At my last job, a couple of the employees attended some kind of disaster preparedness or recovery (I’m really not sure which) seminar.  Upon their return one of them knowing that I am heavily involved with Scouting said something to me about being CPR Trained and being the person in the office that knew it.

I let them know that I was not CPR trained but if the company wanted to help pay for me to attend the training (it’s less than $100), I’d be happy to take the time and get trained.  It’s just not a requirement to be a Scout leader and it’s not something that I’ve done yet.

The reaction was kind of “Well when you get trained, let us know and we’ll use you as our CPR person”.  A few more times over the next several months the topic came up again, and my answer was always the same, “Help pay for it, and I’d be happy to do it”.  I just wasn’t going to go do it because they asked me to, at my expense so that they could claim that they had someone CPR trained in their office, seemed like that was a situation where they gained more than I did.  Of course, after being laid off and then being asked to other things at no cost, it shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

Another thing that I suggested was that the office really should get an AED device.  There wasn’t one there and in my opinion, there needed to be one.  I was literally laughed at and mocked for making such a suggestion, on several occasions.

Now I realize that they aren’t cheap, but I also know that they save lives.  I was told that everyone working there was young and in good shape and that such a device wasn’t needed and even if someone did happen to have an issue that the Fire Department was just minutes away.  After that I told my wife that if I just happened to have a heart attack while working there and died, that she should look into her legal options.

So while watching the news tonight I had a huge smile on my face when I saw thisreport.  I don’t know the details of the ordinance, and this company isn’t located in South Jordan (they are literally only a few blocks away though), but it’s good to see that some people are taking things like this seriously.

And for the record, my new company does have one and I know exactly where it is located just in case it’s needed.  The funny thing is it’s within 20 feet of the vending machines.

About 9 months ago I started getting some really bad headaches. This was really unusual for me, because I’ve never been one to get headaches. They were coming everyday and I wasn’t really getting any relief.

I went through a few doctors, medications, tests, and scans trying to figure out what was wrong. They really couldn’t figure out what was going on and nothing was really helping.

That was until I was sent to a Neurologist, who knew what it was immediately. She put me on a new medicine and ordered a Sleep Study to confirm it. Sure enough she was right.

Sleep Apnea.  Once they confirmed what it was, I was put on a CPAP machine and while my headaches haven’t gone away completely it’s nice to at least know that and I’ve getting a decent nights sleep.

Previously, I was unable to sleep on any kind of Scout camp.  I would literally lay there at night with my eyes closed and think to myself "Go to sleep, it’s not that hard, you’re tired, now just go to sleep".  Come to find out, I was "sleeping" but I was also having episodes an average of 62 times an hour, so it just felt like I was awake all night long.

I went to the Varsity Big Event recently and was able to take my machine with me.  I won’t say that I slept perfectly, but it was much better than it was in the past.

So hopefully we’re on the right road and the headaches become a the past.

Last week, I was out of town so when I returned and saw the new about BYU’s Basketball Coach Dave Rose being diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, my heart sank.  All I know about Pancreatic Cancer is that it is not a good one ot be diagnosed with.

I was quite impressed when I saw that some of my Ute Fan friends at UteFans.net had taken up a collection in his honor and were doing what they could to help up.

I was actually quite relieved to read about the Press Conference today about his situation and that he is currently cancer free.  Hopefully he stays that way.

Any kind of cancer is not fun, if has affected our family somewhat and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Even at Scout Camps.  Life must go on though I guess.  You can’t shut the world down for a couple of weeks and hope that all of this goes away.  You have to deal with it as things come up and do what you can.

I’ve ranted about web ads here quite a bit.  Not that my rants have any affect on what people produce, but I can’t believe some of the garbage that is cranked out and passed off for advertising.

While I have personally noticed a reduction in the total number of annoyance ads that either pop-up, pop-under, or float over a page that I’m viewing I have noticed an increase in the text based ads.  Usually they are pretty simple with a small image, some basic text and a short link.

My beef with them is that they are just as annoying as the other types of ads.  The one that I’m seeing all the time is the “Jiggly Fat” one.  It makes my kids laugh, but I think that it’s just plain stupid (sorry that’s a “Naughty” word in our house) just plain “lame”.

Then again, maybe I do have a bunch of “Jiggly Fat” that I need to lose and the agency that produced these ads have developed technology to only display it to people like me who really need to lose said “Jiggly Fat”, but I know for a fact that I don’t need a “Colon Cleanser”.  One Colonoscopy per lifetime is enough thank you very much.