Almost as much change as a presidential candidate

Saturday  in mid-morning  Matt Winckler

Change. Change! Change. That’s what I’m all about. Let’s have some change!

Thursday was my last day as an employee of Battelle. It was an odd feeling, but not anything unexpected. I managed to keep my emotions in check, and as far as I can tell my coworkers managed to do the same, since they refrained from jumping in the air while clicking their heels until after I’d walked out for the last time and relinquished my prox card.

Yesterday I showed up for work at the police station and began my new career. It was a hard day at the office. First off I was issued my ballistic nylon duty belt and gear, body armor, class-A uniform, some wonderfully comfortable tactical boots, the very fine baseball cap shown above, and duty weapon: a .40 caliber Glock 22 that I’m already extremely fond of. The rest of the morning was spent learning how to field strip and clean the Glock, as well as proper shooting stance and grip (something that’s going to take me a lot of practice to unlearn my self-taught bad habits). After a break for lunch, we went to KPD’s firing range and spent the next three hours or so shooting. We went through various exercises and then shot the qualification course (two other new officers were present who needed to qualify for the department, since they’re laterals and not going to academy like me). Despite my bad habits and lack of practice, I still managed to qualify at the “Master” level, shooting 245/250 on one run and 248/250 on the second try. However, as the instructors rightly pointed out, the qualification unfortunately measures “precision shooting” as opposed to “combat shooting”. While the former may come into play sometimes in a police career, the latter is far more important to master, and it is also the one that will require the most work on my part. Additionally, the two laterals mentioned that the academy qualification course (which will actually define which “skill level” pin I get to wear on my uniform) may be more difficult. Actually, I hope that it is more difficult, because if someone like me can come in off the street and shoot at “Master” level, then the designation doesn’t seem to mean much.

On Monday morning I will be sworn in, and immediately thereafter I will depart for Spokane to begin my first week of police academy. I don’t know yet how the schedule and workload will go;the two laterals I was training with yesterday (and probably holding back as a neophyte) had rather conflicting opinions–one said the Spokane academy was a cakewalk, and the other seemed to think it was pretty difficult challenge. I’ll find out for myself soon enough.

Since I don’t expect to have Internet access in any convenient form, I’ll be adding Mystie to this blog so that she can post the interesting stories here before I forget about them.

I would appreciate prayer in general and for the following things in particular:

• That my family would survive the next four and a half months intact. It will definitely be a challenging time.
• That my knee would not explode or fall apart from under me. I saw an orthopedic fellow and got an MRI and everything, and he pointed out some little things but said there are no restrictions on activity, but it still feels queer sometimes.
• That I will be fleet of foot, strong of arm, sharp of wit, and holy of walk.
• That I will have an imperial ton of fun.

Lord willing, I’ll be hitting the streets of Kennewick with a training officer in mid-December.

Next stop: Spokane

23 Jul 2008  in the early morning  Matt Winckler

The KPD training officer called me up this morning.

Him: “So Matt, tell me: do you feel lucky?”
Me: “Uh, you tell me, sir…”
Him: “Oh, you’re lucky.”

It’s official: I’m headed for the Spokane Basic Law Enforcement Academy starting August 4th–a week from Monday. Praise God for working that which seemed extremely unlikely! Despite the short notice, I am very grateful that I will be in Spokane and not Burien. It will make coming home on weekends (especially during the colder months) much easier, and apart from that I get the impression that Spokane is the better of the two academies.

And now, the fun begins.

A quickening pace

21 Jul 2008  in the late afternoon  Matt Winckler

All right, so I was not quite accurate when I said I’d taken the last of the tests. Today I took the last pre-academy test, another physical agility test exactly like the one I took at the beginning of this process. Once more I passed it with flying colors, but today I was flying even faster than usual, as I came in with the fastest mile-and-a-half that I’ve run since high school: 10:23. This proves yet again that competition drives me; there was some rabbit there who ran it in probably 9:30 or so, and I simply refused to let him lap me.

The reason I was taking this PAT today is that it turns out I’m on the waiting list for the Spokane police academy starting two weeks from today. I’m 6th on the list, so I need 6 people to fail the PAT at the other testing locations tomorrow. (Yes, I’m praying they will fail!) If that doesn’t happen, then I’ll be starting academy in Burien on 25 August. Spokane would be nice because, in addition to being much closer, I would be going up with at least two other Kennewick guys that I met today, and who strike me as first-rate fellows. In fact, everyone I’ve met so far at KPD has been fairly top-notch, and while I’m sure there are exceptions, overall this bodes very well.

