Michelle and I have been living in Hiawassee for over a month now. We moved from Kennesaw on March 27, and I started with the Towns County Sheriff’s Office on March 30. I started out riding with another officer on day shift (6:00 am to 6:00 pm). Once they figured out that I knew what I was doing, they put me out on my own. I stayed on day shift for a couple of weeks until an incident occurred on night shift that left two officers on administrative leave. Once the GBI completes their investigation I’ll be able to say more. In the mean time, I’m working night shift to help cover the beats.

It’s nice though. I use to get terrible headaches everyday and I lived on migraine medicine. Since moving back to Hiawassee, I haven’t had any bad headaches. That either means that the headaches were stress induced, or the tumor that was causing them miraculously disappeared. It’s also been greet to be able to stop at home and eat with Michelle or stop at my parent’s house for coffee.

There are some drawbacks to moving back to Hiawassee though. I took a 50% pay cut. This blow was softened with a take home car, a county cell phone, and a free house (provided by Michelle’s grandmother, not the county). It’s also difficult to police in the town you grew up in. I’ve had to arrest a former classmate, and I know most people I pull over. If I don’t know the people I come across at work, then they either know me or my family. I’ll be talking to someone, and they’ll suddenly say, “Are you Stephen Smith’s son? He taught me algebra when I was in high school. He was the best teacher I ever had, and the best thing to happen to the school.” It’s hard to write a ticket to someone after they say something like that, but I manage anyway.

A thunderstorm rolled through Marietta on February 18th. I happened to be sitting in the parking lot of Holy Family Catholic Church working on a report. When the sky started to fill with clouds and lightning, I pulled out my Sony Cyber-shot H9. I hoped to get pictures of the lightning itself, but that didn’t happen. Instead, I changed the shutter speed to 30 seconds and sat the camera on the roof of my car. Here’s three of the pictures that came out well. Holy Family has a great cross in the front of the parking lot that made for a great focal point.

I responded to a report of an accident with injuries one afternoon. When I arrived, I found this Honda wrapped around a telephone poll. The teenage driver was miraculously not injured. The telephone poll snapped in half, and the top half came to rest feet from the car, still standing. It took the EMC hours to fix the problem.

On February 23rd I had an interview with the Towns County Sheriff’s Office. It went very well. I wasn’t promised a position, but the lieutenant said that he would hire me on the spot if it was up to him. They’re supposed to have a position opening this month, and hopefully I will fill that position.

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On February 28th, I was dispatched to a call where a 24 year old male had fallen unconscious and stopped breathing. One of his friends, Friend 1, called 911. The other friend, Friend 2, started CPR. I had been at a coffee shop nearby when the call went out, so I arrived quickly. Typically, the fire department arrives at medical calls before the police do. They’re usually dispatched first, and they are usually on scene doing what they can do before I ever roll up. When I pulled into the subdivision, I heard the fire truck behind me. I pulled up to the house and Friend 1 ran outside. I took the stairs to the front door three at a time and ran in the house. The Friend 2 jumped up and ran to me, telling me what happened. I’m not sure what he said, because I immediately took his position on the floor next to his dying friend. His face was deep blue. I started with chest compressions. After 100 compressions, the man took a breath. At that time, the fire department came in with all of their medical equipment. I did 30 more compressions and he took another breath. The FD checked for a pulse and found one. He still wasn’t breathing well, so they began pumping air into him and monitoring his pulse.

I caught my breath and went to talk with Friend 1 and 2. They said that they hadn’t seen their friend in a couple of weeks. He came by the house today randomly. His lips were blue when they answered the door, and he asked for a cigarette. After he put the cigarette in his mouth, he passed out and the rest of his face turned blue. They said that he was a heavy drug user, but they weren’t sure if he was on anything at the time. While the FD started an IV, I searched his pockets, but didn’t find anything that would have killed him. I asked dispatch to have a detective call me, and I started searching his car for any clues.

The ambulance pulled up while I was searching the car and brought a stretcher to the stairs. I spoke with the detective and told him what was going on. He said he would notify the family, and asked that I call him if there were any major changes in his condition. By the time I finished speaking with the detective, I saw the paramedics wheeling the stretcher back to the ambulance, but there was noticeable lack of a body on it. I went back into the house and the dead guy was standing up, rubbing his chest and scratching his head. I went back outside and called the detective. Once I convinced the detective that I wasn’t joking, the fire captain came outside and told me that the guy was refusing to go to the hospital. Unfortunately, we can’t force someone to go to the hospital unless a doctor or judge orders it. The fire captain called Kennestone Hospital and spoke with a doctor while I went inside to talk to the no-longer-dead-guy.

He told me that he felt fine, and didn’t need to go to the hospital. We tried to explain to him that whatever he had taken that killed him was still in his system. When the medicine from the IV and whatever shots they gave him wore off, he would likely die again. He continued to assure us that he was fine and didn’t need to go to the hospital. The captain came in and said that the doctor said that he would order the committal. When faced with a three day committal, or a voluntary visit to the hospital, the no-longer-dead-guy chose to walk to the ambulance.

