FiremanRich End of Year (2009) Review

There are those that will say the cup is half full and those that will say the cup is half empty. What is it? Well, I'm a person that always tries, at least for the most part, to look at the cup as half full.

I was given a coffee cup by a Brother Fire Fighter years back as a gift that has the statement "There Are Three Kinds Of People" on one side of it. There's three answers to pick from on the opposite side of the cup.

My Brother Fire Fighter told me when he gave me the cup that I was a person that made things happen while others watched & wondered. They weren't big things as far as I can remember but they were enough that a simple token of appreciation was give by the passing of a coffee cup that I always look upon now as being half full, even when it's empty. ; )

This is pretty much how I look upon the ending of 2009. It's a year that was half full and positive learning from others and passing on even in a small way new things to learn and knowledge to pass on. With the New Year of 2010 upon us I'm sure it will be full of new things to learn as I continue the journey.

I express some additional thoughts and outlooks in my YouTube I did earlier today on the path traveled in 2009....

"One should look at the path they traveled to continued the journey." (?)

Happy New Year! : )

(The usual disclaimers: I am not a journalist; This is a blog that expresses an outlook and is not conclusive in any shape or manner.)

Who Has Influenced You?

We are who we are and become who we are by those that have influenced us throughout our lifes.

For me, my biggest influence in life was my Father who always stood tall, in my eyes, like John Wayne on the big movie screen in the 1949 movie classic Sands of Iwo Jima. Always did like that movie along with the other movies the Duke was in. Would have to say the military movies the Duke stared in were my favorite. That’s probably one of the influences of why I entered the military after high school. Of course I was soon to find out that the movie military life and real life military were two different things. Go figure lol. All and all though it wasn’t a bad gig serving in the US Air Force. The time I served, I came across a lot of great influences that molded me into the person I am today.

Oh did I tell you also that my Dad was a volunteer fireman or what you would call now a volunteer fire fighter when I was growing up? Yup, he was. I use to hang around the local fire station with my Dad when he was busy doing something around the station after I got out of school with the other volunteer fireman like cleaning up the fire house, the fire trucks, or I was waiting till they returned from a fire call. Watching and learning even though I didn’t realize it. I soon enough joined the local volunteer fire department when I was of age. My Dad being an influence to me in joining because I saw it was all about helping people that were in need when the call came in. Always sort of neat when your doing the help people thing. : )

Since starting this blog I can say I’ve learned a lot, with a lot more to learn, and that I’ve also been influenced by people that are online. Some of these individual are what I would say are “heavy hitters” in that they know what their doing. You could say they’ve influenced me in a big way on how I should be as an online presence too. Be it reading others online that have blogs, or on twitter, or who I met on facebook there’s an influence with each and everyone that is online these days.

I came across a YouTube of a person name Micah Baldwin @micah on “Building Influence Online” who talked about such at Gnomedex 9. What’s a Gnomedex? Well, I soon found out by watching a few of the YouTubes about it with the various guest speakers. Gnomedex is a conference that has a lot of influence with all the great information presented.

Here Micah’s YouTube presentation at Gnomedex 9…

“Write like no one is reading. Write when you want to write. The moment you think “that would be a good blog post” you become a blogger.”

Those three sentences in Micah’s Gnomedex 9 presentation about blew me out of my chair. Wow I said, Wow again I said! Why? I found with those 3 statements, in it’s simplest form, is what it was all about to be doing this blog thing. Micah’s influence in this YouTube has made me begin to think and hopefully become a blogger of some sorts. I blog so I am a blogger.

Didn’t know that Micah Baldwin was the founder of “FollowFriday” on Twitter? Yeah he is, which is pretty neat knowing how it all got stared. “Tweet On Twitter & Have Fun” is my twitter motto and Micah has just made it more fun to do the twitter thing on followfriday. Thank-you Micah!

Some of those online “heavy hitter” influences that I follow either from their online web/blog page and via twitter are:

Joel Comm @joelcomm, Chris Pirillo @chrispirill, James Holmes @AskJamesHolmes, Lisa Irby @2createawebsite, Jim Stround @jimstroud, Jake Press @jakepress

I would recommend these individuals to anyone new to the online scene, blogging scene, or who ever is doing the twitter thing.

Want to thank Chris Pirillo @chrispirill for the Gnomedex-9 YouTubes. GREAT FRICKEN STUFF DUDE! I know Chris I know, no shouting in the live chat room but here on TFPFP I allow myself alittle shout out to those that are pretty cool. Thank-you. : )

Now I’ve come across a lot of very polished and very good content bloggers too since starting the TFPFP blog from the many people I follow online and on twitter. All have an influence on me or I wouldn’t be reading their blogs or following them on twitter. They have an online presence of influence.

