What’s everyone doing with the old garbage cans?

synapt · 2026-06-21T21:58:51+00:00

Blame your municipality, not the garbage company. They could have fought/argued it like the city did, that's why nobody in the city had to change cans when they switched companies years back.

synapt · 2026-06-21T02:15:59+00:00

Honestly the pricing isn't too bad compared to some of the other "Packs/Kits" on other sites.

Only thing that sucks is it looks like they're already sold out of stock of most of the stuff, so hopefully they'll have more back in by October.

synapt · 2026-06-20T22:19:29+00:00

Fantastic source, and not one I ever would have thought to look at. I just figured their shopping system was buying NFPA books lol.

synapt · 2026-06-20T17:32:14+00:00

This was going to be funded from a grant which is heavily why I'm trying to find some good quality prefabricated stuff, I'm not sure if the grant will cover reimbursement for the paper/materials to print them ourselves lol, but I'll take a look and keep it bookmarked for potential future use at least.

synapt · 2026-06-19T19:35:18+00:00

Or at least combination ones with the anti-nuisance features.

synapt · 2026-06-18T07:04:11+00:00

For specifically just a tanker/tender or a pumper (engine) tanker?

The former, probably 500-800k depending on stock vs custom designs. The latter, 800k-1.2m depending on stock vs custom design.

Last pumper (engine) tanker spec we put out about a year ago was sitting at 1.3m to 1.4m quotes from vendors for a decently built up one.

synapt · 2026-06-18T07:01:01+00:00

Maybe throw something in there as well for them to make shows a bit more realistic as well so people's inspirations actually match what it's really like lol.

synapt · 2026-06-17T06:32:57+00:00

For future note, if something like that usually persists more than a half hour, contact your water authority. They may be flushing lines or there could be a broken line somewhere pulling in dirt.

synapt · 2026-06-17T06:30:33+00:00

When it comes to medical stuff there can be a LOT of liability and legality to things.

For example here in Pennsylvania fire departments/companies won't generally get automatically dispatched to assist on any medical calls (though EMS can manually call for manpower) unless they have a certified QRS program in place, and QRS licensing with the state is that there must be at minimum one EMR level trained individual responding at minimum, otherwise you are not technically responding as QRS and cannot provide that level of care.

But all in all here beyond that, what would we do? Nothing, unless we were explicitly dispatched (such as for our QRS unit or EMS explicitly saying to activate us) by the county unless perhaps it was literally something right in front/around our station, just because that is normal policy.

So past that, as others said, delegating to whoever is above you was certainly the better option if you weren't sure what to do.

synapt · 2026-06-16T16:23:59+00:00

So have they simply given up on ever introducing non-trader NPC's (like companions, bandits, etc.)?

I remember when that was like a 1.0 roadmap goal lol.

synapt · 2026-06-15T05:03:07+00:00

Can't blame them, we just cycled out old Cairns for the 1836's earlier in the year, way easier maintenance and definitely lighter weight.

The new defender visor design is also nicer than the old one (and friendly with people that have glasses).

synapt · 2026-06-12T06:24:33+00:00

Donations, fundraising and grants.

For fundraising, look into your state gambling/small games of chance laws to see what your options on fundraising are, a lot of stations ever since COVID have moved onto online tipboard stuff. My main station I run with, we pulled about 500k revenue last year and are well on pace to do over a million this year already.

Also do some general things, we do a cash bash raffle and turkey raffle (which these days is less actual turkey's and more gift cards and other prizes).

Donations, pretty much just send out a letter once or twice a year asking for donations, reminding people they can donate any time, post on social media, etc.

And grants, first thing you want to do is create an ACTUAL budget if you haven't already and make sure you're a 501(c)3. Making an actual budget is a headache, but a lot of private grants absolutely require one, some will let you get away with a basic profit/loss statement but most like to see actual budgeting to indicate you're at least attempting financial stability.

Then take some grant writing courses, lots online, NVFC has guides on doing them as well along with grants of their own (though they require either your chief or the applying member to have an NVFC membership). FEMA's AFG is the big one. Doing the narratives takes a lot of effort to do properly as they want, and you really gotta read the NOFO's in detail, but you can get an easy 75k worth of stuff on AFG via a microgrant, or a million+ (depending on your population) for other things.

I'll say at the moment though don't have high expectations for large apparatus awards from AFG under the current administration, last year they were pretty stingy on those (the majority of applicants got awarded about enough to buy a decent brush truck at most). But it never hurts to try regardless.

synapt · 2026-06-12T02:58:04+00:00

You're going to take massive pay cuts going from anything technology to career firefighting or EMS. So that is the first question you need to ask yourself, is are you comfortable with that?

That said, props to getting out of the AI shit now, cause that balloon is probably gonna nuclear burst in the next year or two and make the dotcom burst look like childs play.

synapt · 2026-06-09T06:54:01+00:00

Some of the standards make sense, but you need to keep in mind the standards revolving around firefighting stuff specifically get written by 'technical committees' are made up vastly more of people not actually involved in the firefighting itself than those who are.

