It's a great gig.

There is something that has been bothering me for quite a while now. I've spent lots of time trying to figure out how to explain it so I didn't seem un-thankful for the dangerous jobs they do. Generally I'm extremely supportive of people who serve our country. However, this one issue keeps poking me and poking me.

It's the firefighters.

Remember a while back when I mentioned I felt firefighters were padding the payrolls? I only became aware of this issue because all the firefighters in my town were sporting really expensive cars. New Volvo's and Audi's and the like.

At the time I wished I taken pictures, because it seemed pretty unbelievable that I was claiming most of them were driving so many expensive new cars. Sure, maybe the chief was sporting an expensive car here and there, but surely not most of them.

Except for the last 10 years, I never remember firefighters driving in such luxury. They all sport these licence plates, so it's easy to tell they are firefighters.

Well, this month I got an opportunity to show just the kind of cars our firefighters are diving. Lexus, and BMW 5 series. These pictures were taken a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I could still squash the feeling to blog about it.






Then last night, I read this story where they sent 35 firefighters to a house fire.

"By Roman Gokhman
Contra Costa Times
Posted: 07/22/2009 09:20:05 PM PDT


MORAGA — A kitchen fire caused $250,000 worth of damage to a Moraga house Wednesday morning.

The fire was reported at 10:15 a.m. in the 1100 block of Larch Avenue by the resident, who returned home from running errands to find his kitchen on fire, Moraga-Orinda Fire Department investigators said.

The department and Contra Costa Fire District sent 35 firefighters to the home. By the time they arrived the house was empty. They were able to contain the blaze to the kitchen and attic, though the rest of the house had extensive smoke damage.

The fire was controlled at 10:40 a.m. The cause remained under investigation Wednesday evening."

Maybe it was a ginormous mansion right? Not so much. I plugged the block into google maps, and the houses are somewhat average. 35 guys are a huge amount of people.

I noticed this trend on my own block one day. I heard all these sirens. I thought it was a huge house fire. It turned out to be a small fire. Flames and smoke never even erupted from the house at all, and there were about 10 guys. I have pictures. I was shocked the house wasn't more fully engulfed for the amount of people they sent.

Now I don't begrudge these guys for working hard and buying beemers. But, padding the staff kind of pisses me off. Considering our state is in so much trouble.

Are they out of their effin minds - or are you just jealous?

Some people may think I've gone on a little tirade against the firefighters. If they were in the private sector and not taking tax dollars - I wouldn't even care. But, you know we are having a little budget shortfall right now, and I tend to get a little bitchy about the whole thing.

So, when I found this Mercedes S500 in front of the gym, I had to take a picture.

I wasn't exaggerating when I said I run across firefighters driving luxury cars all the time. This one, (in case you were wondering) runs 83,000 dollars - 137,000 dollars. Here.

Of course that was 3 years ago. The S550 is today's equivalent and would only run about 83 grand. I wonder what the monthly payment on that thing is? It's gotta be like a grand or something. And you know he probably isn't parking it in front of a crapshack.

I've almost managed to run across one of these a month since I decided to start taking pictures. July here. August here. I ran across a Lexus last month, but it was only a 30,000 dollar one. I didn't really find it that one objectionable. It did make me revel at how yuppie firefighters seem to be in the Bay Area. Which I don't really care about. It is interesting though.

I do however have a problem when a bunch of them seem to be driving cars that cost twice the median income for most in the Bay Area. You know - because we are broke. But, whatever.

They are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

 

I guess all of those stories about the Democrats paying fines for felons is true.  A couple of days ago I got this text. Then today I got a voicemail from a different number, but the same organization. 

I find the whole thing super creepy and frustrating because I support an avenue to work off your bad choices. For instance, Newsome actually did something good for once and made it so prison firefighters can become actual firefighters. It teaches them a skill and helps them be employed after their sentence. But you should have to work for it. 

This is just ridiculous. How bad does your campaign have to be going, to be scrounging up felons?

Now ~that~ is a pricey car.