Psych test results are still out, so it’s the only remaining uncertainty. I should hear something by late tomorrow or Wednesday.

The career shift draws near. It’s no longer some hypothetical plan off in the distant future; it’s now imminent and reality. This is a great thing.

Unwitting truth

18 Jul 2008  just before lunchtime  Matt Winckler

Seen in a review of some music I was considering purchasing:

I dont think there truly are any verbs to properly describe Loreena’s Music.

Truly, I suspect that is the case. Tragic.

Official: Healthy person here

17 Jul 2008  in the late afternoon  Matt Winckler

Today marked the final barrage of tests involved in becoming a police officer: the medical tests. These were considerably less routing and more mundane than the psychological test. The morning consisted of another lengthy questionnaire, a drug/urine test, a blood pressure test (120/71), a blood draw, a vision test, a hearing test, a lung capacity test (kind of like a breathalyzer), and a general physical examination. This was followed by a chest x-ray, which concluded the morning’s festivities. This afternoon I took a treadmill stress test at the cardiologist’s office, which I summarily passed, though I only managed to stay on the treadmill for just under 16 minutes. (It’s the continually-increasing slope that gets you! Or, rather, got me, being accustomed only to running on a flat track.)

The only remaining uncertainty is now the psychological exam, for which I still do not have the result. The scheduled tests, however, are now wholly complete.

Psycho?

15 Jul 2008  around evening time  Matt Winckler

Today was another step in the police officer application process: the psychological examination.

This was perhaps the part about which I knew the least; I did not know what to expect at all. Looking back on it, nothing was particularly surprising, but there were definitely elements that were strange.

The festivities kicked off this morning at 10:00. It began with the part that surprised me most: an objective test of problem-solving abilities. (In my mind, “objectivity” and “psychology” are generally contradictory terms. Fortunately, these words were not a pair selected for the problem-solving test.) The test had 50 questions, ordered by increasing difficulty, and I was allotted 15 minutes to answer them. I didn’t manage to finish (I think I got 43 or so done), but the doctor said that no one does. The questions were fairly basic until right near the end, consisting of things such as the following (working from memory; these are not likely exact):

• ILLUSTRATE and ILLUSTRIOUS: Is the meaning of these two words: 1) similar 2) contradictory 3) neither similar nor contradictory
• What is the next number in the sequence: 54 51 48 45 …
• If a roof is supported by 7 rafters and each rafter is 6.5 feet long, and rafters cost $.70 per linear foot, how much did the roof’s rafters cost?
• Which word is different from the rest? quiet murmur still silence hush
• Arrange the following words so that they form a true sentence. Write the last letter of the last word as your answer. never rains it pours but it
• Three of the following five shapes can be arranged to form a triangle. The shapes must not overlap. Which three? (series of shapes)
• Arrange the following words so that they form a statement. As your answer, write in whether the statement is true or false. is planet Mars a

And so on and so forth. The difficulty, obviously, arises from the fact that if you want to answer every single question, you can only spend 18 seconds per question at most. I cannot recall many of the later, more difficult questions, because later in the test I knew time was getting short and I was focusing on a bunch of calculations. I think the above questions capture the general types fairly comprehensively, however. This was the most entertaining and interesting part of the day.

Next came a computerized multiple-choice personality test consisting of 185 questions, some 170 or so of which had “no wrong answer” (unless you want a job as a police officer, presumably). These seemed to center around about two or three basic questions, attempting to determine whether I am 1) an airy-fairy sort of person or a down-to-earth pragmatic individual; 2) an introvert or an extrovert; and 3) an authoritarian or a hippie. As with all of the other tests of the day, I didn’t get a score. The last few questions on this test were more of the objective sort (a screen warned me that the next questions really did have right and wrong answers), and consisted of things similar to the earlier timed test:

• What is the next letter in the sequence: A B D G
• Which word is not like the others: cat near sun

Next up was a two-hundred-some question written test that seemed to focus mainly on three questions:

• Are you suicidal?
• Are you depressed?
• Are you a drug addict or alcoholic?

Possible answers include: “False”, “Somewhat True”, “Mainly True”, and “Very True”. The results of this test (and answers to particular questions) were to be discussed later on in the 1.5-hour interview with the psychic. I mean psychiatrist. Or psychologist. I still don’t quite know the difference, and I’m wishing I’d remembered to ask.

