04 May 2010

Future Job Prospects

To keep yall up to date with my future job prospects, here's what I have going on:

1) Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Fire Department/Crash Fire & Rescue. Well,after a few months of work the MWAA police finally finished my background check which moved me onward to the next phase of the hiring process, the physical exam. I took it and came to find out that I need to take one more test, a stress echocardiogram before I can move on with the process. I normally have a minor arrhythmia called ST depression which can sometimes signify various cardiac problems. So in order to prove to MWAA that I do not indeed have some sort of cardiac deficit, I have to complete this last medical test...on their dime thank God. If all goes well, I could be starting there as soon as June 7th.

2)Raytheon Polar Services Company - Antarctic Fire Department. I applied to go down as a Winfly and Summer Primary (early August 2010 till February 2011) and a Winter alternate (February 2011 till October 2011). Considering this will be my 3rd season down there, having only skipped one season, and having a decent track record as far as my evals go, I'm hoping I'll be considered to go back down this time around. Who knows, I may even winter down there and pull a full 14 months in Antarctica...

3) Warren County Fire & Rescue. I applied to work part-time for this county in Northwestern VA. If I end up staying here in VA whether I work for MWAA or continue working for PTS I'll try to pick up shifts here and there in Warren County.

4) Yellowstone National Park - Structural Firefighter. I applied for a permanent position at Yellowstone National Park as a structural firefighter. I figure I may be able to weasel my way onto some wildland fires if I get hired and take the job which will allow me to keep my qualifications current on my red card. Having surpass the requirements for the position which included Firefighter I, Firefighter II, and Driver-Pump Operator pro board certificates, I'm hoping I'll at least get a phone call or an email regarding this position. I fell in love with the place driving through it on my way to Boise in 2007 so I'm sure working at the fire department there would be a hell of an experience.


As of right now, nothing's for certain. But having many options can't hurt. I'd much rather have make one hard decision picking out one option out of several versus not having any at all...

03 May 2010

A Pale Blue Dot

I had a profound, somewhat life changing even occur tonight for me. While surfing the internet, I came across a blog posting signifying the 20th anniversary of the Voyager 1 spacecraft's photo of the earth while at the edge of our solar system. Also known by the famous title, "Pale Blue Dot", American Astronomer Carl Sagan wrote on this photo:

"Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known."




Now, I've always considered myself a humble, humane, and sincerely nice person but looking at that picture of our home and reading Sagan's words truly changed me tonight. They have changed how I will forever look at our world and the people in it. They have changed how I will treat people from now on. I'll let Sagan's words speak for itself. I challenge any one that reads this to look at that photo and read what Sagan has to say regarding the planet we live on.