The gods are against me, but the librarians love me

01.14.2003

Another day at the office. The department's wintel laptop crapped out just as the Power Point presentation was about to begin. I guess we were lucky that it almost worked.

John Wessell, the notoriously incompetent AV tech, had actually left the right cables in the classroom. Of course, he left no instructions. This is the John Wessell who's never in his office and never returns his calls (everyone in the Arts and Sciences offices and our department just roll their eyes when they hear his name). But I was able to figure out how to start up the projection system and what cables to connect to which ports on the laptop. Success.

And then ... the screen froze and the system crashed. Even when I closed the laptop, the screen was still on (visible on the projector). There's no handy little reset button on this mini-laptop like there is on every Apple iBook and PowerBook (at least not one I'm aware of). So no Power Point presentation for the class. I'm assigning myself the project of linking my iBook to the projector. I just need an adaptor for the video-out cable.

Of course, it'll be tough to test since we have this new stupid rule on campus. The classrooms must be locked after each class and unlocked by the following professor before his/her class. The locks are based on the magnetic strips from our campus ID cards. If this procedure isn't followed closely, deafeningly loud alarms go off that disturb classes in an entire building. So the 100+ students form one class have about ten minutes to leave a class before the 100+ students from the next class enter. This, of course, is for our increased security. Thank you, Osama.

After class, I went to the library to look up some information. Let me go on record as saying that librarians are the best people on the planet. No doubt about it. Every time I have to find some odd information, I go straight to them. It just makes sense. First, because it's their job. Second, they know everything (or at least how to find out anything). Third, they're always so damn helpful and eager. Did I mention that they know everything?

My one success today was finding the birth year of two semi-obscure academics.

Posted by Miguel at 04:15 PM

Comments

Hey... nice blog! Very clean looking.

So, with that new rule, no students can wait in the classroom unless when it's opened by the professor? No students can open those doors except the professors?

Posted by: lippy lin at January 15, 2003 10:23 AM

that's wierd. The computer guy in our dept. is Kevin Wessel. I wonder if they are related.

Posted by: allison at January 15, 2003 11:29 AM

Yep, students can no longer wait in the classroom for their professor. They must wait in the lobby in a mad crush. Imagine the lobby of Knauss filled w/ about 500+ kids coming and going in those critical ten minutes between classes. It's a ridiculously insane policy.

Posted by: Miguel at January 15, 2003 01:46 PM