Truly Unusual

      This week has been an experience. So as you know, I started the new job this week. Doing security for an apartment complex, or in this case a condo complex, is quite a bit different than working for a large aero-space company. It's defiantly much more active, which is why a couple of former co-workers said I was crazy for making the change. Here is the thing though, I got my "G" license to use it and make more money as a result of it, and the more money part is a much needed part of it. I could have sat back and more than likely eventually became the supervisor of one or maybe even both of the sites I was working at, but I would have still been making less there as a supervisor as I am currently as a security officer.

     I've been getting the lay of the land this week and will start enforcing rules a little more as the next couple of weeks come along. Really there isn't much that I've seen that I need to enforce. I was told that the weekends would be the most active of the days and from a sense that was true, but not quite the weekend day that I had expected. I was thinking Friday and Saturday nights would be the most active, it turned out that last night, Sunday was a bit wild. I should give a little background for the property. Once upon a time my brother lived there briefly and I would go on the weekends and swim in one of the pools, so I know the property pretty well. maybe 10 years after that time, it became a pretty bad area. The owners at that time let it fall into disrepair and allowed a lot of bad elements in. It became a sort of blight in the area; murders, drug dealing, rapes, burglary. The current owners cleaned it up, put a little money into it and are continuing to weed out the bad seeds. The history that it had, still reigns over it and there are some things that will continue to improve. One of those things was why I am there now as opposed to the former security officer. He and a police officer ended up shooting a tenant. I do not no the final results, but from what I've heard from tenants, I don't think they killed the person. Reason I believe that is, that I was told that one of the stray cats in the area had the tip of it's tail shot off. Bad aim means that suspect more than likely lived. This was an isolated incident when it comes to something that extreme and there were other incidents with the SO that made them want to move him to another site. All of this is why they wanted me kitted out to look like I'm going on a tactical raid. It was even pointed out to me by a few of the tenants when they saw me.

     I've done things quite a bit different than the last SO and I'm getting a lot of feedback from the tenants on how they like what I'm doing. I walk a lot. I can tell you that in the last week I've averaged 25,000 steps each day. That is about 7 miles each day. My goal is to be an active presence in the community and by doing that becoming and active deterrent to anything going on. I'm being told that it is working, but I can't trust that word on only 1 week of work. Time will tell if I'm truly doing the right thing.

       Back to Sunday night now. There were only 2 big events but they were quite the doozies. The first was a commotion over a handicap parking spot. One tenant accused the other of falsifying their temporary handicap tag, and then proceeded to park illegally next to the handicap space pinning the car in without access to the driver side door. I attempted to get the one tenant to move their car and they yelled and argued and then we went to the other tenant. They asked If I wanted to see all their documents and I did, because if I didn't verify than I wouldn't be doing my job. I checked all their documents and verified that their tag was authentic and that they were rightfully parked in the space. The other tenant begrudgingly accepted the result and moved their car with a lot of shall we say "fanfare". The tenant that was rightfully parked called the police which I told her she should do, just so that we could have an official response.They showed up just as the other tenant was angrily walking back to their unit. The police talked with us and I explained the situation in detail, they agreed with us and then had a quick word with the other tenant. Situation was almost calmly resolved. I did have to get in between them at one point as one tenant lunged at the other one. I do think it was more of a show rather than a real attempt to attack. One of those "you better hold me back" moments, which I did. I told both of the tenants at separate times that I was going to make sure I patrolled the area a bit more often than usual just to keep the peace and everyone calmed down. The overall problem is that there are 3 handicap people in that one building and only 1 space. That breaks it down to a first come first serve situation, and the angry tenant had free range over that spot for a long time and now they have to sort of fight for it, and they are unhappy. I told them that I understood their anger and frustration, but it is an unfortunate event and they will have to try to get to the spot earlier than they have been in order to have it. I wrote my report and mentioned the lack of needed handicap spaces, but the management is within their rights with having the required amount of handicap spaces on the property. 

