911 System in Action

We have a custodian at the MTA Pub named Joann. She's worked for us for about a decade, and does an amazing job of keeping the floors and washrooms clean.

This morning, she was hard at work, and was wiping down one of the phones in the building. Six minutes later, the RCMP stormed the University Centre, to make sure she was OK. Apparently, while wiping off the phone, she unknowingly dialed 911.

She was pretty embarrassed, but it's good to know that the system can function effectively for emergencies!

The Tequila Wave of 2001

I was just going through some old data files, and I found an amusing video. It's from the Mount Allison University Pub, where in 2001, Drew Dudley decided that he would try to set a world record for the most consecutive people taking shots of tequila. The whole point of the exercise was to be a fun & unique way to raise money for Shinerama. Everyone who participated paid $10 to join, and all that money went as a donation to the Shinerama campaign. The folks who distribute Jose Cuervo tequila made arrangements so that someone could cover the costs of the tequila consumed. Here is the video, filmed in the Pub one afternoon just before supper:



YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v8g02iREBo

There's also a page on the Pub website that has more details:
http://www.mta.ca/pub/tequila.html

Looking back, it's neat seeing a ton of my old friends and staff members on the video. And strangely enough, even though it was about six years ago now that this event took place, several of those people are still working at or near Mount Allison. Also notable: as much as Drew was able to set a lot of records during his years as a Shinerama Director, both at Mount Allison and in other parts of Canada, I think this is probably the fastest time (four minutes) that he was ever able to raise $2000.

I'm going to try to tag a bunch of the people I recognize when this feeds out to my Facebook Notes - so far, I can see about fifty people that participated and who are in my Facebook friends list. It's pretty entertaining, at least for any of us that were there when it happened, and it's making me look forward to Homecoming Weekend at the university in just another three weeks or so. I'm going to have to keep digging around and see what other old videos I can find to share around.

University Exams and Garbage Cans

We're in the middle of end-of-semester exams here at Mount Allison University, so most of my friends are stressing out about how hard their lives are right now. But really, when you're 80 years old, will you look back and say to yourself, "Man, I can't believe I missed that question about Dirac's Constant on my exam back in 2006. That pretty much ruined the rest of my life."

Let's be serious for a minute: is that exam really going to make the difference between you spending the rest of your life doing sub-atomic particle research versus being "the fry guy" at the local drive-through? I thought so. So it isn't worth getting that stressed out. Study, but don't stress.

I agree that exams can be pretty hard sometimes, but do you want to know something that is really hard? Try throwing out a garbage can. I'm not kidding. I have a broken garbage can, so every week, I put it out on the curb with the rest of the garbage. But do the garbage collectors ever take it away? No. It's always left standing there, lonely and unwanted, as they drive off into the sunset. It's becoming a war of attrition between me and PBS Waste, but unlike Bush and the war in Iraq, I know that someday I'm going to win.