When I first created this site - originally over on GeoCities - I had thought I would link to sites offering diversions or what I considered to be worthwhile special projects for my peers (everywhere, in all three disciplines of Public Safety) to peruse. After all, some folks don't want work to intrude on their off-duty time. I'd get home from work after my "swing" shift and be just absolutely whipped - but not the least bit sleepy yet. Residual adrenaline, y'know? So I haunted the humor sites - especially The Centre for the Easily Amused. I knew my peers all had incredibly varied interests and I was discovering avenues to all sorts of stuff on the WWW. I wanted to gather them together as on-line "bookmarks" - and display them all somewhere in one convenient spot where my Internet-connected friends could find them.

This list of links grew until I had to separate them into categories: Goodies To Get, Internet Toys, Magical Places, Sites to See! and Local Sites. As I surfed the 'Net and collected bookmarks, I began to encounter sites related to public safety.....

Links to on the Web

It struck me, as I ran across more and more of the public safety sites, if I got so much pleasure in discovering Home Pages developed for and maintained by officers, dispatchers, fire fighters, and emergency medical personnel, then maybe some of y'all would like to check 'em out, too. I also began to stumble across more professional agency and departmental web-sites, which thrilled me to no end. Except for one disturbing facet: there weren't any web-sites for dispatchers!

Well..... that couldn't be right, could it?
Apparently it could (back in late 1996). Oh, I'd occasionally find some reference TO dispatchers, or to an agency's "State of the Art 9-1-1 Center" but that was about it. It was very disappointing. There were (pardon this next comment; I'm not trying to offend anyone) Home Pages for volunteer fire squads in the hinterland with all the officers and apparatus listed by name as well as large metropolitan law enforcement agency sites listing - with photographs of ranking personnel - all of their divisions and units and not much more than a single line referencing their Communications Center or staff. Usually that reference was merely "Dial 9-1-1 for emergencies."

The Break Room began to fill that void in the WWW. And as I located more dispatchers' Home Pages and discovered actual pages about Comm Centers within agency web-sites (I'd link directly to that page to showcase the dispatchers!), I would list 'em, one after another. Eventually, I had to start categorizing the Comm Center links; I chose to list them by NCIC 2-character code. Today, the Break Room is lagging woefully behind in keeping up with all the sites.

Click the 9-1-1 logo to go to directly to Comm Center links.

Well, in recent years, due to abuses by folks with access to Law Enforcement computer systems, there have been severe restrictions (outright BANS) on "surfing" official computerized networks. Until 1989, there were no sanctions against looking up anybody you wanted in DMV files, or sending messages to, from, and within agencies in a friendly, communicative manner. Nowadays, it's not only frowned upon, but you can (and SHOULD) be disciplined and/or FIRED for using such access without legal reason. (This is a GOOD thing, by the way.) However, I kinda miss playing with those abilities. Luckily, there are more appropriate off-duty pastimes to satisfy that need to chat with others in the same career field.

Why create a web-site, though? Well, I like a challenge.

Computer systems have always fascinated me. When I first started as a dispatcher (in 1977) we used actual teletype machines: big clunky, noisy boxes with clanging bells that clattered out text onto paper (or punched teletype tape) at sixty words a minute. I learned how to make that puppy play tricks and I could even get a request for "guns registered to [someone]" accomplished without cutting the tape first to run it through the reader once the line to the state criminal justice database was accessed. (If you know exactly what I mean, let me shake your hand across cyberspace!)

If you can use an NLETS or NCIC manual, you can learn to write HTML. Trust me. .... And so the Break Room was born.

Okay, so I first created my little Home Page for GryEyes911 on AOL. Then, later in my 'Net surfing expeditions, I ran across GeoCities - a free server for personal Home Pages! In June of 1996, the Break Room was launched in cyberspace. By late 1997, for a variety of reasons, I became increasingly dissatisfied with GeoCities and jumped on the chance to move the Break Room to FireFighting.Com in October 1997. Then, in November, '99, I relocated the Break Room to an even more suitable home on Emergency-World.com, hosted by HotCity.com. Something horrible happened on June 15th, 2003 and the server lost everything, so I'm recreating (and updating, I hope!) the Break Room once again. I have, however, kept the "mirror" site with the original version up because there are a LOT of folks who found it there and I don't want to lose those contacts who may have already bookmarked that URL. (But this will be the most current version of the Break Room, as I'll update the links and add new features here at the new home for www.gryeyes.com.)

Please be patient while I recreate The Break Room - it's going to take a LOT of work!

Anyway, I was first introduced to on-line chatting as an AOL member - in 1995. Since then, I've become addicted, errrrr, heavily involved in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and spend a great deal of time online with friends I've made around the world. It's free (unlike America OnLine) and one can have real-time conversations with hundreds of thousands of folks on different topics.

You can sometimes find me, if you're interested in "meeting" the author of this site, on the TalkCity server in this channel: