Monthly Archives: September 2009

Going to become a first-aider at work

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On the 13th of October I’m finally going to learn the basics of first aid.

I’m being sent on the course by my boss after volunteering in response to an email. I’ve been wanting to do this for a very long time. I requested this training when I worked at my previous job, and they never managed to get around to sending me on the course. They sent Lizz pretty much straight away when she requested it (that’s favouritism for you)!

It’s only on for a few hours, so I’m just hoping they cover plenty of things in the time they have.

Looking forward to crossing this thing off. đŸ™‚

See more progress on: learn first aid

Data Centre Trip

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Yesterday I went to the data centre with the sysadmin team to help set up a massive delivery of new dedicated servers. When we reached the data centre we found that the servers were ready and waiting for us. The delivery company had stacked them in large columns in the entrance to the data centre. I was given a visitor card so I could walk around the centre by swiping my card and it made me feel a little bit important to have a swipe card with my picture on it.

Once we got into the data centre itself we all had our specific jobs assigned to us. Luckily I managed to escape the dreaded box opening/disposal tasks and got the much more exciting rack rail screwing job with Jarrod. Here’s a basic idea of the job: each server has two rails to mount it on, each rail has two screws at the front and 2 screws at the back. 80 servers had to be done by the end of the day. That’s a total of 320 screws for me and another 320 for Jarrod.

We spent all morning putting rails into a couple of server cabinets, then we went for lunch together and enjoyed watching Jarrod try to eat a 15 inch pizza by himself. Needless to say, he failed.

When we got back into the data centre we put rails in the remaining space of one cabinet, and most of the next cabinet. Other members of the team put the servers into the cabinet while we were working on that.

Just when Jarrod and I thought our screwing escapades were over we were asked to make sure the servers were all fastened in using screws on the front to secure them to the rails. There are two screws on the front of each server for this very purpose, so that made for an additional 160 screws, but these ones were done a lot faster.

My first trip to the data centre was definitely an interesting experience, and it was very nice to get to visit it, and be involved in the hardware side of things as well as the software side. It’s nice to know I’ve played a physical part in the company rather than just an electronic part.

The Daily Mail is (still) full of shit

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I was linked to an article on a ridiculous website that cites this Daily Mail article most of the way through.

Basically the article is more scaremongering by The Daily Mail, this time focusing on Swine Flu vaccinations instead of cancer, but it mostly comes down to the same thing: sensationalist journalism intended to do nothing but sell papers, regardless of the consequences.

In 1976 there was an outbreak of swine flu in America. One man died from it, and several others were hospitalised. The USA rushed out a vaccine to 40 million people. Of these 40 million there were 25 deaths from 500 detected cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome.

Here’s what The Daily Mail has to say on the matter:

  • More people died from the vaccination than from swine flu.
  • 500 cases of GBS were detected.
  • The vaccine may have increased the risk of contracting GBS by eight times.

Let’s think about that for a second. Only one man died from swine flu but 25 died from the vaccination. Surely that suggests that the vaccination actually worked pretty well at preventing the virus from spreading. The side-effects seem pretty bad, admittedly, but I believe they are less likely to kill you than the swine flu the vaccination helps to prevent, especially 30 years on.

The risk of contracting GBS is now somewhere around 0.7 cases per million flu vaccinations.

More than 700 people had died from swine flu without widespread vaccinations when the BBC published the linked article. That figure is based on 125000 reported cases. The number of deaths is now somewhere over 2100 out of 200000 cases. The actual number of cases is higher than the confirmed number because of unreported mild cases, but we can also assume that was the case with GBS back in 1976.

If you have the flu vaccine then you’ve got roughly a 1 in 1.4 million chance of contracting GBS. If you’re one of the fifty incredibly unlucky people in the entire population of the UK that would get it then you can still relax because there’s still only a 1 in 20 chance that you’ll actually die of GBS, and that’s based on data from 1976. You’re probably more likely to be treated for it now, especially since people know to look out for it when flu vaccinations are being given.

If you don’t have the vaccination and you do get swine flu then you’ve got (very roughly) a 1 in 1250 chance of dying from it.

I think I’d rather take my chances on the vaccination.