This semester at the local community college, just for the heck of it, I'm taking a criminal justice class (CJ101) along with prep classes for the basic academy at the Orange County Sheriff's Department (or any other academy for that matter). I'm taking CJA010 (Pre-Employment Preparation for Law Enforcement), CJA021 (Laws of Arrest), and CJA040-16 (P.C. 832 Arrest and Firearms). All three of the CJA classes are short (3-4 weeks) and graded solely on attendence - there's no reason for you to be taking them unless you wanted to be there. We had our first classroom meetings earlier this week where we were introduced to the downsides of law enforcement along with being able to talk to a recent academy graduate. But today was the fun class. Class began at 7am at the basic academy grounds in Garden Grove where we first went over some basics about the testing procedure and then we actually got to run the obstacle course, pick-up and drag the dummy, push a car, and then run a quarter mile. All of those events are scored and you need 700 points to pass the test and make it into the academy (of course, there's also academic tests you have to pass as well).

My first try on the obstacle course, I ran into a problem with the 6' wall that has to be jumped over (it's actually 6'5" - as the OC Sheriff's goes a bit overboard on everything), but after a couple attempts, I made it over without a problem. I stayed after class and had a few more tries on it and had no other problems, so I figure it was just nerves the first time going over - my instructor said I was just thinking too much. After that, we did the dummy drag which wasn't a big problem, though my time wasn't perfect, it was quite acceptable and then we moved on to the car push - we pushed a full car while in neutral 10 feet. To score the max points on the car push, you have to do it in 4.0 seconds. While attempting it today, I did it in 5.7 seconds, which our instructor said we could knock a second off of because his car was full with gear and the car used in the test is much lighter (as confirmed by two people in the class who had already tested before for the academy).

Then came the quarter mile run which has a target time of 1 minute, 6 seconds for max points - which I completed in 1 minute, 10 seconds. I can easily knock 4 seconds off that through some training (I usually jog, so I'm not that good at short sprints). So with the 200 max points from the run and 50 points from the trigger pull, I've already got 1/4 of the total points possible and over 1/3 of the points needed to get into the academy. Today, even with my problems at the wall, when all was said and done, I scored 787 points out of 1,000. 700 are needed to pass the physical testing portion. As for the written tests, I forsee no problems. The two guys I overheard talking about the tests said the hardest part was spelling - which I could easily ace. So it's good to know that I could get into the academy - and I should be able to score much higher after these classes and now knowing what exactly I should be stressing in my training.

As for the home networking experience, I got the MAME computer converted to the MCE and went out and bought a remote for it at Fry's (which works quite well). I'm still having to transfer files via our old wireless network, so it skips from time to time, but that will be fixed with ethernet cables run directly to the computer. Another problem I'm having is VLC seems to stutter from time to time not due to network problems, so I'm going to see what other programs my remote works with and see how they work on the MCE. I originally went with VLC because I thought I would need to have a server and client set up to stream the videos, but I'm having no problems just sharing the drive via Windows Networking, so the files show up normally in explorer and any program can be used to run them. I think I just need one that has a configurable buffer to control the skipping.

URL: Basic Academy