If you weren't aware of it, that spells "respect", just like Aretha Franklin said so many years ago. So what is it? Why is it so elusive in emergency services? When you read the blogs and posts here on the Nation, so much of what is bandied about is the need for respect or the apparent lack of respect. Some of it is directed at respecting your elders (the crusty officer in your crew), respect for the youngsters (those probies you endure), respect for the opposite gender, and the public's… Continue

It seems to me that there are those of us bonding as a team here to improve the fire service, which is pretty cool when you think about the fact that we're spread all over the country and some of us have never met. It made me think about teamwork and what composes a team, and about the inner workings of teams that make them special.



Teams like the Patriots and the Giants (for some of you, these are football teams) and their trip from the beginning of the season that culminated in a… Continue

Yesterday I encountered that feared vision known throughout all computerdom, the Blue Screen of Death. I will not be posting blogs as regularly for a few days while I decipher the needs of my "ruggedized" Task Force-issued Panasonic Toughbook CF-29, which is the third I have been through. These are neither rugged nor tough and to be honest, for the amount of money we spent on them, we would have been better off buying three or four cheaper laptops that are not ruggedized and just replacing…

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As popular as the Firefighter Nation has become, it is still only around 14,000 people out of the million plus firefighters in the United States, not to mention the rest of our brothers across the globe. The 12k who have signed on here are but a scratch on the surface of a bigger universe; they are the responders who have access to computers and choose to spend some time looking around to see what they can see, logging in daily or weekly (or every ten minutes) to share some insight on their…

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