     Ok, second incident of the night. As I was walking past one of the buildings a tenant I had met earlier in the week came out and caught my attention. They told me that there was a squatter hanging out in one of the units on another building and that I should check it out. I walked around and attempted to knock on the door and even tried the door, but there was no answer and the door was secure. I then noticed that the blinds were moving as if from a fan, so it showed signs of someone being in there. I contacted my chief to ask for his advice on how to approach further and he told me to put it in my report and get with building management the next day. I did that and then did a little more investigating and checked the back of the window to see if I could see lights in that unit, I didn't see any, but I did find a missing AC unit in a different unit which would allow access into it. I also found a footprint underneath that hole, so I added it to my list of potential squatter sites. Since I wasn't told about that unit I couldn't check it as I did the other one. I'm security and not police so I just can't try to gain access to a unit without a strong reasons, and speculation isn't strong enough. I can only observe and report at that point, which is what I did.

     All in all, if that is the worst of the situations I get involved in there, then I'm going to be just fine. I'm sure the future has more in store for me though.

      Oh, I can also tell you that it is a very odd thing to have a gun strapped to your hip as you are talking to law enforcement. I don't know if that will every seem normal to me. I guess that is all me sense of people needing to be trained and licensed to own a firearm. It always stuns people when I tell them I'm not a 2nd amendment guy. I truly believe there needs to be restrictions on who can own and how you get a gun.

     Ok, it's time for Favorite Song of the Week. I've been going back and listening to my current favorite band and just have bee overly drawn to this song off their last album. It is of course Twenty One Pilots, and this song is such a groove. I'm just going to get on with it and present to you Twenty One Pilots with their song, Bounce Man". 

     That's all I got for today. Have to get ready soon and I still have clothes to dry. Have a wonderful week. Peace in and goodnight.

A New Chapter Begins

      One era is over and a new one is about to begin. I finished up my final shift with the former company on Sunday and then went in today to return my uniforms. I start the new job tomorrow. I'll be working 7 days a week for the time being. I was told to give them advanced notice to when I was beginning to get tired. I'm going to shoot for going through the month of January at the least, just so I can catch up on things. I'll be working 8 hour shifts but they will change every couple of days or so. It seems that for the majority of the week days I'll be going in at around noon and leaving at 8, then on the weekends I'll start a little later since those are what are going to be called the busy hours. This is an apartment complex, so you would expect most of the activity to happen on the weekends when people are generally off work, hence the later hours on those days, but that schedule could change every two weeks or so. I say two weeks since that is the current schedule I have, it is for the next two weeks.

     I'm looking forward to this new experience. I've been preparing and almost have everything I need, but the fundamentals are in place: firearm. duty belt, holster, tactical vest, badge, first aid kit, as well as a few other things. Still have a few things to get, but they can wait and aren't quite as important as the stuff above. I did have to trouble shoot something this morning. I was going through a routine with my firearm in what I have planned for my daily, well routine. I had a magazine loaded, placed in the gun, racked the slide then holstered my gun. I did what is referred to as an administrative unload, which is taking the magazine out of the gun while it is in the holster. I then put the magazine in a spare mag holder, drew my gun and attempted to eject the chambered round. My slide had become stuck and I had no idea what was going on. It was clearly the cartridge in the barrel, but I had no way of removing it. The first thought was take it to a gunsmith to get it taken care of, but since everyone is observing the new year today, that option was out, so online I went. Found a few different internet ideas, one of the worst one being, just fire the round and see if it ejects with the slide goes back to slide lock. Yeah, that wasn't happening. Second worst but not as bad, was bang the slide trying to avoid the front of the barrel on a piece of wood until it knocked the slide back. That is just some redneck science right there. The option I went with seemed the safest and most reasonable, which was to just use as much physical force to pull the slide back into slide lock to eject the cartridge. With a mighty effort it worked. The cartridge still didn't fully eject but I was able to pull it out. I then checked that cartridge with others that I have and even though they are both 9mm lugar and 147 grain, they are very different. I then pulled the slide off and took the barrel out so I could see just what was going on. I took the new cartridge and slid it in the barrel and there was a little play, which is what I expected, the one that was jammed slid in, but was very tight and took a little effort to remove form the barrel. I then put the cartridges side by side and the stuck one had a much bigger bullet and the casing was just the slightest bit wider. Now there is a chance that it would fire and extract with the force of the gases and spring on recoil, but I can't take that chance, so I immediately unloaded the magazine and placed all those rounds back in their respective box. I will use the ones that I know will cycle through the weapon. I don't need a potential malfunction when it comes to my life or protecting someone else's. The goal is still never draw my weapon in defense, but in the event that I do, I need to know that it will works as intended.

