In Case of Emergency – ICE Your Cell Phone

I had a post all set for today, but then I got an email from my sweetie and I thought “This needs sharing!”

So here it is, as received:

A recent article from the Toronto Star, “the ICE idea”, is catching on and it is a very simple, yet important method of contact for you or a loved one in case of an emergency. As cell phones are carried by the majority of the population, all you need to do is program the number of a contact person or persons and store the name as “ICE”. The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found that when they went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they didn’t know which numbers to call. He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name to file “next of kin” under.

Following a disaster in London, the East Anglican Ambulance Service has launched a national “In case of Emergency (ICE)” campaign. The idea is that you store the word “ICE ” in your mobile phone address book, and with it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted “In Case of Emergency”. In an emergency situation, Emergency Services personnel and hospital staff would then be able to quickly contact your next of kin, by simply dialing the number programmed under “ICE”.

Please forward this. It won’t take too many “forwards” before everybody will know about this. It really could save your life, or put a loved one’s mind at rest. For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1,ICE2, ICE3 etc.

Being the sometimes skeptical girl that I am, I wondered – is this true? So off I went on a google search. I wasn’t able to locate the Toronto Star article, but I did find this link in Snopes, this one at Wikipedia, and more importantly, this link at the BC Provincial Emergency Program (PEP) website.

Bottom line? I’m going to make sure my phone is ICE’d before I leave the house tomorrow morning. Just in case. Interested in the image at the top of this post? You can find it and the downloadable template here.

Call Now! Famous (Dead) People Are Standing By

One of the things I really appreciate about gmail is that I don’t have to bother dealing with spam unless I want to.

All spurious emails suggesting that I’m letting down my girlfriend, that I can get cheap software, or that I’ve won an online lottery I didn’t enter automatically go to the spam folder, and are automatically deleted after 30 days. At any given time I can also see how many are in the file. The other day I had 147, so I thought – why not take a peek and see what junk is coming my way now?

Well, apparently one of my favourite authors is reaching out from the grave and trying to pass on a stock tip:

Hmm. You know, if a hot stock tip has hit the afterlife, I’m pretty sure it’s already peaked.

lo·cus (lō’kəs)

<!–Tags: Vancouver, Life–> There is something glorious yet dangerous about turning your back on technology. After 2 weeks of ‘forgetting’ my cell phone, checking my email as little as possible, not blogging, and generally staying as far away from the computer as possible, I caught myself having radical thoughts.

When faced with my ‘essential’ daily emails:
Why were these important again?

When dealing with emails I subscribed to, meant to keep me in the loop:
But they’re just selling stuff….

When cc’ed on yet another email where I actually a/didn’t have any decision making to do or b/ was getting it simply because someone was executing yet another CYA maneuver…
Bah.
Followed closely by DELETE.

So I started another list on a random, scrubby post-it, and titled it “emails received that I deleted without reading/or abandoned within the first few sentences”. Long name. Longer list. Once a subscription got 3 strikes, I requested to be removed.

I don’t think they’ll miss me.

I began to think that maybe all the information that claims to be relevent is, but not in my life. At least, not the one I want to be having, the one in which the friends I have I see face to face and know their voices and habits personally, not by their profile on myspace.

I began to think that the problem with living where I live is that so much effort is made to keep the shiny surface from tarnishing that the inner works are rusting from disuse. Fading even…

My focus is changing. And so most likely, will this blog.