Feelin' a Little Up Town

Talk about some awesome upgrades.

Last week we had our radio guys come in and do a complete overhaul upgrade on our radio systems here in dispatch. So we have completely new radios in our back room.

Today, I came into work to find all new mouse pads...if you had seen how dirty nasty our old ones were, you would understand why I'm so excited about this.

Then our radio guru came in and gave us brand new back up scanners that we can...wait for it...PAGE OUT ON!!! Ok, I know, this is probably all Greek to you but let me try to explain. When our main radios go down (usually because of updates being done) we have to talk to our officers and fire departments on our little backup scanners. It's like going back to the stone age for us. And then, if we have to page out fire or ambulance, we have to use this funky little device that hooks up to the scanners, type in a code, hope that it tones out, and then talk. (Side note, definition of paging: when we want to dispatch fire or ambulance, we have to hit that station's page button which sends out a special tone that tells responders for that station to listen up, they're about to get dispatched out.) Well, with these new scanners, the paging tones are programmed into it. All we have to do is hit a button, select the station to be paged, it the button again, and then talk. It's very exciting!

Oh, and our boss also ordered new chairs for us. Our current chairs get used literally 24/7, and they are so worn down. The one I'm currently sitting it constantly rocks back and forth because the lever that controls that particular function is broken. We have duct tape wrapped around both arms on both chairs because they are so torn up. And did I mention that by the end of your 12 hour shift, you're back is constantly crying at you? The chairs our boss ordered are expensive and very fancy...they should be here in 6 weeks...I'm thinking about making a countdown ticker just because I'm so excited.

So yeah, I'm feeling pretty fancy right now.