So my early influence of my view of the military and the volunteer fire department made me travel down the path as a United States Air Force Fire Protection Specialist, which is actually a fancy name that basically means “Fireman.” LoL I know you have to say fire fighter now. Guess I’m still old school. : )

I’ve been out of the USAF for awhile now but I still belong to the local volunteer fire department in my community and my current job has me in some cases having a second opportunity of doing what I did in the USAF, that being an Aircraft Rescue Fire Fighter (ARFF). They say second opportunities are rare but the opportunity of people having an influence on your life that is positive in nature is even more rare.

Thank-you Dad, and thank-you all out there in that vast internet world.

(The usual disclaimers: I am not a journalist; This is a blog that expresses an outlook and is not conclusive in any shape or manner.)

Twitter Tweet meets Blogger Blog

When Tweet meets Blog…or is it Blog meets Tweet? Well, I’m definitely doing both and use Twitter to enhance the TFPFP Blog with daily news items of the fire protection/prevention nature that are listed over on the right hand column of my blog here.

On my Twitter @FiremanRich timeline, I’ve been making my tweets count or at least try to, and have the tweets be ones of substance by providing links to informative online news items concerning fire safety. When I’ve done an update to the TFPFP Blog, with a new article, I also tweet about it on Twitter a few times, trying not to do any type of twitter spam. So you could say both my blog and my twitter sort of go hand and hand. From all the information I’ve been learning about blogging and twittering it all comes down to content that helps to provides useful information to those who read them. Those that do visit my blog and/or read my twitter timeline I have to say Thank-You and come back often because I plan on being here for awhile. : )

Since changing up the way I tweet this last month or so, to make my tweets count for more and provide my blog with an area of fresh daily content I begun to notice a small pattern of sorts. With the number of tweets that I make of similar concerns I realized by bringing them together a blog article can emerge. I do read the articles I tweet links to and are of interest to me because the subject matter can save a persons life and make someone more a wear of their surroundings. One of the more important items I tweet about is on smoke detectors and on Twitter you can find a lot of good information at the #smokealarm trend area about them. Over the past week there were two tweets concerning smoke detectors that really caught my eye after I made the tweets about them. One was a good tweet the other not so good.

First the sad tweet, that was about a 94-year-old woman from Longview Texas who died in a fire. The Fire Marshal of the area, Thomas Mock stated, "The sad part is, she has a security system in the house, but as far as we can tell, there was not a smoke detector inside." Alla V. McCray was found trying to reach the backdoor to escape the fire but apparently did not have enough time before being overcome by the smoke and fire.

The good tweet was from Antigo, Wisconsin, where a woman was alerted of the early stages of a deadly fire. Lt. Mark McKinney of the Antigo Fire Department stated, "The owner was alerted by smoke detectors before the fire progressed a lot." The woman gives credit of being woke up by working smoke detectors in the house that gave her enough time to egress/exit safely out of the home that was on fire.

Both these fires happen days apart of each other, to two different people and, in two different parts of the country. Both had different results, which emphasizes the great importance to check those smoke detectors on a monthly basis.

If more data is needed to show the importance of smoke detectors, we only need to look at a report that came out this month from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), Fire Analysis and Research Division. The report is entitled “Smoke Alarms in U.S. Home Fires ” and can be read in its entire PDF format at…

http://www.nfpa.org/assets/files/PDF/OS.SmokeAlarms.pdf

According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) report released this month, 40% of all home fire deaths resulted from fires in homes with no smoke alarms.

“Smoke alarms are one of the greatest fire protection devices of our time and have significantly contributed to the decline in home fire fatalities since the late 70’s,” said James M. Shannon, president of NFPA. “But it’s not enough to randomly put up one smoke alarm and forget about it. In addition to placing smoke alarms in recommended areas, they must be kept in good working order, which includes testing them monthly, changing batteries at least once a year, and making sure that they are not disconnected.”

The NFPA offers the following smoke alarm tips:

* Choose a smoke alarm that bears the label of a recognized testing laboratory.

* Install a smoke alarm in every bedroom, outside each sleeping area, and on every level of your home, including the basement.

* Interconnect all smoke alarms throughout the home. When one sounds, they all sound.

* Replace all smoke alarms, including alarms that use 10-year batteries and hard-wired alarms, when they are 10 years old or sooner if they do not respond properly when tested.

* Consider home fire sprinklers when building a new home or doing a major renovation.

If you take the NFPA’s “Smoke Alarms in U.S. Home Fires Report” along with the tweets on Twitter you can find at the #smokealarm trend area you will see the picture that should be forming at this point in this blog entry.

Hold that thought for a moment….I’ll be right back….

… I just checked my smoke detectors in my house for the month. They are all in a full working mode with good batteries. I care about my family very much and it only takes a few minutes each month to make sure my early warning smoke detectors are in working order.

Are yours?

(The usual disclaimers: I am not a journalist; This is a blog that expresses an outlook and is not conclusive in any shape or manner.)