Things to be afraid of

This weekend was spent hiding from two of the scariest groups known to man: Republicans and Hippies. I don’t know if I could say which one is worse then the other, so I just felt it safer to stay in Queens this weekend (and the rest of the week), and leave Manhattan to them.

Didn’t do much of anything Saturday, it was just too damn hot. Did the needed laundry and cleaning up around the apartment in the morning but other then that I was a slug. Today was a bit more productive however. This morning I went for a walk around forest park (yes, even with the risk of constant tiger attacks). It was a nice little walk. I have only seen the outside of the place but its a good sized park with a golf course and trees and stuff. Then after I got back I went food shopping and checked out the Family Dollar that just opened down the street. I picked up a few things for the apartment that I could use. Nothing too exciting really.

Tomorrow I will be back to playing with drugs. The rest of last week was relatively un-eventful. I had a few more crack cases, and another marihuana or two. Friday was just sort of a catch up day. We didn’t get any new cases just finished up what we had and did the paper work for them. We also spent a good deal of time fixing the mistakes we made on said paperwork, but I think most people are getting the hang of it now. I actually had two cases on Friday that went through the quality control people and that were approved, meaning I could finish sealing them up and return them to the evidence control people. So right now the numbers stand: 8 cases analyzed and completed, and of those 8, 2 approved and done. W00T!

Tomorrow I get more cases, they say they might start increasing our case load to 3 or 4 a day to get us used to what it will be like when we get up “on the bench” doing real work. So stay tuned, I promise that the next post will be way more interesting, it’s just that when I don’t do anything there really isn’t much to write about!

3$ pot »« In the front lines on the war on drugs

In the front lines on the war on drugs

First off W00T! I just fixed my CD player. After dropping it on the subway yesterday and having the cover break off (which had the controls built into it) I was sure it was a goner. But I was able to take it apart here and get it to work again woo hoo!

That being said now back to the drugs. Tuesday, my second day of case work was almost identical to my first. I had an alleged marihuana and an alleged crack cocaine. The alleged marihuana ended up actually being marihuana and, like Monday, the alleged crack was fake. This time instead of soap came back from the GCMS as acetaminophen aka. Tylenol. As Jenn put it “it wont get you high but it’ll cure your headache” hehehe. Then today I got two more cases, again alleged marihuana and alleged crack cocaine. This time the crack was real (finally), but because of the weight that was there I have to submit it to quant to find out how much pure cocaine is in the sample, so that case wont be done till at least tomorrow. The marihuana was an easy one, I’m getting good at those already, and was able to do it in under an hour.

We were also told today that there will be a slight change in the time table for the rest of training. Now we will do three full weeks of this supervised case work before having our mock court. They still plan for us to be up on the bench by the first week of October. Some time this week we get to put down what tours we want (7-3, 8-4, or 10-6) and where we want to sit. I don’t care much where my desk is and am shooting for the 8-4 or at worst the 7-3. Though, sense I am at like the bottom of the seniority list, it is mostly up to fate and luck that I get the tours I want.

Tomorrow will be at least two more cases so hopefully I will get something interesting. Well not too interesting, Tom tells us that there is a tablet case up there with like 1100+ tablets in it. Which can either be a really easy case (1 and done) or a REALLY pain in the ass case if they are all different, or come up as NCS (No Controlled Substance) in which case you have to do WAY more then 1!

Things to be afraid of »« My anti-drug is drugs.

My anti-drug is drugs.

Well today is the day! I got my first two cases! W00T! 4 year of college and two years of trying to get a job and then waiting when I did find one has finally paid off. Look at me with my two cases:

Nifty eh? My first two cases were a vegetative matter case (read: alleged marihuana) and a case with alleged crack cocaine. Because we had to wait on the chemicals we needed to test the marihuana I decided to start on the alleged crack cocaine. I did all the weights and opened the first bag and began with my color tests. The first one came up negative, mind you this is the one that tests for the possible presence of cocaine. So ok, I try the other test and it too is negative. So I call my supervisor over and he takes a look at the case and tells me to try a super scientific procedure that involves a vial and some water resulting in suds. So at this point we are thinking that what I have is not crack but soap packaged up to look like crack. The FTIR soon confirmed this (normally we GC/MS everything that comes up as no controlled substance (NCS) but you can’t really GC/MS soap so FTIR it was). It’s sad really, I mean if you can’t trust crack dealers who can you trust damn it!

