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August 26, 2007
Neurosis is its own reward
So here I am at the office, Sunday before classes start. We can now make our image presentations from home using the superb software of Artifact, the Visual Resources Collection of these Colleges. Sadly for you, access to Artifact is restricted to Colleges' users - I'd love to show you the elegant interface.
However, I'm here, because I like to check things. If I ironed shirts I'd always be running back to check on the iron. Luckily, science has solved that problem for me. So I not only am making my presentation for the first meeting of Art 218, Age of Chivalry - Gothic Art & Architecture but I went in to try it out in Houghton House 212, because some remodeling was supposed to be completed by now. At the very least, I wanted to lower the blackout shades before any young folks got near them. I often think we should drop the drinking age in America, but I would be happy to see a requirement of 25-or-older for operating the kind of chain-drive-shades-that-run-in-tracks we have. I don't mean to be condescending, but the young always seem to rush the process and we end up having to call Building & Grounds to disassemble the tracks and get things back in place.
So there I am, trial run of the first version of tomorrow's class. The computer starts up on the first try, which is pleasant. The digital projector, no.
I try several things from the podium that often work. No luck.
I walk over and try to start it manually from its own power button. No luck.
I finally climb up on a chair and look at the damned thing. It is suspended on a pipe from the ceiling. Someone (I'm looking at YOU, A.V.! Feel free to blame the painters or the fire alarm installers, though) has UNPLUGGED the projector and forgotten to plug it back in. Of course, the cord is neatly entwined with other cords around the suspension system, so it wasn't exactly dangling where one could see it from a distance.
But - go back and click on Houghton House - we have high ceilings. Even while standing on a chair I can't reach the ceiling-mounted power outlet. Now because we're the Art Department and we're always fiddling with things hung on the walls and the way we light them, we usually have a ladder standing in a corner of the house. Today? No. I looked everywhere. I even asked a colleague who's here painting, the only member of the studio side of our faculty who didn't move to the new building. He couldn't find it, either.
Well, I'm absolutely certain that AV is way too harried today and tomorrow to get over here to plug something in before my class at 12:20 tomorrow, so I found a sturdy table to stand on and plugged the damned thing in.
Success!
And my images look lovely!
Though, of course, I now see they're not really what I need. There's nothing like seeing things room-sized to realize you need other images to explain them. Back to preparation.
However, now you see why neurosis is sometimes its own reward. I'm the first person scheduled to teach in the room this academic year, and that would have been exactly the kind of way to start a semester that would have killed me.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at August 26, 2007 11:13 AM