The fire captain told me that it was because of my effort with the CPR that the man lived. He later emailed my lieutenant, informing him of the work I did.

When I left the scene, one of the first thoughts I had was, “This would make a great Facebook status update.” So I updated my Facebook status to say, “Paul just brought someone back from the dead. CPR works wonders.”

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Since then, I’ve had a great excuse for getting out of chores I don’t want to do. I simply hold out my hands and tell Michelle, “Honey, these hands give life. They don’t do dishes.” When she presses me further to do the dishes, I again hold out my hands as if in awe of them and say, “Honey, these hands give life. They can take life too.” She laughs at me and I end up doing the dishes anyway.

Michelle and I purchased our iPhones when Apple released the 3G model in July of ‘08. It is hands down, the best gadget I have ever owned. Shortly after the new year, I noticed that there was a stuck pixel on my iPhone’s screen. The pixel would always be the opposite color of whatever it was supposed to be. Shortly after I noticed that pixel, I noticed another that was stuck.

I called the nearest Apple store and made an appointment to meet with someone to discuss my pixel issue. The next day Michelle and I went to a very crowded Apple store and looked at all of the beautiful electronics until my name was called. I showed the Apple employee my phone and told him about the problems. He also pointed out some dust that had apparently gotten under the glass screen. He said he needed to talk to someone else about it, then went into the back room. A few minutes later he came back out with a small box. Inside that box was a brand new iPhone. He slid a piece of paper in front of me, and I initialed twice and signed twice. He then handed me my new phone and wished me a happy day. 

Michelle was a little annoyed that my phone was now newer  and shinier than hers, but I she got over it. I, too, quickly got over the excitement when the screen stopped responding the next day. I thought that maybe the phone was just frozen. (iPhones aren’t perfect, they freeze on occasion and have to be rebooted.) I pressed the sleep button on the top of the phone, and instead of the screen turning black, it turned white. I did a hard reset (turned it all of the way off, then let it reboot) and that seemed to fix the problem. Until the next day. Apparently it was a reoccurring problem, and no matter how many reboots I performed, the issue remained. At times I was even unable to turn the phone off. So I called Apple support. They suggested that I restore the phone to factory conditions to see if the problem still persisted. When I plugged the phone into my computer, iTunes did not recognize that anything was plugged in. After more troubleshooting with Apple support, I finally got the phone to be recognized and restored. 

As soon as the phone booted up, it locked up and turned white. Apple support determined that it was a hardware problem, and suggested I take it to an Apple store to have it replaced. So, I made another appointment at an Apple store to meet, once again, to have my phone replaced. Michelle and I arrived 15 minutes late for my appointment. If we had arrived one minute earlier, they would have seen me right then and there. Unfortunately, due to the high volume of traffic in the stores, I was placed on standby until a space opened up. We played with the computers for about 30 minutes until someone else missed an appointment. I handed the phone to an employee. He went into the back room and brought out another brand new iPhone. I initialed and signed twice more, and walked out of the store with another new phone.

This phone, fortunately, has not caused me any problems. Until I dropped it in a cup of coffee a week ago. I was sitting in the living room playing on the phone and drinking a cup of coffee (brewed with my Keurig coffee maker). Somehow, (no thanks to gravity) I dropped the phone into the coffee. It fell top end first into a half empty* cup. The music immediately stopped playing (I cussed profusely), but the screen did not seem affected. I quickly dried it off,  turned off the power, and took out the SIM card. I had been saving all of the silica gel beads I could find for just an occasion. I emptied the beads into a tupperware container and tossed in the phone. After a while I took the phone out and used a cotton swab to dry out the earphone jack and the SIM card slot as much as possible. Apple places a small piece of paper in the bottom of the earphone jack that is white, until it gets wet, at which point it turns red. This way when someone brings in a broken phone, they can look to see if it had been dropped in the toilet, or a cup of coffee. Amazingly, the water sensor was still white. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, the speaker was still not working. The phone went back into the silica gel beads while I scoured the internet for solutions. Most forums suggested using compressed air or a hair dryer. One person said he put his in the oven. Since I didn’t have any compressed air, and I didn’t want to bake my phone, I tried a hair dryer. 

The phone worked fine, other than the speaker issue. I couldn’t hear anybody on the phone, so I grabbed my bluetooth headset and went to work. After using the headset a couple of times to make and receive phone calls, the speaker miraculously began working again. 

And I lived happily ever after.

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* I’m not a pessimist. I see the cup as half full if it’s in the process of being filled, and half empty if it’s in the process of being emptied. If I were to come across a random container filled/emptied to the mid-point, I would just say it’s half.

The picture above was slightly time consuming. There’s the large iPhone, which has this page displayed on it. The iPhone in the iPhone also has this page displayed, as well as the one inside of it (even if you can’t see it). The things I do to entertain myself…