Monday 6 August 2007

I'd rather not be here ...

I got home late yesterday afternoon. I didn't want to be home but I couldn't put it off any longer.

I went to work this morning. About half of the paperwork in my pigeon hole belonged elsewhere (including the round filing cabinet), so I was able to reduce the pile very quickly. I thought I had a lecture at 10 am but was delighted to find that it had been shifted to 11 am. Things were going well.

Then I found out that the bulb had blown in the projector in that lecture theatre. Apparently, the problem had been reported last week but it was taking some time to fix. (A blown bulb is a common problem, so why didn't they have one on hand? Well, that would be an unused asset, silly.) So, I printed out the 150 Powerpoint slides (it was a long lecture) to photocopy onto transparencies for use on the OHP (which, as far as I knew, had a functioning bulb.)

Now this was within 20 minutes of the start of the lecture. It was a bit tight but I could copy some of the text and pictures ...

Well, I could have copied them, had the photocopier not been left jammed* and, once having been unjammed, had it not refused to pick up the slippery transparencies from the bypass tray.

I contemplated standing at the front, holding up the photocopied slides and discarding them one by one like Bob Dylan in the clip for 'Subterranean homesick blues'.

In the end, I had to give the lecture without any visual aids other than a white board and a blue marker. And I think I managed it. I'm no great fan of Powerpoint for Powerpoint's sake but it can be useful in lectures, especially for images (of which there were many).

They had better get a projector bulb quickly ...

Yep. I'm back at work.
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* Thank you, whoever did that. You're on my hit list.