It's been a few years since I railed against this topic. Here and here. Thankfully most of the guys have garaged their fancy cars, or moved the plates to their more sensible cars. It does run salt into the wounds when you see firefighters driving cars you yourself could not afford. And I have two houses! It's not like I'm doing too shabby. This car however costs between 70 and 100 grand. I blogged about it way back here.

Of course I will get a bunch of firefighters here telling me they have wives that make much more money than them. I never believe them. It's like believing strippers actually will finish college. It's their get out of jail free card. Not to mention the threats of "it would be a shame if your house burnt down".

When I was growing up I already lost a family house to fire. That innuendo doesn't work on me.

Today's random stuff?

Ambulance chasing. Well - not so much chasing, as stumbling upon.

Every week now, Mr S. and I not only check the real estate stuff. We check rental rates. I want to make sure we remain competitive for the market. And, if my renter can't pay his rent anymore - I don't want a nasty surprise in finding out the rents have collapsed and I must charge much less for the crapshack. I'd rather keep an eye on the market and know in advance.

Mostly though, you are no better than the phone company to renters. If they can find a place like yours at a cheaper rate, they will move.

While going over the rentals and rates, we spotted one in our old neighborhood in which the rent seemed really high. While our old neighborhood was nice, we couldn't imagine why they were asking so much. We didn't think the area could pull in that kind of rental price. So, we decided to drive by the house to see this fantastic palace of a place.

This is also where we ran across this huge police presence. The roads were closed down. There were a bazillion law enforcement. Since we were already there. We might as well find out what happened. At first I stayed at the police line and used my telephoto lens.

Pretty soon though, I saw people walking down the street. I followed. Only to find out some guy crashed into a pole. He did travel across oncoming traffic. I was pretty shocked. The police response was pretty disproportionate for a single car involved accident. You'd have thought there was shooting.

The only reason I say anything about this is because my town seems to be pretty famous for this. Last year the firefighters were driving new audi's and volovo's. I'm not even kidding. There would be this fantastic audi that caught my attention and I'd see a firefighters plate on it. They must have been pulling bank in overtime.





There are 7 of them in this shot. That doesn't even count the ones blocking the roads. I estimated 20 of them for this one incident.



Oh - the house turned out not to quite be in our old neighborhood. It was also pink. If a house is pink on the outside - the inside probably looks like crap.

The final days of the gravy train.

It is ironic I got this shot today. When I started bitching about the firefighters, here and way back here, I never imagined the shit storm that was descending on government employees.

How could I know really? It's taken 5 years to gain access to government employee compensation. This is after a supreme court ruled that cities must release the information. Some cities are still holding out.

"More than two years after state Supreme Court Justice Ronald George authored a 7-0 ruling stating that the salaries of all government employees are public record, some local governments still refuse to quickly release data. Pinole in Contra Costa County balked at providing data on overtime and bonuses, releasing only gross pay. The city of Alameda took more than two months to release information on all of its 2008 employees and would not perform calculations to make the data easier for the public to understand. Albany refused to make similar calculations on overtime pay and bonuses."

Read more here from Inside Bay Area.

Which I urge everyone in California to read. It outlines the unconscionable abuses across the board in over time pay. With a ginormous amount of people spiking their salaries 150% with overtime pay. So for example, if your base salary was 100,000 - your take home could be 250,000! And, we'd pay you that for for as long as you live. You might even get a car allowance or bonus thrown in for good measure.

I honestly debated titling this post the 100 thousand dollar club.

They retire with salary plus 150% overtime and deluxe medical. Then they hire someone else for 100+ grand to take their spot. And what is so infuriating - is they could have hired a whole new staff member and still saved us money. Since they are pulling time and a half after all.They rob us all. They make business move out of the state due to the ridiculous tax burden.

No wonder I can run into a firefighter sporting a CLS Mercedes or a series 5 BMW or Volvo or Lexus with reasonable regularity. And the sad thing is - firefighters are only visible because of their license plates. Apparently the abuses are ridiculously rampant in all cities. These are the people who are going to keep health care costs down in a public run system?!

Look at this quote from the article.