Once I finished up with that and went to lunch it was then time for my alleged marihuana case. When I opened the case inside was a little baggie of green plant like material and first off got the weight of the stuff that was there. Then following our standard operating procedure I performed the Duquenois-Levine which is the test we use to detect the possible presence of marihuana. Look at a picture of me doing said test:

Doesn’t that look exciting? Just like on CSI! Anyway, then I looked at my sample under the microscope. I saw the required characteristic hairs and got my supervisor to verify that they were actually there (part of still being in training). At that point I could conclude that marihuana was present in my sample. My first real identification of a controlled substance. Again I say W00T! Granted these are just found property cases so no one will ever go to jail because of them but still its just cool to finally be doing what I spent 4 years of schooling to do!

Tomorrow we will get at least one more case to work on and then work on finishing up the reports and all the paper work for the stuff we have done so far. Whee! My stuff will be easy but some of my poor classmates got some tough first cases. Trial by fire I guess and all that, still better them then me, but I’m sure I’ll get my share as time goes on.

I’m sure there was more I wanted to write but I can’t think of it for now so this will have to do. Enjoy the picts and keep an eye out for more adventures from the crime lab!

In the front lines on the war on drugs »« RIP Red Shoes

RIP Red Shoes

Today is a sad day. I was finally forced to buy my self a new pair of non-red, non-converse sneakers. I have had my red converse shoes for more then a year now (well not the same pair but I have had red ones for more then a year). As much as I loved them they sadly don’t seem to be able to handle the amount of walking that NYC requires. I was wearing this pair for less then six months and already the treads are wearing down and starting to fall apart inside. Sniffle. I replaced them today after my OT at work with a cheap, 20$ pair, of generic sneakers from Payless. I will go back to Cons. again I am sure but for now I need something with a bit more padding and that can handle at least two miles of walking a day.

So that was today in a nutshell. Work and get new shoes. Tomorrow I get to do all sorts of super fun stuff like laundry,shopping, and cleaning the bathroom. Whee.

But Monday will make up for a boring weekend when we get our first case, so thats something to look forward to.

My anti-drug is drugs. »« The “Weight” is over

The “Weight” is over

As you can tell by the cleaver pun I used for a title of this entry we finally took our Weights and Measures exam. I got a 92%, only messing up on two of the weight problems, which given what there was to remember isn’t bad at all. This also was our last written exam. Monday we officially begin our Supervised Case work. Everyone in the class is excited. We will finally be doing what we went to school and through training for. As I said before we will start our first week analyzing �found property�, which is just what it sounds like. Drugs that are found in some way or another or that just don’t have an owner that can be proven. These tend to be small and simple cases that will likely never go to court. They basically save them for us trainees to work on. They have to get analyzed eventually but there really is no rush so we get them to work on. Monday we will get one case to work on for the day and then the idea is we will give a little talk to the class about each of our cases and what we did and why. Should be fun! I also talked to our trainer Tom today and asked him just what I would be ok talking about on here when it comes to the cases I work on. He said that as long as I don’t give any names or other case specific information there should be no problems. So you can look forward to semi-interesting drug related posts in the near future

While we may be starting our supervised casework Monday we are not quite done with training yet. We will have at least a week working with found property and then have our Mock Court day. It is actually sort of like an exam that we have to do decent on to finally pass training. They take one of the cases we did our first week and we have to testify about it in front of a �jurry� (our classmates). There will be a DA, Judge, and Defense attorney (who is usually played by Scott). The defense will cross examine us and we have to be able to field his questions and answer to what we did an why. After that fun experience we have about three weeks where we will be working on Misdemeanor cases (which do have real defendants and a slim chance of going to court). Once we finish that we will be done and �up on the bench� by October 1 as fully fledged Criminalists. Again I say W00T!

