Another Well Known Secret...WTF?

How many of you just click on a FD or FD related site and view it but fail to check out the links page for other FD's or more stuff to make the brotherhood and ourselves better? Be it training or just gee whiz info that is interesting and encouraging to read or watch. How many of us out there have explored every link in this community or on FE itself? Probably impossible but every bit worth your time and energy to get all you can out of a FREE site you come across. If you aren't looking at the links or the other areas that are listed, you're missing out on the "Big Picture". Beside all those links and ads you click on could be bringing in money to fund the site and their efforts or even help the FD buy needed equipment to keep them safe.

I am pretty much a technology freak...well that is what some of my brothers tell me because I am usually on top of the latest and greatest stuff. Sometimes I am a bit slow as in my time management and having to actually work besides surfing pertaining to opportunities to explore the World Wide Web because there is so much ground to cover and not a lot of time in my life to do it all. I really love finding new stuff and today was one of those days. I surfed into a site off one of my friends page here on FE Community. It was a site for Burke Co. FF's Assoc in NC, thanks for the link Brother Doug!!! As I was glancing down through it, I saw a site called "The Battalion TV" I thought GREAT, now I can watch even more stuff pertaining to my job at work to piss the Fire Chief off to the point he may even take the internet away from us because we use it so much...that's no lie and besides the point I'm trying to make here. I may just create a group called Technology and the WWW here too. We could use it to post new and interesting sites pertaining to the fire service so the secret will be revealed hence the creation of "The Secret List by Chief Goldfeder. telling us we need to be safer out there and prevent the stuff they post there from happening to us. Same goes for complety searching a webpage and all it's links like "The Secret List".

The point I am making is that when you surf a site don't just cruise the surface....be a bottom feeder and dig into the dirt of it and see what else there is to find. Who know's you may find they have links to some pretty cool stuff like I found today. After all if we only researched one reference book on a hazmat call with an unknown substance or put the fire on the surface in a structure and didn't tear out portions of the walls or ceiling to find hidden fire, are we really doing our job the best we can and using all our resources? Same thing goes for the internet and other sources of information...dig a little deeper and you just may find the answers and the truth you seek. It's not only the web but other places as well! Many of you know Dr. Denis Onieal, from the NFA, now the Assistant Deputy Administrator of the USFA ...has told many of us that have attended classes there that the NFA and the NETC are some of the best kept secrets in the fire service and why is that you ask? Because they are so misunderstood and not utilized to their fullest potential until we have things there like the NFFF Memorial Weekend. Now don't get me wrong here, because I am not knocking it at all. I have been to a NFFF Weekend and it is a very moving and sombering time and experience to remember and celebrate the lives our our loved ones lost. I am saying that if that many people that attended the services on that weekend would go to the the NFA or NETC during a few months or a year that would be HUGE. I am hoping that it won't happen but if we don't start utilizing our resources we have available to us here soon...the day may come that we need them or have the opportunity to use them, they just may be gone and never recoverable again. So back to what I was saying; I found even more stuff off of the Battalion TV site...see how it just grows and grows like a disease but it's an awesome disease if it does good. Not like the disease of posting garbage about other people you don't like or disagree with or Monday quarterback a video or post they throw up. Don't be a brake on the wheel of progress and tradition in the Fire Service but be a motivator and a mentor and an educator instead of an agressor, you will only hurt yourself in the end. So off the podium I come for now and as promised here is the Secret site I uncovered today The Battalion TV


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