"The data show wide discrepancies in pay and sometimes high salaries in government agencies, such as the Port of Oakland, where a semiskilled laborer grossed $123,450 in 2008, and in Newark, in southern Alameda County, where more than half of the 215 city employees were each paid more than $100,000 last year and the average gross pay was $109,027."

Half! Of the city of Newark made over 100k, when the average salary for that city is 80K.

Thank goodness someone had the balls to get this data from the government. I don't know how much traction it will get. Yet, I have seen some bubbling up this past week. At least one official in the East bay has "stepped down to spend more time with his family". Which is code for - you better leave. His pension close to 300k a year. I'll try to find the article.

I hadn't thought much about the whole thing except I'd started seeing more and more stories about it this last week. Then it was on the front page of the newspaper today. They even have a term for it. Pension jackpot.

Strangely when I first started talking about this I attributed the ridiculous pay to 9/11 fallout. However, I've been noticing the comments for these stories change dramatically. From Hero's to thieves.

There's even a website dedicated to the Pension Tsunami. You know, if you wanted to kill all feelings of hope that ever existed in your body.

Or you could read more outrageousness from presstelegram.com
It only gets more ridiculous.

"The dubious honor of collecting the state's highest pension belongs to former Vernon City Administrator Bruce Malkenhorst, who receives $499,675 per year - even though he is currently facing two counts of misappropriating public funds for allegedly taking $60,000 in city money for personal use."

"As grand juries throughout the state are investigating pension systems, former Assemblyman Keith Richman, president of CFFR, said these huge pensions are the result of a "corrupt pension system."

California, Richman said, is the only state in the nation that allows employees to use their highest year of salary - including unused vacation, vehicle allowances, bonuses and other compensation - in calculating their pensions."

Enviros say kill people. Not fish.

"The U.S. Forest Service is weighing tighter restrictions on aerial fire retardant drops as part of a long-running legal battle over the environmental effects of pouring millions of gallons of the chemical mixture on Western wildlands every year.

Retardant use has soared in recent decades as wildfires have grown larger and more houses have been built on the wildland edge. Nationally, federal and state agencies apply an average of more than 28 million gallons a year, the vast majority of it in the West and much of that in California." Latimes.

Maybe they use so much of this stuff because Californians are batshit crazy about letting any tree be trimmed. They can't clear out the forests of fuel. People won't trim their trees for defensible space.

Now they want to limit the use of retardant - which will basically just risk lives of firefighters.

Maybe it is finally percolating down.

Today I went to pick up some stuff for the holiday in the town next to me. As the checker was going through my stuff - he made small talk by saying he was coming to my house.

Me - well, it's not going to be as fun. My town cut their fireworks this year.

Him - Why?

Me - budget cuts!

Then something magical happened that you never see in California - this guy became all spun up. Young guy.

You mean they are spending all that money on that fountain, and they can't pay for fireworks! They've had to fix it like six times!

I made a guess of the one he was talking about, but I hadn't heard anyone else complaining. And I didn't want to hold up his line by asking him which fountain it was.

He also went on to complain about our city putting in these expensive faucets in a public restroom that keeps getting stolen at two grand a pop.

He started to touch the firefighters. And even though I'd have died to talk to him for a few minutes - I really hate holding up other people. So the conversation became fragmented quickly. All I can feel is their laser beam eyes on me. Cause that is what I'd do.

Still... I walked away kinda feeling happy. Like people were finally starting to "get it". All the way down to the video game checkout dude. Hell yeah he's a gamer.

At least it's a dry heat.

Just kidding! It's not quite a Texas style muggy heat heat, but close. Everyone knows by now that California is in a bit of a heatwave. The above shot is just the "feels like temp" from a couple of days ago. JK. I think it was only 106 that day. But the truck thought it was 115.

Then... last night we got a lightning storm. Which woke ~literally~ everyone up at 5am. Dry lightning was in the forecast, but we all laugh at that. I didn't prepare any of my cameras because 99.99% it never materializes. Since lightning storms are very short events here, when it looked like it had died down Mr S. went back to bed. I stayed up a little while trying longer to see if I could get any shots of strikes. Which I sorts did. But it's behind the tree on the right. If I wouldn't have gone back to bed it probably would have been easy to get better shots because the storm was sustained for a couple of hours.