Interesting questions on that test (apart from eight flavors of “Are you suicidal”) included:

• “I have ideas that others think are strange.” (Very True. This one came up in the interview, and the…doctor expressed surprise that I thought other people might think Christianity is strange, being that “the majority of people are Christian”. I explained that the majority of people consider themselves Christians if they darken the threshold of a church twice a year at Easter and Christmas, and I actually believe in strange things like absolute morality or consequences for your actions or actually reading–and obeying–the Bible.)
• “My favorite poet is Raymond Kertezc.” (Uhhh….false? This one baffled me, because Raymond didn’t seem like a poet’s name at the time. Turns out that Google denies his existence, which makes sense.)
• “My favorite event to watch on television is the high jump.” (Huh.)

Mostly they were boring, however. There are only so many ways you can ask whether someone’s a junkie.

Following that was the STAXI, a brief sort of test focusing entirely on anger and the management thereof. What amused me about this test is that it had three parts: 1) How I feel right now, 2) How I feel generally, and 3) How I manage my anger. The first part amused me greatly, because I was imagining what sort of dim bulb gets this far into an application process to become a police officer and then answers “Very much True” to questions like (true examples):

• I am infuriated.
• I feel like cursing out loud.
• I feel like hitting something.

Parts 2 and 3, however, were heavily discussed in the interview, because I admitted that I “Sometimes” get angry. And, lo! “Sometimes” I am “more irritated than the people around me think.” sigh Can’t win.

Then there was a test that I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure it existed, because there was a series of three things in a bunch. Perhaps I’ll think of it later.

The third thing in that bunch was writing myself a two-page autobiography, into which religion factored significantly. Apart from the fact that religion is in fact a very significant and central part of my life and deserves to be included in any two-page autobiography of myself, I derive certain amusement from dropping discrimination-law-protected things into job applications and interviews, just to see what the reaction will be. (I am not generally in favor of such laws and would never prosecute someone even if I could prove that they’d unlawfully discriminated against me on the basis of religion, but that doesn’t stop me from having fun with the law.) This makes the fourth time I’ve managed it in this application process alone (fifth, if you count the whole “Strange Ideas == Very True” incident separately), and it still isn’t old. Obnoxious, I know.

Lastly came the interview with the psyche doctor, which began about 1:15 or so. I think they design it this way, so that you come in mid-morning and spend your lunchtime writing down inane answers, and then they can see how your psyche behaves on an empty stomach. The interview consisted mostly of reviewing crazy answers I’d put down on any of the previous tests, discussing my anger and conflict management abilities and shortcomings at length, and generally asking the same sorts of things that had been asked twice before during the background investigation. (I guess they don’t trust the polygraph quite that much.) I had the opportunity to inform the doctor that failing to obtain a building permit is a misdemeanor, and that yes, indeed Richland does require a permit to replace a window. The interview lasted until 2:45, at which point I was released from bondage.

Looking back on it, I can see how a well-adjusted person might “fail” this test. It likely depends greatly upon how the department interprets the report, since really the psychologist only makes a recommendation to them on how well-suited the applicant is for the job. Since the psychologist’s client was KPD and not me, she didn’t tell me any of the results, but she said that her report would be in the hands of HR by tomorrow or Thursday.

If I fail this one, perhaps I’m going to have to go practice taking personality tests. Interestingly, one of the most difficult questions to answer was: “Describe your personality.” I mean, how do you go about describing so personable a person as myself? The possibilities are endless. It was a chore narrowing the description down to a succinct few words.

One point of reassurance that I was on the right path (or at least the honest one) was when I came home and told my wife about it. A question during the interview was: “If your wife had to choose three words to describe your personality, what would she pick?” I got two out of three right, and we both had to think a long time for the third one (which we answered differently, but not dramatically so).

So from my perspective, the jury is still out on the question of whether I am a psycho. Ah well. For better or for worse, one more battery of tests is behind me.

Drive safely

02 Jul 2008  around lunchtime  Matt Winckler

Some safety propaganda at my workplace claims that 1 out of 4 vehicle accidents happen while backing up. Having firmly established the hazardous nature of reverse (using only these numbers), the propaganda piece then goes on to explain the various ways in which you can increase the safety of your vehicular backing (up to and including “get someone else to act as a spotter for you”–a first-rate suggestion which I plan to employ in the parking lot at my earliest convenience, perhaps next time I’m backing my motorcycle out).

However, if my math (and their statistical representation) is correct, this means that three out of four vehicular accidents happen while moving forward. Following this line of reasoning, it quickly becomes evident that driving forward is three times as dangerous as driving backward!

