I'm so competent, I amaze myself.

In preparing for a departmental seminar I gave today (on my proposed bloggy project—yes, I talked about YOU*), I anticipated the worst.

I created the presentation in Open Office on my Macbook. But! I thought to myself. I haven't ever given a presentation using Apple, and I haven't tested my adapter. What if it won't hook up to the projector? So I backed the presentation up onto a flashdrive.

But! I thought to myself. What if the computer in the seminar room doesn't have Open Office? So I saved it as PowerPoint, and as pdf as well.

But! I thought to myself. What if the links in the presentation don't work on another computer? So I opened the file on various other machines and indeed, did have to resave some of the links as relative instead of absolute.

But! I thought to myself. What if the presentation won't open at all? So I made sure my links were saved outside the presentation so I could go directly to the relevant websites.

But! I thought to myself. What if the internet connection is down? So I saved cached versions of all the sites I wanted to show.

But! I thought to myself. What if ALL my technology fails me? So I made a cruddy set of printouts of my slides.

But! I thought to myself—

—but it was too late, because it was time for the seminar.

The Macbook hooked up to the projector with no trouble.
The presentation opened with no trouble.
I began the seminar with no trouble.
The first link worked with no trouble.

And then the computer froze dead and everyone got to watch me reboot. Upon which the thing couldn't reopen my presentation, and we had already wasted so much time trying to fix it that it wasn't worth trying any of my other backup plans. And I gave the rest of the seminar the old-fashioned way. Talking only.

It's just embarrassing that it was a seminar about technology.


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* Well, probably not you. But maybe you, over there in the corner. And you, with the nice haircut. I may even have shown excerpts from your blog. (This is a blogroll. This is a traffic tracker. These is what we call "comments".)