In the distance I noticed a small red smudge. I went to tell Mr S. that I thought the lightning had set the hill on fire. By the time get got back out to the deck he was like - yeah, that is a fire.





We watched it for a couple of minutes and it was really starting to get involved. It took a while to hear any sirens. And just then...... the sky opened! It just started raining. All I can say... the firefighters got super lucky.



By the time I woke back up there were fires on every side of town. I think people over-use the term apocalyptic, but fires in the sky in every direction was sort of.

And since we are back to rolling blackouts, our day got hijacked by buying air mattress. We are going to do a new style of glamping called - camping in our living room. It has all the features of home. Just possibly not electricity. Because 106 degree heat and no electricity is just California doing California. And these people want to electrify EVERYTHING. 

Normally such a purchase would take an hour max. But because everyone and their uncle bought bikes, you pretty much can not find bike pumps anywhere. (for the air mattress) We wound up at Dicks in Fremont, but they were out of pumps. In my city I had to stop by a bike store because they wouldn't pick up the phone only to find out they also were out of them.

And finally I just want to bitch up a storm about merchants. How is it in this day and age that the only way to find out if a store has something -  is to just go there? Most sites search criteria is torched so if you look up say... "bike pump", you get backpacks. For effs sakes - no wonder Amazon is killing everyone. It's not that complicated. But this whole series of events took the whole fucking day. Because this is life now.

 

This is the smoke line from one side of town. This is another fire out the other side of town.

2020 just keeps adding layer upon layer of shit.

You've probably been wondering where I've been.

I haven't been evacuated..... yet.

Last week my neighbor decided to plant those 20 foot palms 2 feet off my property line. Now I have half a tree on my property. When I told them the canopy could not be on my side, they called the cops on me. For the second time. The cops came and said I could trim anything over the fence, but I knew they were wrong.

Then I spent two days calling around to see if I could get any remedy. I called the city. LOL. I called a bunch of lawyers. Eventually I found a lawyer who referred me to some fancy pants guy in Berkeley who writes case law on trees. He's pretty much the "expert witness" lawyers call when they need opinion. He drove out to my house - from Berkeley, and pretty much told me I was fucked. He said it ~was~ a technical violation, but it would be too costly to fight. I appreciated his honestly immensely even if it didn't go as I would have hoped. I am out 700 bucks, but when I trim those fucking trees I can say that I called in an expert and did everything I could to do the right thing. He's basically my insurance policy.

Now I'm trying to figure out a way to get out of my house.

Which brings me to the fires. I don't mind people having their trees a few feet over my property. It's only when it gets egregious that I care. And it's because of the fires. This morning at 9:30am Mr S. and I went to the Valley to buy welding blankets because I am sitting on a half cord of wood. I'm terrified of the embers falling on it. So, it is now wrapped in a welding blanket. The mylar fire blankets were sold out almost everywhere because all the firefighters are in my city and the city next to me. I was initially going to use that.

Because of one judge, you have ZERO property rights regarding trees. If the owner will not trim them, you are pretty much fucked. There is NOTHING you can do. You are forced to prove you used extreme care in triming your neighbors trees. Because NO tree trimmer will touch them. If you feel you need defensible space because you've already had a fire take your house and everything you own - who cares. And this is why California burns every single year. It's not because of global warming and all that other shit. It's because these people are fucking mental when it comes to trees. They would rather have their whole fucking city burn down than touch those precious trees. So when you are feeling sad about people losing their houses, remember this post because some of them don't deserve your sympathy. I know it sounds harsh, but it is the sad truth.

The winds are suppose to get erratic tonight. This is the first time I'm actually going to pack a bug out bag for Lacy. I've played out this scenario a million times in my mind. I'm still staying to fight. All morning I was pushing water into the trees I have on my property. I'm astonished not a single other person is doing this.


So... that's where I have been. I'm super mad pretty much. So please don't poke me. I'm so mad I might just decide to quit the internet.