The solution to having safer roads seems obvious. I may write them a letter.

Stress and progress

01 Jul 2008  around evening time  Matt Winckler

There is more progress on the career front, praise be to God: today I successfully passed an interview with the Kennewick chief of police and his command staff. Two tests remain before an official hire: the medical and the psychological exams. At this point my stress levels are much reduced, as I consider both of these tests to be essentially out of my hands. (A sane person might successfully pass himself off as crazy, but I have my doubts about whether a crazy person could pass himself off as sane. I’ll let you know after the test.)

Tentative academy start date (assuming a hire) is now late September.

The interview today was frankly somewhat disappointing. It was not challenging at all–nor, I learned from the chief himself, was it intended to be. Evidently I’d passed through enough hurdles to get to this stage, and the main point of the interview was for the chief and captains to ensure that their subordinates had not made some grievous error in judgment and let a buffoon get through their selection process. (This much I inferred.) Thus I found, to my chagrin, that the hours I spent preparing for all manner of challenging and difficult questions were rather wasted upon six (six!) measly HR-garden-variety questions (true example: “Tell me about your experiences working with people of other backgrounds”). Nothing about “You and your partner are transporting a dangerous prisoner to the county jail when you come across a serious three-vehicle accident. No one else is around, and no one is moving in the involved vehicles. What do you do?”

Even so, I failed to perform perfectly in the interview, because despite having thought an answer through beforehand, when it came to the question of “Why should we hire you?”, to my lasting regret my mind partially blanked and I neglected to include my best line: “Because I have an excellent sense of humor and look positively dashing in uniform.” They were the sort of crowd this would have gone over well with, too. Curses! Thankfully, they passed me anyway. I can surprise them with my excellent sense of humor and good looks later, as sort of a bonus.

I’m still working to get into shape so that I won’t be quite so utterly crushed when I get to police academy. I’m up to running 2.75 miles in 22 minutes, and last night I managed to knock out 50 consecutive pushups for the first time ever. (I’m attempting to follow the one hundred pushups program after seeing Richard take up the challenge.) I think the odds are that no matter how much I exercise, I’m still going to be in a world of pain at academy, but I figure that if I start in reasonable condition, I ought to end in superb condition, ready to ferret out crime and chase evildoers on foot for miles on end before wrestling them to the ground.

A Polygraphal Experience

17 Jun 2008  around lunchtime  Matt Winckler

Probably the most interesting and/or stressful part of the KPD application process thus far was the polygraph examination. There is a plethora of information on the Internet about the polygraph exam, most of which decries the practice as “black magic”, “voodoo”, and generally unreliable. The majority of these diatribes seem (to me) to stem from people who have failed polygraph exams. You can also find a load of information on how to “beat” the polygraph, using a variety of techniques from sticking tacks in your shoes and pushing your toes against them when answering, to performing some sort of Kegel exercise while answering. Before taking the polygraph, I looked at these sorts of articles with a dubious eye; after the polygraph, I look at them with scarcely concealed scorn.

I’d never before seen a polygraph machine. In one sense it’s an impressive setup, but in another sense it’s rather underwhelming. There is a chair in which you sit that has pads on the seat and both armrests. Two bands go around your chest, and the bands expand and contract with your lungs to measure your breathing. Two metal half-rings held on by Velcro go on two of your fingers, and on another finger goes one of those clip-on measuring things that hospitals use, the name and purpose of which I can never remember. Finally, there’s also a blood pressure cuff armband. The polygraph examiner (who in my case bore some resemblance to that SS interrogation officer in The Great Escape, but actually turned out to be a nice fellow) also has you take off your shoes. (So much for the tacks!) All these sensors measure more things than I can remember, including heart rate, breathing rate, the amount of (some-fancy-word) sub-dermal sweat (the sweat beneath your skin), your blood pressure, your arterial blood flow rate, and so forth. More things than you could ever hope to intentionally fake, anyway.

The whole ordeal started off with a comprehensive interview, consisting of pages and pages of questions designed to ferret out every minor sin you have ever committed in your lifetime. (This was, in my experience, hands-down the most unpleasant part. And I’m pretty clean!) Following that, he explained the way the polygraph machine worked, and demonstrated the extreme sensitivity of the armrest pads by gently setting a ball-point pen on one of them–which resulted in a spike on the graph of that sensor (displayed real-time on a laptop nearby). He also described the fact that some percentage of folks do fail the polygraph, but these fall into two categories: the ones who are lying to cover something up, and the ones who are truthful, but (for whatever reason) are trying to use some technique to “enhance” their results. (I suppose that these would be the truthful ones who are completely distrustful of the polygraph process in general.)

