My blog

For my team throughout the past nine weeks in this class, things have been going pretty well. I would have to say that the strongest part of this team is the chemistry and relationships built throughout the past semester, each member of the team has been able to work very well within small groups as well as with the group as a whole. Although no group and no individual is perfect, even on our roughest days we have been able to get past whatever else is going on in our lives and classes and been able to pull it together to work as a great group. Everyone has participated greatly and has brought their own skills as an individual to the table and has been able to make teamwork a breeze. As far as improvements go with our team, I would have to say that participation is always key, and that any small form of participation or feedback from team members, no matter how small can save a team from any kind of trouble or having to work so much harder for a simple goal. This class has been very fun and the closeness of group members has made some good friendships between classmates, but that is also a recipe for getting a little too social in class and getting off topic with friends, if group members were just a little better at differentiating between class time and fun time, things would go much smoother and faster in class. I believe our team needs to spend more time on the series game and take it (no pun intended) more seriously, as it is a big assignment and there is a lot of work that it will be requiring to complete. The three biggest things we need to do to get ready for our beta test is the completion of the game board, the solidification of the game rules onto paper, and a day to work out any kinks in the entire plan to make sure all operations are flawless and that we are ahead of the game when it comes to being set for our beta test.

In the book the legislation did fail repeatedly but thanks to the state legislator that continually pushed for, what was deemed at the time to be a fairly progressive law, we now have much safer roads due to the restrictions placed on drivers regarding cell phone usage. In chapter 23 there was scientific proof showing the dangers and consequences of cell phone usage while driving and it repeatedly failed because of the lobby groups backed by the cell phone companies and carriers who didn’t want any other kind of restriction to cell phone usage while driving. The lobby groups also used the system and its history of bias against minorities and their likelihood of being pulled over and the addition of making the use of cell phones in cars illegal would add to the amount of vehicles pulled over and would add the the stigma, and lawmakers didn’t want that. The common sense education pushed by the lobbyists, I believe, was a good idea but still fell short of accomplishing the goal of safety for the thousands of drivers and pedestrians affected by distracted drivers each year. The best legislation is actually what we have today, zero use of cell phones or texting while driving, and the use of hands free devices such as bluetooth built into the vehicle. Although there is not too much research to support or refute the help of hands free devices and I believe that there could be future legislation to further regulate the use of any kind of phone usage in the car while driving.

Estimation and calculation are almost two contradictory items, on one hand you have an exact measurement, and in the other you have something that is just an estimated guess. When dealing with things where the margins don’t need to be exact, estimations can be an acceptable option. But when things need to become specific, calculations will always be a necessity. This ties greatly into assumptions and data, pretty much the same concept, just worded a little differently and for slightly different purposes. In today’s digital world where we may be in need of directions, we are going to rely on data to get us where we need to be when using maps. Take google maps for example, the users rely on data from google maps to get their directions and google keeps these maps updated with data, whether it’s from other map users, construction companies, or just general employees doing their jobs to make sure the user gets the best possible rout. Take construction on roadways for example, google must rely on data to stay up to date on those kinds of things because if the maps always assume that a certain roadway will always be open, it will prove to be troublesome to the user following the map to a closed road when it could have been avoided with an alternate route that would have easily led to the same destination. But assumptions are a good thing as well, when estimating things out, assumptions are always the biggest players in helping estimates because those generally tend to be the things that can be easily relied upon. If calculation the time it takes to take a quick trip across town to go the movie theater, it’s always good to take on the assumptions first because those will be your biggest factors in this kind of traveling.  You’ll  need to make assumptions based off of what time of day it is to best deal with the Chico traffic to get the movies on time.

Reggie’s accident certainly is numbing, the shock factor that follows is very believable. Although a real case of “amnesia” is not really possible, the shock factor of what happened is enough to make anyones’ reality a little hazy and difficult to comprehend. I do side with Reggie in his difficulty to piece the events, right before the accident and during, together. I do think this shock is temporarily forgivable but Reggie must do his best to recover and do his best to truthfully piece his reality back together to bring light to the accident and provide an explanation to what happened. I have never had a close call super similar to Reggie’s, but I have been in an accident that has brought similar haze to my memory during the events of my accident. My junior year of high school I was involved in a car accident that ultimately left me with a broken foot after everything was said and done. I was riding on the back of my best friend’s bumper as he backed out of his parking spot at school and he too became distracted by something, whether it was his sister in the truck with him or my other friends standing on both sides of his vehicle, I don’t know, but he ended up backing me into an SUV in the spaces behind him and I was partially crushed. I remember everything leading up to the accident vividly but the moments, even seconds, right before impact become extremely hazy and hard to recall. I didn’t hit my head or pass out from excruciating pain, I just went into shock. That event is something I had never experienced before and I believe I was overcome with fear. Just like Reggie this amount of shell shock can and will do a number on your memory. As of right now in the book, from what I have read, Reggie is still experiencing this shock and hopefully can snap out of it sooner than later to help solve the cause of this tragic accident.