Just outside of Fremont there are gravel pits. A Chinook was dropping down into them to get water that gets trapped from the rains. I have never ever seen that. There are two reservoirs within 10 miles.

I'm a bit anxious.

I'm sure this weather event is going to turn out to be a nothingburger, but they are now evacing the towns of Healdsburg and Winsor.

Every single year I study the fires and the damage to see if I would have survived had that been me. I'm like - that house would have never made it. That house would have been fine. Every year I have the conversation with Mr S. that I am not evacing. I'm staying to fight for my house. I'm not reckless. Please no comments about that. I just pray to a gawd I don't believe in that I'm never tested. Fire is the number one way I don't want to die.

Survivor guilt is a powerful thing though. I've always felt if I wouldn't have gone to stay with my boyfriend that night my cousin would still be here. And I'm not losing everything I own twice. You do eventually get over it but....It's like you have no history. Like you don't exist before a certain time. You are just an article in a newspaper.

Out here in the burbs there is a lot of grass. Fire is an omnipresent thing. The creek by my house goes up almost every year and all it would take is a little wind. But the firefighters tamp stuff down super quick out here. It only becomes concerting if they are stretched too thin.

At least my deck is fire door rated. It covers about 1/4th of my roof surface.  I just can't believe every year I have to have this conversation. But I'm reasonably sure everything will just be overhyped. You can never take things too much for granted though.

Why the Republicans should be scared.

We see you all as the credit card carrying spenders of Bell California.

So what is the Tea Party -- the group that will help the Republicans take Congress, or the one that will accidentally help the Democrats keep it?

It's really amusing that the GOP is as confused as ever, as to why their candidates keep loosing. It is simple really. When you said you were the party of fiscal responsibility - that meant something to us.

I hear a chorus of Dems saying where were you when HitlerBush was spending us into the ground. Which is a fair question. It is.

At the time I didn't have a problem with the money Bush was spending. Because, I didn't know how much public officials were making. As a matter of a fact, public unions sued to block this information in 2003. When a lawsuit was filed to have this information disclosed.

From the Morgan Hill Times.

"The Contra Costa Times initiated the court battle for salaries after a 2003 ruling in San Mateo County that gave cities an excuse to withhold salary information from the public. In San Mateo County, Superior Court Judge Rosemary Pfeiffer denied an attempt by the Palo Alto Daily News to obtain salaries from the cities of Atherton, Belmont, Burlingame, San Carlos and San Mateo. The newspaper had previously published the names and salaries of Palo Alto and Menlo Park employees, and wanted to do the same for additional cities.

But unions representing public employees caught wind of the newspaper's request, and eventually filed a lawsuit to prevent the information from going public."

The lawsuit was finally settled at the end of 2007. It still took cities more than two years to release the information.

From Inside Bay Area 12/09/09.

"More than two years after state Supreme Court Justice Ronald George authored a 7-0 ruling stating that the salaries of all government employees are public record, some local governments still refuse to quickly release data. The city of Alameda took more than two months to release information on all of its 2008 employees and would not perform calculations to make the data easier for the public to understand. Albany refused to make similar calculations on overtime pay and bonuses."

As late as March 2008 state workers were protesting the court ruling saying they were concerned about safety and privacy.

From Govtech.

"Susan, a CalTrans manager, says she doesn't remember signing away her privacy when she became a state worker. I was sickened when I saw what was on there," she said. "I felt like I can be tracked down by people I worked with and I feel like I'm vulnerable."

She was right. Just not in the way she thought. In 2008, none of us would know how tired the taxpayer would become. For obvious good reason.

Some people say Chief Justice Ronald M. George's legacy will have been the act that temporarily gave gay couples the right to marry. Here. Not to diminish their plight - but, his larger legacy will have been the one that perhaps turned back the hand of out of control government. A government that affects every single person in this State.

Would things have been different if we'd known five years ago that the mayor of a small town was making 4 times what the Chief Justice himself was making? Or that a small town called Bell was charging property taxes at a higher rate then the residents of Beverly Hills. An increase of 50% in three years! For a constituent that on average only makes 40 grand a year? Here with video.

I don't know.