So that, in a nutshell, is whats been going on in the exciting world of the NYPD crime lab this week. Though for me the week isn’t quite over yet. I am going in tomorrow for some Saturday overtime. A easy little project of sorting through old cases from like 1988 and pulling out only the class A felony’s to save. Out of a box we are lucky to find 10 of them. It’s kind of pointless but its easy work and I can use the OT so eh. I would just sit on my ass all Saturday anyway, this way I can do it sorting through cases making time and a half.

RIP Red Shoes »« Have to wait for weight

Have to wait for weight

So there is a little delay with our weights and measures exam and we will be having it tomorrow (8-20-04) instead of today. We got another set of problems to work on today which are easier then the ones we got yesterday and are more like the stuff we should expect to see on the test. They were easy, though that was with the SOP and notes, have to wait and see how easy they are tomorrow with nothing but a calculator and my brain. Also at work we have another pointless OT project to work on. Whee! This one involved sorting through boxes of cases from 1988-1989 and pulling out only the A felonies. The rest I guess will be trashed eventually or something. It’s actually not a bad project I guess, better then that stupid rip-and-strip stuff we were doing before. I might even end up coming in this Saturday to work on it. It is supposed to be rainy (Again) and the extra cash is always nice. The best part of the project is seeing hundreds of cases as we sort through them and some of them are unintentional funny. For one the item was listed as “1 vile of suspected crack” (though one of my coworkers pointed out that maybe the crack was it self especially vile or something). But my favorite one was the item description that read “one bag of alleged white powder”. Sure the powder could have been blue or red for all anyone knew but no one bothered to look so it was just allegedly white. Fun stuff.

The “Weight” is over »« T-minus 7 days and counting…

T-minus 7 days and counting…

Rest of the weekend went about as expected. Stayed in Sunday because it was dark and rainy and I really had no place I needed to go. I amused my self in the morning buy cleaning my kitchen and totally re-arranging my food cabinet. I got it into pretty good shape too. Thought it’s a sight that would make the Atkins folk cringe, almost the entire bottom shelf is filled with pastas and rice and other good carb loaded stuff. Mmmmmm. Carbs…..

Rest of day was spent even less productively getting into playing video games on my computer. Whee the exciting NYC life!

One thing worth noting is that while in theory a snake should be a quiet pet she can sure be noisy at times. Saturday night she was moving all around her thank, trying to climb the walls which is always followed by a thunk of her falling back down. Also at some point she decided she was bored with her tank lay out so she started re-arranging stuff. Her cardboard tube was moved from one side of the tank to the other. I guess everyone gets bored with their living rooms from time to time.

I am at work right now. We got two interesting pieces of news today. First that our weights and measures exam is scheduled for either Wednesday or Thursday at the latest (better get studying I guess) and more exciting number two is that we are scheduled to start supervised casework next Monday (8/23/04). W00T! Things are starting to pick up so stay tuned, ideally updates should be coming a bit more often starting soon.

Have to wait for weight »« some random rants

some random rants

It’s the weekend. Whee! Or something like that.
The lack of updates this past week is simply due to nothing very interesting happening. So rather then bore you with short pointless posts everyday you can get one BIG pointless post and you will be all caught up.

In training this week we have still been working on the Weights and Measures section. The theory goes that the NYPD has set down certain criteria for what to weight and how much of a certain drug we have to analyze depending on what it is, how they got it and how much the weight is. Sounds good in theory. It’s supposed to save us work and time eventually. Right now it is just making us homicidal/suicidal. It starts out simple, get the weight of what yah got and then look and see what yah have to do with it depending on the weight. The idea is to find the highest charge for the DA. But then it starts getting complicated with how you have to number the different items and label them on your paper work. Then god-forbid you have more then one item, then it can get confusing. Not to mention that each drug has a different set of charges and an almost totally different weighing method, as in say the case of Marihuana. So yah, needless to say its been a load of fun. What did help some was when we got “cases” to analyze mid-week. They were tic-tac’s. We had to weight them and count/figure how many to analyze depending on what they were supposed to be in each case.

