How risk averse are we?

As I scheduled our flights this time I, for the first time, paid attention to the type of plane we'll be on based on safety rather than simple comfort. Following the crash of Air France 447 I noticed that a number of the Airbus A-330 problems happened in the air, while most of the Boeing problems were problems of a more human nature like crashes on the ground. Mechanical failures have certainly happened on 747's as well (like engines falling off in the early '90's) but recent history made me a little more cautious about flying Airbus.

There are certainly risks associated with travel of any kind. If we never took risks we'd miss out on so many incredible sights and experiences. I love riding my motorcycle for example, and frequently going sans helmet. I'm generally more prone to take and enjoy risk than many people I know, but like any reasonable person I prefer to minimize them where it's practical or at least simple to do so. So... I chose flights using Boeing aircraft rather than Airbus for our flights.

I read an interesting article on the human vs. machine topic that was passed along on Twitter. If you're interested: http://trueslant.com/milesobrien/2009/06/10/the-paradox-of-simplicity/.

That aside, we're very much looking forward to our trip to see Marnnie and Travis. I'm probably more pumped about seeing Paris again and this time being able to share it with Marnnie and Kim, while Kim is more pumped about the Ireland leg of the trip, but it will be nice to share some time and create some new memories throughout.

Work-wise I've been experimenting with more and more of the social media use for marketing. I'm active on Twitter, with two accounts (work and personal), LinkedIn and we have our Rockwell Autmation portal. It's interesting to see how they work in concert. This week I joined Facebook. I'm not a big fan of all the trash that seems to happen on Facebook... getting strange requests to be friends with people I don't know, etc., but it's part of the mix so I want to see more of what it's all about.

I sent out a Twitter that our LinkedIn Safety Automation Forum group had reached 100 members after being about a month old. The next 24 hours saw a big increase in requests to join, with 14 requests in the following 24 hours and several more since. Of additional interest was where the requests were coming from, with the immediate requests coming from the U.S., then overnight requests coming from India and other parts of Asia as they got into their work days. I'm keeping a log of what type of requests garner the best results and thoughts on how to use these new tools in the future.

How risk averse are you? What risks do you take that you think are reasonable that others might find unreasonable? Most importantly, what would you like to do or achieve that you don't or won't because you feel the risk is too great?