I got the impression that when I started blogging about BMW driving firefighters in early 2009 people thought I was sort of an asshole. So maybe nothing would have been different at all.

So, when the spineless Republicans go against their core values of cutting taxes and spending - both of which would have helped the residents of Bell California - we want to vote them out just as much as Democrats.

I don't know why this still shocks me.

I hope to get off this soon, but almost every day now an article comes out about this. I think if everyone would have known how much we were paying these people, this would have come to a stop a long time ago - and our state would not be many billions in the hole.

Let me point out that this would take at least 4 well paid engineers to cover the salary of just one of the 67 of these people making 200 grand+ in SF.

From calfire.blogspot.

"San Francisco Fire Department Chief Joanne Hayes-White is by all accounts good at her job -- and she's well compensated for it. Hayes-White received $293,869.93 for her services in 2009 -- but she's not the Fire Department's top earner.

That honor went to Battalion Chief Johnny Lo. Lo's base pay was $101,164.21, but he took home $53,409.64 in overtime and $139,549.39 in a category called "other pay" (cashed in sick days and vacation time) for a grand earning of $294,123.24.

Joining Lo and Hayes-White atop the $200,000+ plateau were 67 other firefighters -- and not just the SFFD's top brass. Paramedics, investigators, a plumbing supervisor and the "marine engineer of fire boats" all took home more than $200,000, according to a departmental wage list obtained by The Appeal."

Who's jittery?

Okay... I'm totally jittery. This is the time of year you keep an eye to the skyline for fires anyway, but the hills are a color I've never seen before. By the end of the year they are a nice camel color. I call them camel butt hills because they kinda look like their backs. Right now they are a weird sort of reddish earth color. I tried to capture it today, but it's hard to capture the color just right.

This small fire was in the (now) dry creek bed about two blocks from my rental. Our firefighters are amazing at getting this stuff stamped down quick. Still the trees are starting to show quite a lot of stress. That is fuel we don't normally have.

Is this going to have to be a "thing" now?

BMW i8 Catches Fire, Gets Dunked in Water.

"Last week a BMW i8 that was put up for display inside a showroom in the Netherlands started smoking for unknown reasons, according to the Tilburg fire department. As people started freaking out and phones started calling the emergency services, the car apparently didn’t explode, but the firefighters did proceed to use a rather unusual means of making sure the fire was put out. As you can see from the photos, the car was simply dunked in a container filled with water."

I don't feel like snarfing their photo, so you will just have to go to the link. But it is a wild world when you have to fully submerge a car to get it to stop burning. This has to affect insurance rates eventually right?

I mean, cars catch on fire all the time. But I would say submerging a car definitely totals it if it weren't before.

As a side note - those i8's didn't really seem to sell all that well. So I'm sure some owners are happy if one burns. As an owner of a ghost brand - buy up all the floor mats you can. Those are the things you can't find years later. Oddly.

The news out of California is horrible today.

I just got a chance to catch up on local news. And it suuuuuuucks.

Coronavirus in the Bay Area: 17 new cases in Santa Clara County.

This brings the total cases in Santa Clara County up to 91.

Of the 91 total confirmed cases, 15 cases are associated with international travel, 27 were in close contact with a known case, and 40 are presumed community transmission cases.

38 people are hospitalized, according to county health officials.

That means...... 41% need hospitalization  right now. Much higher than the 20 percent I've been talking about.

In addition to that - MANY San Jose firefighters have been infected. The number was 2 just yesterday (I think). All the numbers change so fast. Now it's at least eight, and one of them is in already in grave condition.

Restaurants in San Fransisco that serve more than 100 people have been ordered to close for SEVEN WEEKS.

Solar fail.

Last night one of the houses on the back side of the block in front of me caught fire. I could smell smoke inside the house which is unusual, so I went outside to see what people were burning. Which eventually led me up to the deck where I could see that part of the block was lit up like a Christmas tree.

Mr S. and I decided to walk down and see how bad the damage was. When we got there of course there were about 10 neighbors or so watching the firefighters who were cutting a hole in the roof at that time. One of the neighbors who lived right across the street said the house that was on fire just had solar installed. They must not have done something right because the fire department cut through the garage door to reveal the fire shooting out of the fuse box.