Next he went through the questions that would be asked on the polygraph (only ten or so, of the yes/no variety), so that I would be certain of how to answer. He gave me the questions to read to make doubly sure there were no surprises, and then got me all hooked up to the apparatus. The fascinating part came when he asked the “calibration” questions, consisting of some simple math (e.g. “What is 4 plus 1?”) He asked one and told me to give a verbal response, and then asked another and told me not to give a verbal response, but simply to think of the answer. Evidently merely the act of thinking the response is sufficient to make some impression on one or more of the sensors. Finally, the questions began.

He went through the same set of questions three times, presumably to get an average of charts to examine. After that, he spent some time analyzing and interpreting the results. He told me that although I had some minor “reactions” to certain questions (he didn’t say which), he didn’t see anything that indicated deception. (Which is fortunate, since I was telling the truth.) At this point it was all over, and I left him to continue interpreting the results and formulate his report.

All in all, having now taken one, I have no problem with the polygraph concept whatsoever. I still think it is prudent that it is not admissable in court as evidence, but I have no qualms with the state of Washington requiring one as part of all law enforcement hiring processes (as it does). The reason I think it should stay out of courts is that it does rely upon the interpretation of the examiner, which introduces that small margin of error which, though doubtless very small, is still big enough in my mind to warrant limitation to lower-stakes applications such as employment background checks. (If someone doesn’t get a job because of an erroneous polygraph interpretation, it’s too bad, but not that big a deal. If somebody gets a life sentence on the basis of a false interpretation, on the other hand, that’s a big deal.) It will be interesting to see how technology continues to advance in this area.

Portents

16 Jun 2008  in the late afternoon  Matt Winckler

This blog has been very quiet lately. So quiet, in fact, that it is almost dead. I’ve tried to kickstart it a few times, but the creative juices inevitably peter out, leaving an empty shell of what it once was. Even so, do not fear: I have called emergency services and an ambulance is on the way.

The time at last has come to reveal the reason for silence to the two or so people who do not already know. The reason is that I tend to blog about that which I think about, and lately I’ve been thinking about things that were not public knowledge. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about careers. I have decided to seek out an alternative to my well-paid, comfortable job as a software developer at Battelle. Indeed, I have decided to seek an alternative to the entire software development industry.

On 25 April, by taking a physical test, video-based test, and reading/writing test, I began the process of becoming an officer with the Kennewick Police Department. I subsequently advanced through the process past the first oral board interview, a background investigation, and a polygraph test. Next up is an interview with the chief of police and command staff, followed by a medical examination and a psychological examination. Lord willing, following that I will begin 18 weeks of training at police academy.

There are several reasons why I am choosing to take a fair-sized pay cut in order to go work days, nights, weekends, and holidays getting beat up, spit on, shot at, cussed at, and generally abused by the ungodly. Firstly, I believe that law enforcement is my calling. I’ve thought about it for years, and it was actually my original intent to pursue it after college. (However, graduating at 20 years old meant finding other employment until I turned 21, and God provided a great and comfortable job right off the bat, which set me down the road to law enforcement.) Secondly, police work is a unique mixture of justice, mercy, and compassion: justice for evildoers, mercy and compassion for the helpless and needy. Of course, in between these admirable extremes there is anyone’s fill of day-to-day crap (angry drivers, irascible neighbors, reams of paperwork, etc.) to deal with, but I am convinced that the good will outweigh the bad and that I will be working at an occupation where, on the whole, my day’s work has meaning. (Every occupation, of course, has meaning if you are doing it as unto God and not unto men. But while I do think that means we ought to be content no matter what our position, I don’t think that means that, given the opportunity, we are to intentionally avoid increasing our mortal job satisfaction.) I am eager to make a positive difference in the community, for many of the same reasons I was eager to start a classical Christian school several years ago. Thirdly (and most importantly!), I have always wanted a job where I can drive fast with the lights and sirens on and carry a gun. It seems to me that there’s nothing quite like barreling down Columbia Drive past Fruitland going 75mph at a quarter to midnight, lights flashing and siren wailing, screaming across the city en route to a “shots fired” call at an apartment complex. (Which is exactly what I got to experience a few weeks ago while riding along with a KPD sergeant.)

The upshot is that if all goes as planned, this blog is eventually going to become more interesting to read. Much more interesting.