Pass Me Some of That Dumbass Over There

I work at a great company that is focused on all kinds of process and personal safety. We get alerts at least once a week, mostly from the guy who used to have my job, who now happens to be in a corporate job. You can learn a lot from some of the incident sharing, and I pass pretty much all of it along.

However, once in a while you get a gem that is just too hard to let go without some kind of comment. I wanted to share one with you.


In figure 1, you'll notice your typical LCD projector, which is usually paired with a computer for doing Powerpoint presentations and such. I use these at least once a month. I'm not an expert, but I can tell you this much: that bulb is HOT! I wanted to point this out to you, especially my office dwelling friends. If there are three things that can burn you in the office, it is this: The LCD projector bulb, the coffee in a paper cup, and that leftover soup you put in the microwave for 3 minutes.

The other thing you need to understand is the fire triangle. You see, heat + fuel + oxygen = FIRE! Three sides, so it's a triangle. In this case heat (bulb) + fuel (paper pad) + air (oxygen) = FIRE! Feel free to use your Beavis voice when saying "Fire!"

This will result in something shown in the next picture. Yep, burned a hole clean through that cardboard backer. I TOLD you it was HOT!

Here's the whole thing that annoys me with this. There's actually a safety alert about an incident that happened at a university in California. Yes, these people are smart enough to get into college, but probably have burns on their hands from pulling the pizza tray out of the oven without mitts.

I can almost see the train of thought here: "Boy, I feel stupid for doing that. If I turn it into a SAFETY ALERT, though, then I can look like I actually learned something from my stupidity."

I guess that's a good thing. But if you're using powerpoint, and you don't want anyone to see the screen, you can always hit the "B" key for "blackout" or hit the "W" key for "Whiteout."

Hopefully everyone learned something from our presentation today. Feel free to pass it around.