Home for Lunch

Home for lunch after force-on-force training. The training itself was good, but I've dont a lot of that over the years and it was starting to get old when the instructors shut it down.

I have time to grab a sandwich and say hi to the grandkids, who are over harassing Grandma. Then it's back to the training center. I'm told we're getting a class on internet predators, which should be interesting because there is absolutely nothing we can do at school to stop them. I say that because all the sites we might use are blocked from viewing within the school system. The school system has some dedicated folks blocking sites in the hopes that we keep the kids out of them. Rightfully, there are things we don't want the kid to see online, but that same blocking program blocks the administration from looking at sites we might use to protect the kids.

We call it the Green Violation Screen, which pops up whenever you've tried to access a site that has been blocked. Often unintentionally. For example; a teacher asks me to get her some information on gangs, or drugs, or the latest data on teen sex. Googling any of those search strings brings you to the Green Violation Screen, because we want to shield the students from gangs and drugs and teen sex. Sometimes, though it's useful to look at Xanga or MySpace or some of the other sites to see what the kids are doing online. Those sites are blocked too, to keep the kids from accessing their MySpace page during class time.

The Green Violation Screen is an unintended consequence, and totally a pain in the butt.

Tomorrow we go through baton and handcuff requalification.