COMPUTER FRUSTRATION

Recently I set up an online account with my health insurance provider in order to access my records and billings, since some of my medical providers have not been paid in a year and I want to know why.  It required, for both the user name and password a certain number of characters, with so many capital letters, numbers and different symbols to be accepted by the system.   I tried to keep it simple and after a few rejections finally came up with a user name and password the system accepted.  I recorded all this in my little black book of  all my different accounts with all their different user names and passwords.    Today I received an email from the health insurance provider telling me that my health records have been updated, so I tried to long into this account with no success.   It did not recognize my password.   After pushing a button to request a temporary password that never worked either, then followed by some codes and other requests for ID and I finally gave up in frustration.   Trying to call a real live person is out of the question these days.  I did see a comment section where customers could make comments which I filled out  to the max with my questions and frustrations without inserting any four letter words.   Once I pushed the submit button it replied that it may take 3 or 4 business days for a reply.  In short, I just don't have the patience for this crap anymore.  

WILDFIRES OF 2024

Here it is the middle of August with fires all over the Cascade Range, mostly caused by lightning storms in July.  Remember, it wasn't until Labor Day when all the fires four to five years ago burned up communities and homes along the McKenzie River, the Santiam River and the nearby Archie Creek Fire up the North Umpqua River.   The cause of those fires was power lines breaking from wind storms.  

Now with a record number of fires throughout the west, fire crews and resources are spread thin and many fire teams have arrived from the east coast where there is much rain.   Most of the fire teams and camps with up to or more than 500 people assigned to them are fighting multiple fires known as complex fires.

Some fires are burning in old fire scares where the underbrush and fallen dead trees have caused a fuel build up over the last 10 to 20 years ready to burn again.   To get crews and equipment into some of these fires it requires opening up secondary forest roads and logging spurs that have not been maintained for years requiring contractors with heavy equipment to open them up.   It is also necessary to use some of  these old road systems for fire breaks.

In the last few days fires are breaking out at the lower elevations in Douglas County, mostly caused by stupidity--burning of debris, operating power equipment and believe it or not, somebody siphoning gas while smoking a cigarette.  Now there is a fast moving fire near Tiller threating homes and ranches.  Many local fire agencies have responded  leaving  very few resources to respond to any new starts.   All that will save us now is rain and that usually does not arrive until mid October.   

SKIN BIOPSY REPORT

Another visit to the Advanced Skin Center in Roseburg today for the latest results from biopsies taken on July 11th when I had my six month full body exam..   Over the years I have had many biopsies, some benign, some basal cell cancer or squamous cell cancer and most followed up with Mohs surgery.  Somewhere in this blog there is a story on Mohs surgery.  Today's report was different for the two biopsies, one on my right hand and the other on my waist.  The pathology report for the one on my waist was a seborrheic keratosis with superimposed actinic atypia, in short a barnacle growing on a barnacle.  This required freezing with liquid nitrogen.  The one on my right hand is atypical well-differentiated cystic squamous proliferation.  Note:  picker's nodule.  Not sure what all this means, but in short there may be squamous cell cancer deeper down than what the biopsy showed.   Options--dig deeper or apply extra dose of liquid nitrogen and come back in six months for my next exam in January and go from there.  I choose the extra dose of liquid nitrogen.

I make more visits to this place than all my other medical providers combined in a year, including primary care doctor, eye doctor and dentist.   I wonder if I can get the out of pocket expenses waived if the medical world would want my old body when I depart this world and have it pickled for show and tell at some medical university?   I'm paying the price now for all those days of working and playing in the great outdoors.  

TREE FALLING

Tree falling is an art, it is also dangerous and can be deadly.   Believe me, as a student from the University of Life with an undergraduate degree in Trial and Error Methods, I have seen some bad mistakes and made a few myself.    Consider yourself lucky if you get a second chance.

When I went to work for the Forest Service in 1971 at Orleans on the Six Rivers National Forest, I became certified on chain saw safety, saw maintenance and falling techniques, but the real lessons are by experience.   I learned it is not the big trees that might do you harm, but the smaller ones that lean one way, twisted in another direction and are hard to read as to where and how they will land.   First, always think safety and know your escape route to get away from the falling tree.  Sometimes this requires clearing out some brush to make your escape faster.   The last thing you want is to move quickly away from the falling tree, trip on some debris and face the consequences.  I will not get into the different undercuts, back cuts, holding wood and other tricks or tools of the trade.  You can find all this online.  It is reading the tree and where you want to place it that requires some know how.   I have guessed what a tree will do and like a bad movie in slow motion could see it had a mind of its own brushing an adjacent tree kicking the butt end in my direction giving me just enough time to move out of the way.   It only took a few of these mishaps to make a believer out of me, so now I put a line about 20 feet up these kinds of trees after making the necessary cuts leaving adequate holding wood and pull them down with my tractor from a safe distance and angle.

It you have any doubts, hire a bonded and insured tree surgeon or professional tree faller.   Remember you want to avoid pain and loss of life at any cost.   

THE NITTY GRITTY OF BEING A FIRE FIGHTER

In my early days with the Forest Service we were called upon to fight fires with little choice in the matter, especially on our days off or after work hours from our regular job of doing timber sale preparation work, including marking trees, marking cutting boundaries, surveying and mapping harvest units and timber cruising.   On big fires or what was called project fires we were assigned a crew boss, who supervised up to 20 people doing a variety of jobs starting with people clearing brush with chain saws, next were people grubbing out a fire trail with Pulaski's, followed by people scrapping the fire line with hoes or Macleod's.  Sometimes people carried drip torches to burnout inside the fire line.   A squad boss was usually assigned to oversee each of these tasks, who also performed work with others in the squad.    We had to carry drinking water, food rations, first aid kits, fire shelters and a few personal items in our fire packs.  Some of us carried one gallon canteens of water as we could not have enough drinking water.    We were either assigned the day shift or night shift.  If we were part of the initial attack sometimes we worked both shifts until more people arrived.   Fire camps were set up in nearby communities, schools, fairgrounds or open fields.  These camps became like small cities with kitchen facilities serving food 24 hours a day, dinning areas, portable potties, shower units, tools supplies/repair area, sleeping areas, vehicle parking areas, fuel trucks, potable water trucks, sewage pump truck, repair/maintenance trucks and sometimes an ambulance with EMTs was made available.   The biggest challenge was trying to sleep with all the noise of activity that went on 24 hours a day.   These camps had their own security to make sure only authorized  people were coming and going in and out of the camp.   With more training and experience I became a squad boss.   After I became a timber sale contract administrator I was a falling and tractor boss supervising contractors and loggers assigned to fires.   

Some high points that I remember was eating those canned biscuits from the rations that reminded me of a tennis ball and even bounced like one.   Sleeping on the fireline was always a thrill at night when it got cold and we made a warming fire.   Then there was the constant danger of getting stung by hornets, but the most fearful memory was running out of toilet paper.   One thing for sure there was never a dull moment.