A Blog Entry About Nothing

My wife has told me several times that I should write more in my blog. Usually it doesn’t really work that way for me. Usually in order for me to write something in my blog, it has to be something that I have some sort of feelings about…something that means something to me, interests me or something that moves me. I just don’t want to write any old thing and have you waste your time reading it. That would be nothing more than writing and reading blah blah blah blah blah. So this morning I woke up, to a cold windy day, with a few snow flurries flying around outside. I asked myself…. self what would you like to write about in my blog today? What could I share with everyone out there that visits my blog. Nothing came to my mind at all…maybe it was a case of writers block…I just don’t know. All I do know is that there was a blank emptiness in my head. I decided to go ahead and take a shower and maybe something to write about would come to mind. And while I was washing my hair, a light bulb came on and I had an idea. Please understand that when my light bulb turns on, at most it is pushing out 40 watts, about 465 lumens of light, and that is on my best day, while others are easily pushing 100 watts, about 1480-1600 lumens of light, on their worst day. With that being said, I decided to make a blog entry about nothing. That’s right nothing….nada…zero…zippo….the big goose egg. I decided to respectfully plagiarize an old Seinfeld show from 1992…The Pitch…the one where George thinks he can write a show for the NBC producers and the show is about nothing. So here it is…nothing fancy, nothing eloquent, nothing deep…just plain nothing at all. Thank you for sticking around this long to read this blog entry about nothing. Hopefully tomorrow I will have a better idea of a topic to write about. And if I do, wouldn’t that be something!!!

Verizon Strikes Again

This morning I got on my computer and found it to be running real slow and then I totally lost my internet connection. I spent the next 4 1/2 hours being bounced around to different people at Verizon. Of course I had to go visit a few foreign countries and of course I had to ask them "could you please repeat that" numerous times before I was bounced back to the USA. What I found out was that there was a glitch in their system and/or someone at Verizon put in a work order on 2/24, to cut my internet connection, which took place today. It all depended on who I spoke to, as far as the reason for me getting shut off. As it stands now, it might be a week until I get my internet service back. I am currently typing this on my Dads computer. I did manage to accomplish a couple of things by having my internet service turned off. I will be getting 3 months of internet service free. My overall bill for the internet/telephone bundled package will be approximately $20 cheaper than it is now..of course this is after my 3 months of free usage. And last but not least, after 31 days of my new internet service starting, I will be receiving a pre-paid bank card in the sum of $100.00
Of course I will probably have to call Verizon repeatedly to get what they promised me. I must admit that I was at wits end talking to these people and getting bounced all over the place. There were several times that I called a certain number and after waiting in the secondary que ,before actually moving into the "real" que, that darn automated synthetic human computer voice told me that "all of our service agents are busy answering other calls and that due to especially high volume of calls, we are unable to answer your call at this time...please call again later"....click! Of course there were numerous statements like..."your call is important to us" and " we are sorry for your inconvenience"...the usual song and dance. The bottom line is that I won't be doing any blog entries until I can get my internet connection restored. I just want to let you know that your patronage of my blog is important to me...that all of my fingers are busy doing other things at this time and that due to the extremely low action of my internet connection, could you please return to my blog at a later date. I am sorry for this inconvenience.....click! Sound familiar???

My Days At A Public Defenders Program

Back in the 1990s, I spent about 8-9 years working for the New Hampshire Public Defenders Program as an Investigator. I am sure you have heard of this type of program..."if you can't afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you by the court". Well, I was part of that program. In our office, in Manchester NH, we had approximately 20 attorneys. There were approximately 4-5 investigators in our office at any given time. The attorneys were divided up amongst the investigators in the office so we each had 4-5 attorneys that we worked directly with. Our job was to locate and interview witnesses to crimes and victims of crimes, write down all of the info that we obtained from everyone we interviewed, writing up and serving subpoenas amongst other things. The crimes ranged from misdemeanors to felony murder. This job would have me dealing with the full spectrum of humanity and visiting locations that ranged from beautiful homes to crack houses. I excelled at doing the job because of my background but I really struggled with the reason for me doing the work itself. I had a difficult time dealing with the internal conflicts, during my time doing this job. Most of my adult life I was employed doing law enforcement related duties. I started by joining the military and becoming a MP (Military Police) and after leaving the military, I joined a police department at a mid west university. I had always been a "cuff'm and stuff'm" type of person. I prided myself in catching the bad guy, making an arrest and taking them to jail. I truly enjoyed the chess match of a good interview, especially ones that lead to a confession. Now I was performing a job that had the completely opposite effect and possible legal outcome. Most of our clients, I would guess about 99% of them, were guilty. I did my job well but I continued to struggled with my own personal moral and ethical feelings about what I was doing and why I was doing it. I really had a very hard time dealing with the fact that even though the client might be guilty, it was my job to try to help him/her get the charges dropped, lowered or some type of agreement made between the prosecutor and our clients attorney. As the days and years dragged by, my mental and emotional conflicts increased. I still did my job as best as I could and I used excuses to reconcile the conflicts that I felt inside. I told myself that although approximately 99% of our clients were guilty of the crimes that they were charged with, that I was really doing my job for the other 1% that might actually be innocent. The innocent were few and far between but I had to do the best job I could so that an innocent person did not go to jail. As time went on, I had to somehow find ways...rationalize and talk myself into continuing to do the job that I was hired to do. To be honest, I hated the job itself and it went against everything that I believed in. I would have been much happier doing work on the "other side of the fence", than where I was. But it did pay the bills and put food on the table and that has to account for something. After approximately 8-9 years of doing that job, I ended up quitting and moving out of state. Believe me...I was so glad when that day came that I could finally release all of those internal conflicts that were associated with that job. Never again.