Are fire drills really necessary?

Fire drills have become a pretty commonly accepted part of life, but are they that necessary? First of all, how many fires are there every year? And of those fires, how many occur when there are people inside? And how many people die in fires beecause they were ill-prepared for escaping when the alarms sounded? It is a good to be able to leave a building when it is on fire, but does that really require practice? Is having to leave a building because alarms sound for no apparent reason going to prepare you to exit the building in the case of a real fire? I contend that considering how rare fires are and how little benefit fire drills offer, fire drills are unnecessary and should be eliminated, except for when the fire department wishes to test the alarms (rather than test people's ability to respond to them).

Nature center photos

I took a few pictures outside that I want to share.

pond at Cedar Ridge Preserve in Dallas (or Cedar Hill)

view of trees at Fort Worth Nature Center

Log in lake at Fort Worth Nature Center

sun shining through trees on water at Fort Worth Nature Center

dead tree in sky at Fort Worth Nature Center

I was playing around with a graphic editor I recently downloaded, called The GIMP, which has a lot of features. I was trying to touch up some photos I took to make them better, and while I believe that these pictures are better than what they originally looked like, I think that with more practice and knowledge, I can become a better photo editor.

Happy about the comments

I just realized that all of my posts this week have received at least 1 comment. I very much like comments so thanks to all of you who have commented. I don't know why I've received so many comments this week, perhaps my posts have been more stimulating than usual, I don't know.

Attended Campus Crusade

I have a friend who is in an on-campus Christian organization called Campus Crusade for Christ, and he's invited me to attend a weekly meeting of Campus Crusade. I've always turned him down because I've been busy or disinterested or apprehensive, but this week hasn't been to busy for me so I went tonight.

The meeting occured in a small auditorium and it started kind of slowly. A standard contemporary Christian band began playing some standard comtemporary Christian songs, which continued past 8:20. I'm not a big fan of comtemporary Christian music, it's all the same and music doesn't seem to a very effective means of worship. After the music, a guy talked about how Christ had transformed his life.

Then, there was another speaker, who was following-up on something a speaker said a few weeks ago. Tonight's speaker talked about how sometimes other Christians make us all look like hypocrites by their behavior. He said that that is partially our fault looking the other way when it happens and that we should confront these people. He provided four questions that we could ask ourselves to determine whether we should confront someone about their behavior, including determining whether the behavior was dishonoring to God, damaging to relationships, to the person, or to someone else. Then, the speaker referenced Bible verses that could help us prepare for confronting someone.

While I can't say that tonight's message was overly applicable to me, it seems like there might be some potential for future meetings to teach me some things that I could apply in my life. I don't know if I'll return, but it wasn't bad, so I might.

recycle on floor

I recycle my paper (and plastic) when I'm at school, but the only recycle bin in the building is downstairs. I don't want to have to regularly take my trash with me downstairs, so I usually have a paper bag in which I store my recycle until I get the chance to recycle it all at once. However, right now I don't have a paper bag, so I have a bunch of paper on the floor. What other option do I have? I'm not going to throw it away, and I don't have a bag to put it in, so putting it on the floor where the bag would be is my only choice. I'll be glad once I have a bag so that I can remove all this paper from the floor.

DART pass

I just got a DART pass, which is something I probably should have done a long time ago. I had to pay $5 for it, but now I can ride DART and the Trinity Railway Express for free to anywhere. I don't really have anywhere in mind that I want to go, but I could if I wanted to. Maybe some appealing destinations will present themselves.

Air freshener

Last week I commented on how I had been leaving the window open to bring some fresh air into my dorm because my room tends to accumulate a smell. I had put some baking soda in my room to try to absorb the smell, but it didn't seem to work very well, so I got an air freshener to try to cover up the smell. It does a decent job of covering up my room's smell, but the room still has a smell and it feels stuffy. I try to open the window whenever I can, but when I can't open the window the room is always in need of fresh air.

I only have like a month left of school, so I guess I'll live with it. The case has been made to me, in private, that I might be the one causing this smell, but I doubt that. I have lived in three dorms before, one in the same building, and one time when I taped the vent with duct tape because the room was getting too cold, and have not had this room stench before.

