1. The switch for the ceiling heater in our bathroom finally got all the way stripped this morning, leaving me in a panic about our apt burning down while I was at Computers in Libraries.
2. Wireless at Computers in Libraries was just about the worst I’ve experienced at a conference or professional meeting. Please take a moment to reflect on the irony if you will.
3. Wireless at Starbucks, however, works beautifully, thanks to my newly purchased Starbucks Gold card. Yes, I went there. The mental health savings today made it entirely worth it.
4. I get to my presentation space. No wireless. A curtain barely conceals the door to the loading dock, through which a strong breeze is escaping. I plug in my flash drive, and my presentation is corrupted and/or can’t be opened. I save another copy on my laptop, put it on the flash, plug the flash in, file has some weird incompatibilities. I upload the file to Slideshare from the presentation laptop thinking it’s a compatibility problem. No luck. I upload the file to Google Docs. File is corrupt. I open the file on my laptop, print as PDF, and then open the PDF on the presentation laptop. FINALLY.
5. 7 people come to my presentation. This is not a technology problem, but it is a bit annoying, especially since I gave one of the best presentations of my professional career.
6. I leave the conference in order to go straight home to attend my LEEP class. I hustled from the disco shuttle to run to the train, then run to the bus, then hustle the few blocks from the bus home, getting there 10 minutes late, which isn’t bad considering the amount of hustling involved.
7. And then, after 3 minutes of connectivity, our network drops out. Cue the hysterics.
8. Shane texts to say he’s going to Buzz to work on his presentation. Instead he picks me up and we BOTH go to Buzz, where the wireless immediately flakes out.
9. I finally, finally get what seems to be a stable connection just in time for the mid-session break. At least now I have a cookie and a coffee and I don’t have to run anywhere for a while.
latterdaybohemian 
Damn, girl. You really deserve a cookie.
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Network snafus seem to be the norm lately. UIUC has had a decent amount of trouble for the last 2-3 weeks. It’s frustrating to us because we’re online every second of our work day and equally frustrating for our users as they only have time for a little slice of internet love every day around their busy class schedules so they expect it to be there hot, sweet, and ready when they come to eat.
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Hey E-
Congratulations on “one of the best presentations of my professional career”. 🙂
But hey, don’t feel down about seven people showing up. I went to Renear’s talk at ASIST in 2007 and there were eight people there (including me). Happens to everybody.
-karen
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