I didn't really know that could happen. You'd think the failure would happen right after dark when the lights came on. But this was more like 9:00. Such a bummer though. Especially this time of year. It didn't burn the whole place down but they probably got a lot of smoke and water damage. And that yummy electrically smelling smoke.

Teachers in Wisconsin commit suicide. Oblivious they are dead.

While watching the coverage of the teachers protest - I had to keep reminding myself unions are only 13% of the population. Maybe less now. I'd wager - much less in the future. It's fascinating that none of them seem to see the cliff they are all running towards. A cliff that can't come soon enough.

I think there are really hard working union folk. I also think those people could probably get better wages without a union. This is my disclaimer for the other stuff I am going to say.

Unions are quickly becoming the most hated segment of the population. And we don't care if you lose your job. We would fire you twice if we could. We don't even care if the kids are unedumacated. We will put up with it to get rid of you.

This is the simple reason why.

I have to pay for all of my retirement. Plus a lot toward my own health care. I have to pay for all of these things for you. For life. I'm resentful about it. So is everyone else. Deeply resentful.

The galling thing is firefighters and police threw everyone else under the bus. They are exempt from the ruling. Yet because they are union members - no one seems to care. I guess that whole - assault to one is an assault to all thing, is bullshit.

The same thing happened here in San Jose. All the old guys refused to give up any money to save the jobs of the young guys. I mean - they are all going to retire soon with hundreds of hours of vacation time.

And anyway - how (mathematically) do people run up 854 days of vacation in 10 years? I'm serious. How?

Look at how much we are paying these people in unused vacation. In some cases it looks like a full years salary. Well - I guess it is actually. Most of the top vacation payouts are for days that equal more than a year. Even if you work there for 30 years - how is that possible?



I've been in the market and overheard people gasping about the extravagant salaries teachers and faculty are getting paid in my town. It's a really good salary. And you can't pay for your own retirement?! Eff you! You suck.

Nothing to see here.

It was really difficult getting pictures today. How do you capture "hey - over there is a hill - but you can't see it"? Every mountain is obscured by smoke. There is even a normally visible mountain range in this shot.

There is a haze down every street. The sun makes the sidewalks a reddish hue. I'm still trying to figure out how to capture that.

Overnight allegedly, the fires quadrupled. The numbers are so staggering - it's hard to believe actually. I'm not even sure how many fires there actually are today. More than 500, less than 2000? I'm also not sure how the firefighters are going to make it through this year. They have been working almost non-stop since the season started.

It also looks like it will be a while before my eyes stop burning. Sucks. But hey, at least today the air smells like wood smoke, and not house fire. It is somewhat pleasant. Sort of like being at a campfire all day. And night. And morning.

It's only a matter of time now.

Update - I found one of the videos. Since I have to google translate almost everything I just can't search. But there are many reports of these weird twitching upon collapse.

I have been dying to talk about the virus but I've obviously been super busy. But - I am really concerned how the population is going to handle this now. I believe that if people really knew what happening in China there would be mass panic. And I'm not being dramatic at all.

People think because we have better heath care there is nothing to fear. But I can assure you that when firefighters have to stroll up in full hazmat gear, this is going to take a new direction. Which is what will happen - guaranteed. I can already see how this is going to play out. The first time someone collapses in a mall things are going to get crazy. And evidence shows that this is a very real possibility.

From what I have gleaned about the virus is that is causes sudden cardiac arrest and people just drop dead. There are tons of videos out of China that show this and now videos out of Iran are starting to corroborate.

As I understand it right now - your body gets so overwhelmed fighting the virus that you experience multiple organ failure. There are lots of videos out there of sudden cardiac events. And oddly after you hit the floor you have a seizure like event.

Now I have seen someone have a heart attack and drop dead in front of me. I have never seen this behavior in my whole life. I will try to link vids if they are still up.

So.... strap in.

I honestly can't believe that people were not following what was happing in China. It is the roadmap of what will come. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. You can predict a lot of things, but unless you were watching you won't know the unexpected things people will do.