Dry 7-11

There is a 7-11 right across the street from my dorm. I went there last night just looking for a snack or some dessert and I noticed that they had no alcohol for sale. Usually in convenience stores there is more alcohol than non-alcoholic beverages, but apparently University Park is a "dry" city, so the 7-11 can't sell alcohol. I just thought that was interesting, I don't remember ever going to a 7-11 without alcohol.

I don't quite understand the point of University Park being a dry city. It is surrounded by Dallas and right next to SMU, so alcohol isn't hard to obtain. It just seems that UP is missing out on sales tax revenue by not selling alcohol.

Few opportunities to exercise creativity

When I was a young'un, I had myriad opportunities to be creative. In school I got to go to art class, write papers, and do creative projects. Outside of school, I got coloring books, paints, color pencils, and more to use creatively.

Now that I'm in college though, the opportunity for creativity rarely presents itself. Engineering requires creativity, but not engineering school. Most of my classes are math-based, which means no creativity involved. My one exception is Spanish, which I sometimes enjoy because of the creative opportunities presented.

I like to be creative but I don't do many creative things, so I'm going to try to be more creative. To start with, I think right now I'll provide a story telling contest. I would like for whoever's interested to write a story of less than 100 words (you don't have to count) about you, someone you just met, an animal, and a crisis in a location that you're not very familiar with.

satellite imagery on Google maps

Google Maps now offers satellite imagery. So, now you can see satellite images of a bunch of different places (to a surprisingly high level of detail) instead of using a map. For some reason satellite images are very neat to me, maybe because they remind me of SimCity Classic. I could spend hours here at Google Maps looking around at what everything looks like from above.

RSS Feed Reader

I probably should've done this a long time ago, but I very recently got an RSS feed reader program. I tell it what blogs/journals I like to read and subscribe to their RSS feeds and then every so often the program tells me when someone posts. This program helps me out in a couple ways: 1) I don't have to go to every different blog just to see if they've posted (and then sometimes find out they haven't posted) and 2) I don't miss any posts. The program I use is called SharpReader.

Air show

The air show was this weekend in Fort Worth. It's pretty popular, more than 100,000 people went to it, and I think that only includes people who actually went to the military base and not all the people who stopped along 341 and 820. Lesley and I went and watched the Blue Angels for a while.

Previous poll results (#44)

Previously, I asked which classes I should take if I choose to take an extra semester. The results are here. Developmental psychology received the most votes, with 4 votes, and four classes received 3 votes: Basics of Photography; Advanced Webmastery, Cybercasting, and Cyberpublishing; World Cultures and Civilization; and Social Welfare.

Message board poll

Here's the poll that some of you have been really looking forward to. Some people think I should get a message board on my site, but I'm ambivalent about this idea. So, I'm letting my visitors decide.

A message board would be separate from the blog and would let people post about whatever they want and anyone could read it and respond to the posts. So, whereas this page lets me talk about whatever I want and everyone comment about what I said, a message board would let anyone post about whatever they want and let anyone commment in response. I had a message board a long time ago and it was hardly ever used.

A message board would be a good thing because it would let people easily comment about whatever they want regardless of how pertinent it is to something I've posted about. If there are any other reasons to get a message board, let me know.

Reasons I see for not taking the steps to set up a message board include the fact that I don't get enough visitors to make a message board that useful. Also, if people have things to say, they can just say them on this page. I'm afraid that a message board would either not get used or it would make people less likely to comment. I just don't see a big reason to get a message board.

Should I get a message board?

Yes, definitely, what a great idea!
Yeah, I guess so
I don't care
No, I don't think so
Definitely not, what a bad idea!

Current Results

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DST disaster

Now that we are re-acquainting ourselves with Daylight Saving Time, I thought I'd share a story that shows a problem that DST can present.

There was a guy who was watching TV late one Saturday night, and what he was watching happened to be porn. The TV schedule said that the show he was watching would be on at 1:00 and again at 2:00 AM. As the first hour of his show ended, he was looking forward to the next hour. But then the unthinkable happened. The time jumped ahead an hour because of Daylight Saving Time, and his show didn't come on again.