome predicted in Idiocracy.
Imagine if we never had the invention of the toilet. Infact it is very possible that that invention could of passed us by. It came and went as a passing fad, so many times in history.
As early as 2800 B.c. Toilets had been invented in many parts of the world. Some of them also included underground drains which carried the waste away under the floor. But most simply emptied out through an outside wall. Somehow this technology was lost for several centuries, and re-emerged in the Roman era. The Roman toilets often included running water.
However that invention was again forgotten about for a several more centuries, until John Harington invented the predecessor to the modern flush toilet in 1596 in England. Unfortunately Queen Elizabeth did not like his flush toilet idea, and thus it never really took off. That is until the late 1800’s when the flush toilet became a widespread craze for wealthy families.
So what did people do when they didn’t have toilets? Well, most often they would use chamber pots. In fact it was considered common to have a chamber pot in the dining room, and under the bed. During the Victorian period, it was often expected for members at a dinner event, to all use their own chamber pots together after the meal, while still staying around the table to engage in discussion. Imagine the smell? Wow… Not only that, but often kings and queens alike would address their subjects while using a chamber pot. Most royalty had servants who would be in charge of carrying around the chamber pot and placing it in position when it was needed.
Back then, the act of going to the bathroom was not something to shy away from. It was quite clearly a public affair. While indeed, it was still disgraceful for a woman to show her body parts in public, for the most part. This is why woman of that era wore long flowing dresses. Mostly to envelop the chamber pot when they needed to squat…
These days, we have gotten so used to privacy in restrooms, that the prospect of urinating in public, a common event in the Victorian age, is now almost completely taboo. Many towns and cities have by-laws against outdoor urination.
But why? I can understand why the toilet took off. It was considered a luxury, and people wanted what the wealthy had. But why have a separate enclosed room for it?
I suppose now that the ladies no longer wear long flowing dresses, they can no longer remain ‘decent’ in public while going to the bathroom. But in our private homes, why must restrooms have doors? Just yesterday I was listening to the local fire channel, and heard a call for a child which locked himself in a bathroom and was having some sort of medical problem. The firemen who responded ended up finding out it was just the fact that he was scared that he was locked in a room, which freaked him out. There was no medical problem. How many times has this happened?
Our society has grown to the point where anything remotely related to urination or defecation is considered dirty, and naughty… And is not to be discussed publicly. We hide it away as if it is a sin to preform those acts. Why must we hide from body functions which we all have in common?
There is still evidence of the old times, in houses today. I have seen many a farm house which had a toilet installed in the corner in a main living room. A tradition, I think, which should be continued. In this case, the toilet becomes the social chamber pot of the past, and allows a user to maintain in social contact with everyone, while they take care of their bodily functions. If I ever designed a house, I may consider just such an installation.
So it seems my WoW account has finally been hacked. Wonderful. Honestly, I do not really care, but heck, I tried to get it back from Blizzard anyhow. Sadly Blizzard does not seem to care either. They are not even replying to stolen account inquiries these days. So far I have sent in 4 emails to their support site detailing all of my information, and they have only responded with a “Blizzard Support Customer Satisfaction Survey” which they send out after every support issue is dealt with.
It is telling when a company like blizzard has finally given up on a game. Obviously they just don’t care about their customers anymore.
So I finally purchased an Axixtech Torrent lightbar, and it arrived last week. The bar is as clean and sleek looking in person as it looks on the web. The bar is built in a solid manner. It is not easy to open up to gain access to the inside, and I do not recommend trying. Everything is very well sealed and enclosed.
The bar mounted up nicely on my 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo. The support plates for the feet were all I needed in order to mount the bar to the rails of my roof rack.
My bar is a fairly standard configuration, full blue bar with dual color blue/amber LED modules at the back for the arrow bar.
The video above is very telling. In direct sun, you can still make out the led modules. And they are bright enough to cause lens flare, even in the same frame as the sun.
In the manner which I have mounted this bar, when it is not activated, it looks just like a luggage rack. You can not tell it is a lightbar until you get right up behind my vehicle. This is good, as it limits the number of people who ’shadow’ me on the highway, sitting in my blind spot, because they are too afraid of passing me. I hate when that happens – but since I installed the Torrent, it hasn’t happened very often.
I have already had the chance to use this lightbar twice while responding to a call. Both times I have had no issues or problems with people in my way. On both sides of the road, everyone pulled over. Cars, trucks, semi-trucks, and buses. A huge improvement to just having a dash light.
In terms of brightness, this lightbar is bright. Some of the guys at my hall were joking that it could be used as an airport landing strip light. At night time, I think I need to activate the Dim mode so I don’t blind people.
In the day time this bar is easily visible from at least a mile away – if not more. At night I imagine this bar would be visible from upwards of 10 miles away at full brightness.
I have dual halogen take downs in my bar. In terms of lighting up a scene, they work more like floodlights (as opposed to spotlights) which is nice. That being said, they are still brighter then the headlights when you look at the front of the vehicle. The alley lights are nice as well. They do work, but again they are not spotlights, so it is more of a flood light effect. It is useful for lighting up a dark street or looking for an address.
In Warning Mode 3, the Takedown lights and Alley lights alternate. There is nothing you can do to really avoid that. That being said, I think they flash at half power, so they give you the flashing halogen effect from the front and side, but they are not overly blinding at night. Also of note in Mode 3, you can not turn the Takedowns on fully, nor can you turn on the Arrow Bar.
‘Cruise Mode’ is also very useful. Who needs scene lights? Just give yourself White or Amber corner modules and activate cruise mode. All of the corner lights light up, and stay on. This is useful at events where you need to be visible for people to approach you through a crowd – or even for when your sitting waiting for calls, flip it on, and it lights up the area around your vehicle. I will likely be using this for camping and off roading, where I need to see around the vehicle, to save on flashlight batteries and such.
The lightbar has 3 main warning modes. We have already spoken a bit about Mode 3. Mode 3 is the ‘pursuit mode’ which is to be used while responding to a call, or chasing someone. Each LED module (pair) in Mode 3 is fully programmable as to what flash pattern it will use. In program mode, you can cycle through each set of modules and select various flash patterns. The same holds true in Mode 2.
In Mode 2, the takedown lights and alley lights do not flash automatically. The Arrow bar also functions in Mode 2. I have set the light heads to alternate is a slower pattern in Mode 2, then I have them set at in mode 3.
In Mode 1, the whole bar alternates as if it was one single light module. You can select various flash patterns, but you have no control over which light heads are selected. I have set my Mode 1 up with Dim, and Front Cutoff, so it acts as a rear warning light. It works well.
So long as the corner modules are all activated, this bar does meet and exceed SAE J845 specs. With the Amber Arrow Bar, this bar also meets and exceeds SAE J595 specs. And when configured properly, this bar can meet part of the SAE J2498 spec.
Buffalo Police Department uses Axixtech Torrents on their newer police cars. They are very effective and after speaking to a few officers about the bars, I haven’t heard any complaints. Rightfully so, this bar is excellent. Honestly, the Axixtech line of emergency lighting is easily on par with the big names. In some cases Axixtech blows the competition out of the water. When I first was getting into LEDs, I was warned to stay away from any LED brand other then Axixtech. And I can totally see why. For the price, and affordability of these products, compared to the effectiveness and dependability of these products, Axixtech are by far the best out there. I have owned various Axixtech lights over the past few years, and I must say they have never let me down.
I want to thank http://www.lightningxproducts.com for their help in making this project become a reality. I highly recommend checking them out, as they have been very helpful. In conclusion, this is an amazing lightbar and I would highly recommend it to anyone who does emergency service work. You will not regret it.
