bmubyzal

SLAC Day 2

This morning i was trying to pull 1984 out of my backpack and I accidently grabbed about 10 post-it notes which I used to take notes on the book. Now a bunch of my notes are out of place and I really don't want to have to go back and reread 50 pages of the book (although it is a good book).

I just indexed about 50 files for the Earthquake safety committee and sent it all off to be posted online. I guess this is the first real work I've done as I have mostly been getting settled in, going through all this security and safety BS. I had to write out every potential risk of working at SLAC and what I'm doing to avoid them. So at my job, I sit at my computer and and type stuff up. So there's carpal tunnel and vision impairment (scary, i know). So, what am I doing to avoid thses? well... stretching my hands and looking away from the computer screen every once in a while. Pathetic at a workplace that requires you to take radiation safety courses... I feel so uncool. They also have this new course called "General Electric Safety" for all new employees. It's a 2.5 hour course teaching people how to deal with electrical dangers. This is in response to the electrocution of a SLAC employee sometime ago (I don't know if he ended up ok, but I hope he did...) To me this seems somewhat dumb, it's in response to a single incident which has only minimal risk. An analogous example is how people are frightened by the possibility of a shark attack (ie recent Florida incident) but not afraid of skin cancer. Shark attacks kill fewer than 100 people every year while skin cancer's fatality rate is orders of magnitude higher. Despite this, people constantly take precautions to avoid shark attacks while doing nothing to avoid the larger threat (by wearing suncreen or staying out of the sun). In the same way, it seems that SLAC is responding to one spectacular incident while ignoring various threats on site such as the construction.

I'm bored...
Good news: I brought my i-pod to work today so in my downtime, I can listen to music.
Bad News: I haven't updated my i-pod for over 5 months

posted by Edward Young @ 11:37 AM