See! Doesn’t that all sound uber exciting? Just like on CSI. Right….

Tiger escapes this week are down from 1 two weeks ago to 0 this week but that number can climb at any minute! I am always on guard. Had a close run in with a squirrel walking back to my apartment from dropping off my laundry but he veered off at the last minute before things got ugly.

So I have come to the conclusion that all I would need to be quite well off money wise right now is $60,000. That would pay off my student loans with just enough left over to pay off my credit card. See I’m not greedy. Sure $1,000,000 (or more) would be nice but its more then I need right now. I figure it’s more realistic to wish for a smaller more manageable amount then the big money. Sure $60,000 is quite a lot of money for about 99% of the population but for that 1% that its not its pocket change. They spend that much on a mid-priced dinner. They wont miss it and it will go to a good cause, paying my student loans so I can focus more time and energy on the ever important war against drugs with out worrying as much about paying stuff off. I promise not to squander it on new toys or anything like that! Heck you don’t even have to send ME the money. You can send it to the credit card and loan people for me! So what do you say Mr. Trump or Mr. Gates?

Speaking of focusing on science stuff it some times amazes me that what I know is so much more then a majority of the average American people (yah I know that isn’t saying much talking about Americans but I don’t know many people outside the USA so I will stick to bashing my own country for now.)
Anyway, I just am amazed some times how much bad/wrong/and just silly science information is floating around out there. I should start a page correcting it but i don’t think there is enough room on the Internet for the size said page would have to be. Maybe for a start Myth Busters on Discovery should become required watching, that might help a little. No your cellphone wont blow up the gas station, nor will having a tongue stud (or any internal metal) make you more likely to be hit by lightning, yes, we EVOLVED from little things into bigger ones, I have no problems believing I am descended from a monkey, hell some days I embrace it! Also bring back Mr. Wizard damn it. He may of hated those kids but he made them learn by God! I am probably coming off sounding like a condescending know-it-all at the moment. I don’t claim to know it all…..just more then most people hehehehe. That and I had to vent so you lucky readers get to listen to it. Unless you got bored by my second paragraph and have surfed over to some dancing hamster page or that one with the badgers and mushrooms or something. Your loss.

I guess thats enough ranting for now. Now back to what I plan to do all weekend which is nothing. Well I did do some stuff today, laundry and bought food (and a book at a tag sale “The Tao of Pooh” for a 1$.) I had pilfered it from Meg but had to give it back so when I saw it today I thought it was a good sign. Plus it’s a cool book. Then tonight I made this turkey chili which came out alright I guess. Not as good as the stuff I usually make which is truly unfortunate seeing as with how much I have I will be eating it all weekend. Ah well. So it goes.

I am sure something more interesting must of happened to me this week but I will be damed if I can think of it. Me and a few guys from work were supposed to see Alien Vs. Predator Friday after work but it was sold out. Sad! Though we will try again Monday. Oh yah I looks like they are opening a “Family Dollar” just a little ways down from where I live. Sure NYC has enough dollar/0.99c stores, but family dollar tends to be the more classy of the “everything for a dollar” places. Woot!
Ok, now I really am just rambeling so I shall go. I’ll try and update again sooner then a week but my life really isn’t that exciting

T-minus 7 days and counting… »« Weekend re-cap…

Weekend re-cap…

Well it’s Monday. Whee! So far it hasn’t been so bad, as Mondays go. I went back home to Connecticut this past weekend so I was a little more active then I am most weekends, and hence a little more tired today I normally am, even on a Monday. However I was quite productive this weekend back home so it was more then worth it.

