Talk about a long, unproductive week. Part of my duties are to perform background checks on new employee applications. I had planned on spending this past week catching up on the little things I’d been putting off while I was busy with the Citizen’s Law Enforcement Academy and week-long Field Training Officer class. Last thursday, I had ten applications dropped on my desk- so much for my slack week. Background checks take some time, as I’ve got to make contact with references and old employers as well as dig into criminal and driver’s histories, as well as law enforcement history. So, I spent the entire week doing that, as well as other things that crossed my desk, instead of what I’d had planned. Fine, except that Thursday I found out- we don’t have any openings. I just wasted my entire week.
Then there’s the current salary/budget controversy. Over the summer, the county hired a consultant to do a salary study, comparing what each employee did as part of his job and what he was paid for it with similar jobs and pay rates at comparable agencies. As every county employee suspected, the study said we were grossly underpaid for the job we do. The county commissioners said ok, we’ll accept their salary recommendations- but that means we can’t increase your budgets for personnel and equipment. That puts us in a tight spot, as we have to roughly double the size of the Sheriff’s Office in the next five years. The other unhappy point was that while everyone will go up to the new minimum pay for their position, those folks on probation- as new hires, or newly promoted- will have to wait until their anniversary date to receive their raise. On the plus side of that, they’ll go up to their midpoint rather than the minimum. In my case, that could be quite a substantial jump. So, considering my anniversary for Sergeant will be the end of February, I think I can live with waiting.
To top it off, Kublai has been sick all weekend. He threw up about six times last night, and about as many today. He doesn’t seem ill otherwise. I tried giving him some Pepto-Bismol (1 tablespoon per 80 pounds every 8 hours is safe for dogs), but he’s smarter than he looks; and after about half a tablespoon had been squirted in his cheek with a large syringe, he just stopped swallowing. He’s been fine for the past couple of hours, so I’m going to skip his dinner tonight and see if he stops yarking. In the meantime, despite cleaning the carpet after every episode (why is it that dogs refuse to puke on linoleum tile, and instead seek out the hardest to reach piece of carpet they can find?), the house still smells faintly of dog vomit.
Ah, well. I took the plunge this week, as well, and ordered the replacement for the venerable Sony Vaio laptop on which I’ve penned most of these ‘blog entries. Don’t get me wrong, the laptop still works… but it’s a Pentium III 500 megahertz, 128 meg RAM, and 5 gig hard drive (barely) running XP Pro. For example, it took 3 minutes to start System Information just now. Add to that the fact that the battery is shot and won’t hold a charge, and I refuse to spend half the laptop’s value on a replacement, meaning I’m tethered to an outlet. Gateway’s CX200X convertable- laptop that doubles as a tablet PC- caught my eye and will be here on the 21st. My roommate found the same model at Best Buy and succumbed to it’s charms as well.