Recently, I have been meeting with the Director and Captains about a couple of disciplinary issues facing officers I work with.

The main issue we are dealing with is the inclusion of prior disciplinary issues in current disciplinary actions.

For instance:

• If I failed to complete a round in January, I would be disciplined for that, as I should be. It’s an important part of our job, and if I don’t do it, I deserve to get into some kind of trouble.

• Let’s say that in June, I come to work 5 minutes late. I should also get into trouble for that, as being at work on time is expected, and if you don’t come to work, you should get into trouble.

The problem?? Currently the missing of the round in January will be brought up as part of the disciplinary process for the late day in June.

Is this right or wrong, and why?

I have been buried in a project lately, because I’ve been trying to redo the website for the jail.

The jail’s current site layout is outdated. It really looks as if it was last updated in 1998. The information contained in the pages is from between 2002 and 2004, so that tells you something right there. There’s no “ajaxy goodness”, and all of the information is laid out in tables. For those of you with no idea what I’m talking about, believe me when I tell you it means the site is old.

Here’s what happened.

A couple weeks ago, I was asked to make a new page on the jail website for the Re-entry Project. The re-entry project itself is one result of the trip that I took to Florida a couple of months ago.

It was fun working on the webpages, but it was also frustrating. I’m sort of a perfectionist when it comes to format. I like things to look “just so” on my sites, (I have two now) and when there’s something I know I can do to make a page look better, I hate not taking care of it.

That’s not to say that my sites are perfect. I’m just saying that as far as I am able, it looks how I want it to. As far as the Jail website goes, the web-master (aka: website boss-man) for the county wouldn’t allow me to change anything major. His rule was that the overall theme had to be consistent with the main county page. Since it was his website, I couldn’t exactly argue with him. So, I decided to bide my time and play the good soldier. I didn’t like it, but since I was only asked to update the site and not asked to re-do the site, I couldn’t very well complain about it. (I did get out of jail-work for the week afterall.)

It was frustrating, though. If I put work into something like that, I want to be proud of it, and if I’m not proud of it, I want to work on it until I am. So, I did.

I ended up making a sample site. I “coded” it at work on my spare time (and at home, much to the chagrin of my wife). It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t have to be. I only needed my sample site to show potential, so I could pitch it to my boss.

Last week, I presented my re-done site to the director, and she immediately asked why I hadn’t made it like that in the first place. (…right into my trap!)

I told her about the webmaster, and explained the rules that I was given. On monday, she is going to request that I be allowed to re-do the entire jail website. The nice thing about having the director ask, is that she can go above the webmaster, straight to the webmaster’s boss.

If the answer ends up being “no”, I won’t be bothered. I figure I have done all I can do. I’ve made a product I am proud of, I’ve pitched it to my boss; anything after that is out of my hands.

So, I say all of that to say that I have been happily plugging away on a completely new layout for the jail website for the last week or so. It’s fun, and makes the time absolutely FLY by between rounds. Hopefully, I will be able to actually implement it, and then the real coding fun begins

It’s official! I’m now on graveyard

My first night wasn’t bad, per se, but it wasn’t exactly nice either.

On my first round, an inmate stopped me to tell me that the toilet in the cell was overflowing. There was crap on the floor. “That’s about right”, I thought to myself, “Why would I expect an easy first grave yard shift?”

I suppose the pounding headache didn’t help any, but seriously, CRAP?? on the floor??? That wasn’t helpful either.

After the crap issue was dealt with, the night was nice and uneventful.

Hopefully the “crap” stories will stop soon. I would hate to have it become a running theme…