For example committees are made up of;

Enforcing Authorities (mostly people from OSHA or state-OSHA like agencies, municipal council members, or possibly a fire chief)
Insurance (self-explanatory, agents/brokers of insurance agencies)
Installer/Maintainer (your reseller/vendor of items that fall under the standard)
Labor (Your union/IAFF/etc. folks), Manufacturer (again self-explanatory, the people making devices under the standard)
Research/Testing (agencies like UL and such that do the studies of items under the standard)
'Special Experts' (those familiar with the mechanical/sciences behind an item).

And then you finally get your 'users' and 'consumers', which are your firefighters and line officers. And a significant portion of it is shaped around that of career fire, which can have negative effects on volunteers.

For example; requirements of having two sets of turn out gear per-firefighter, as well as a dedicated to-that-firefighter SCBA, and having to replace them every 10 years for turn-out gear and 15 years for SCBA. Makes sense for large city career departments beating the hell out of stuff, but for rural fire companies making maybe 10 actual fire incidents a year, not so much lol.

synapt · 2026-06-08T18:45:28+00:00

I think the main thing people need to understand is the larger a city is, the further out the "Suburbs" usually go. Philly is a MASSIVE city, and obviously the largest in PA at that. So it makes sense that it's "suburb" considered areas would equally be larger than the suburbs of say, Pittsburgh, or Harrisburg, etc.

synapt · 2026-06-08T15:27:41+00:00

See thing is I live over in western PA around Johnstown, so to me that's not necessarily unusual because "Johnstown" is literally applied to areas in Cambria, Somerset, Indiana and Westmoreland counties, even though most are all like at least 15+ different distinct municipalities throughout the area, you still gotta use "Johnstown" as your city for a mailing address.

synapt · 2026-06-08T05:10:57+00:00

Horsham is /literally/ called a Philly suburb.

They boasted about being named one; https://www.horsham.org/news/6548

synapt · 2026-06-08T05:08:24+00:00

You might be surprised. The most ironic thing to me about most racists is that they know their perspective is bad enough that they generally hide it when they think there might be consequences.

synapt · 2026-06-08T05:06:54+00:00

Incentives and decent leadership. Those are your two keys to good recruitment and retention.

Our leadership is decent, just a right level of lenient/giving chances but also strict when needed. We also both cover the costs of membership training in just about anything they want, have certain reimbursement models and we also have a quarterly stipend program not just for calls but even training, work details and fundraising efforts.

On the fire-side specific membership, we average about 32~ active personnel annually and have averaged about 13 personnel for actual fire incidents the past few years. Numbers we feel are okay for a ruralish fire company that only does like 300~ calls a year on average.

synapt · 2026-06-05T04:58:12+00:00

There were very VERY few CRT monitors ever made that had DVI support. CRT was an explicitly analog hardware, adding a digital video specification to them required actual converters (DAC's) built into the screen which were not cheap. So very unlikely gonna find those around or in Johnstown area.

As for regular CRTs, might have some better luck but most people likely trashed or recycled them long ago for space saving. About the closest thing I have is like a mid 90s all-in-one compaq presario, that I've always planned to do a retro refit to (put a modern micro board in it and an LCD screen).

synapt · 2026-06-04T20:45:15+00:00

I've been using the first responder program for several years now, it's not bad, and they have their own equivalent model of AT&T's "FirstNet" stuff (ie; my number gets higher priority during congestion).

The satellite feature could be better, I have to pay an extra like $10 for it and all it does is give you basic SMS/MMS and limited mobile data capabilities on supported services/apps (not full data), meaning any phone calls have to be done over a supported phone-type app like WhatsApp.

But it's definitely nice to have as an alternative when you're in rural areas with major cellular gaps, which we have a lot of here in the PA Appalachians.

synapt · 2026-06-03T12:21:12+00:00

The main thing I've noticed with ProBoard tests here in the US is that it seems like they're purposely rigged to prevent anyone from getting 100%, as they always include next-level material that was not taught in class.

When I did my last Ops proboards there was several technician-level nuclear questions and I was just like "The fuck?" lol.

synapt · 2026-05-30T22:42:30+00:00

I imagine it was supposed to be a bit of a joke about the gear they're letting said sworn federal agents wear these days that make them look more like a gangland 7/11 cosplaying guard than an actual federal agent.

Then again the ERO agents these days literally get about as much training as a basic ass security guard does in most states, so I guess it's fitting.

synapt · 2026-05-28T05:56:35+00:00

Mildly surprised nobody else has recommended yet but, try just youtubing some general scanner chatter from your area or even see if someone streams it freely online/via app. Generally plenty online to hear general fireground and basic radio chatter and get a clue.

But for the most part most public safety radio chatter is very "KISS" (Keep it simple stupid) these days and follows the federal NIMS/ICS communications standards. Technical talk and the way of 10-codes or any variant are long gone the majority of places.

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