Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Learn CPR.
You might save your daughter's life.

I am taking a quick break from the usual silliness and whining that inhabits my blog. Also, this is going up on all the blogs. Sorry for the repition, but it is the only important thing I've had to say in a long time.

Tonight we went to our first AAA minor league baseball game of the season. We were having a great time, hanging out on the left field berm. The kids were going crazy. And they cheered when an 8 or 10 year old girl near us caught a foul ball that the left fielder flipped up to the crowd.

Less than 5 minutes later that girl was unconscious and not breathing. We have no idea what happened. EMTs made it around pretty quickly. But not before the girl's dad had to start rescue breathing. She was out for several looooong minutes. Not just passed out from excitement, mind you. This was blue all over, motionless on the ground not breathing.

How scary is that? Your kid is having a great time and then a couple of minutes later she stops breathing.

When we left the park the girl was sitting upright with loads of attention coming at her from the Fire Fighters and Paramedics that had responded. Looks like she was lucky, She has a hero for a dad. Here's hoping I never have to be my daughter's breath.

So anyways, here is a quick online CPR reference. Please review it in case it has been a while since you took a class. Then please, please, PLEASE take a class to get more familiar with CPR procedures. Go here or go here to get help finding a class in your area. I'll be looking for a refresher course in the morning.

Modem move

Since our desktop and the wife's laptop both use our wireless router for an internet connection, I moved the modem and router away from the computer cabinet a while back.

I did it for two reasons. One, we were out of power in the living room. Every outlet is filled and I am already running a power strip/surge protector for the computer system and entertainment center. The other reason, our phone line in the living room died and it cost more to replace the line than to install a wireless card into our desktop. So that is what I did. We already had the wireless router running for the wife's computer.

Anyways, I did not have a good spot for the router and modem, so they ended up plugged into a phone jack behind our bed. A neighbor convinced me yesterday that might not be the best place for it. He says the radio frequencies might not be good for you. So I moved everything to the kitchen yesterday.

I did not want the modem and router sitting on the kitchen counter, so I set them up inside one of our cabinets. I just had to drill a hole for the phone line to pass through. Seems like a good idea. Nothing under the bed and nothing cluttering up the kitchen either.

Of course, once I tried to log back into the system, our internet connection would not work. I had to deal with the tech service guys to get them to reset my password. I had already figured out that was the glitch.

Anyways, the guy reset my password easily enough. But when I tried to get off the phone after that he wanted to walk me through a bunch of other steps to ensure everything was set-up properly. I ended up spending more time on the phone convincing him, and eventually one of his supervisors that I was capable of setting up my own dang wireless network, than I did getting the problem taken care of.

Anyways, now that everything is running right again, I thought I would send out a gripe to the over-friendly tech support guys. Dude, just let it go. I'll be OK. I swear. And if not, you gave me a work order number and a callback number to get right to your desk just in case.

Thanks for the password reset. Can I have my half hour back now?