As some of you may know from reading past entries this past Saturday was the Barnett book tent sale. This is an event that we plan our summer around to a point so we can be sure to be around and have the morning off for the sale. In past years we have done alright book wise, you never know what you will find there from year to year. This year though I made out quite well. Ended up spending 18$ outside (and for those of you bad at math that translates into 18 books). I got a nice mix of things from uber expensive computer books to some cool/strange novel type stuff that will be good to read at work. The computer ones were a real nice find, I got a few on web design and coding (that normally retail anywhere from 30-50$). Then we went inside the outlet store and I was able to find a few other books, cost more then a 1$ but still were cheep and worth it. The most interesting one I picked up was “The complete idiots guide to world religions”. I’ve always been interested in learning more about the differences between all the major religions, and for 6$ I figured it was worth it.

After the book sale I went out and did some shopping, bought some bulk food from BJ’s club for back home and some other odds and ends I needed (including stuff for Nippy’s tank, more on that later). Saturday night I drove down to New Haven to see Valerie for her Birthday. I took her out to eat and then we went to a movie. Saw cat woman. Yah. It wasn’t THAT bad I guess but wasn’t a great movie by any means either. In between food and the movies we had time to kill and she wanted to stop in Linens and Things and look around. A very bad idea for me because I saw about a hundred things I wanted for my apartment. Even with my self restraint I still didn’t get out of there with out spending more money then I should of. Not that they were totally pointless purchases exactly…but they weren’t exactly essential either. I got a nice king size fleece blanket which I actually sort of needed, and seeing as it was only 10$ it was a bargain. I also got a machine that you put water in and it simulates rain with lights and colors and your choice of 6 relaxing sounds. Totally frivolous but something I have always wanted so what the hell. We also stopped into Toys R Us so Valerie could get something for her baby and I made yet another pointless purchase. This time it was a stuffed brown bear with a trout in its mouth. But when you press his paw he makes bear sounds and the fish flops around. Best of all this wonder of technology was on clearance for only 5.99$ (marked down from 24.99$). So of course I had to have it. It now has a place of honor in my living room with my turkey, Mr. Potato head, and Tiki God.

The trip back to NYC was mostly un-eventful. We stopped at Trader Joes and I got a few more food items (as well as a cool Middle Eastern Meal kit for lunch today). Last night was spent putting stuff away and doing a little cleaning. Nippy also got a nice clean tank. I changed her bedding while she was in her feeding tub. She was a touch disoriented when I put her back in there though. The whole tank smelled different from what she remembered so as far as she knew it was a totally new place she had never been before.

Anyway so that was my weekend in a nut shell. Well a very long nut shell at this point but still. Now everyone is updated on my exciting weekend! And from what I have been told everyone is more people then I thought. Apparently there are quite a few of you that read this thing so I hope all this hasn’t been too boring for you all. I’ll try and post some more interesting stuff later, I swear.

some random rants »« Oral exam take two…

Oral exam take two…

I re-took the oral exam today after the required 72 hours of remediation. I passed it with no problems, which I would have done the first time if I didn’t make that stupid mistake. Anyway, so yah, oral passed and over with. Yay! Now I can focus all my attention to the weights and measures section, joy! We have some in class problems we have been working on, which I may have totally butchered, but think I did right. I guess I will find out when we go over them in lecture.

Oh goodie, I just got asked to stay OT today. Will probably take it as cash sense I have quite a bit of time already, it’s only two hours though so I’ll have to wait and see.

Weekend re-cap… »« Tiger

Tiger

Yesterday when I was on my way home from my walk to CVS I herd a lot of police sirens coming from around Myrtle ave. It being NYC I didn’t pay much attention to them at the time, but did notice that there seemed to be a lot of them. With the highway right near there thought I thought some accident or fire or something probably. Well this morning I am watching the news and see this story: Tiger Escapes from Circus. Well I guess I now know what all the fuss was about. Living in NYC there are plenty of things to concern ones self with but until today the chance of being eaten by a tiger while walking around my neighborhood was never very high on my list.

I guess I need a new list.

Oral exam take two… »« You are not your fucking khakis