      Ok, on to stuff that isn't work related. I received a few comments on the last post, and as always they are greatly appreciated, but sometimes I have no idea who they are from, so I'm going to give a little tutorial on how you can put your name in, or some other identifying monicker. When you hit on the comment bar, it will open the area for you to write the comment and also a little pull down window that has Comment as next to it. If you hit that tab it will open options for Google account, Default setting of Anonymous, and Name/URL. Now it used to use the your google account information if you were signed in, but it no longer does that and I have no idea how to get it to work. The anonymous is what we are trying to avoid so that just leaves Name/URL. This one isn't as daunting as it seems, that is the one I use to leave my name as Counterfeitsquirrel. Simply click on that one and type what of identifier you want, just ignore the URL line and write in a name. It doesn't have to be your own name, but please leave something that I might know you by. Like I said I really appreciate the comments, but it's always better when you actually know who they are from. Of course I do have one friend who always leaves little easter egg type of language so I always know why they are. You know who you are kiddo, so they can just keep on keeping on. I really do wish it were easier, but that is the best I can do to help out.

     Oh, just a reminder of just how lame my life is now. I spent New Year's Eve building the lower half of a new gun. I think I mentioned that I was going to build a gun, mostly so I can have the experience of doing it. I have no plans for this other than it being a range weapon. Just cause I built it, well especially because I built it, I don't plan on using it for a home defense weapon. I got real lucky around black friday and found everything I needed for what is referred to as a complete lower receiver, by getting it in pieces and an absurdly reduced price. Mind you, I bought this before all these crazy bills began hitting out of no where. It was a bit of a struggle to build since the videos I was watching, although  really informative, they could have done two things much much better, and that is camera angles and giving full explanations of exactly what they were doing. I think it was more of a case of them knowing very well what they are doing that they don't realize that the majority of the people watching have no clue what they are talking about. With that being said, after completing this part of it, if I ever do it again I can do it without the video help and do it much faster than I did this first time. I guess the hidden blessing in the videos not being incredibly thorough, was that I had to do quite a bit of trial and error, which can sometimes be a better teacher than actual instruction. The other reason I'm doing this is so that I have a better understating of the weapons that I'm using for my own job. By building a gun I know every part of it rather than just knowing how to field strip it for cleaning. You know those scenes in movies were people are blind folded and they strip a gun down and then put it back together. Well, I won't be able to do that, but I can strip it all the way down to a full disassembly and be able to put it back together. That goes far beyond field stripping.

     Ok, I feel like I'm rambling on about things that will probably bore you to tears so here is a picture of my puppies waiting for me to finish burgers today.

     No, The Chonk is not dead, he just simply knows that it all takes time and I will eventually give him something to eat, he just wants to be in exactly were I have to step in order to make sure he is there to receive said food item. Oh, and Morty always looks like he is guilty when food is involved, and Ri Ri is just Ri Ri.

     Ok, that's it for today. I still have no idea why I still have internet, but as long as I do I'll be able to write and update you. The next couple of weeks should change my financial situation so everything should get back to some sort of normalcy, hopefully. Until next week, peace in and goodnight.