Dichroic Reflections

my worst training

The other thing I like about this time of year is the rowing. It's not too cold any more in the mornings when we get out there, before we warm up, but it's not too hot after we warm up, either. (It would be at midday, but not at 5AM.) And it's the season for egrets and herons: flapping slowly overhead or standing in line on the side of the lake for all the world like spectators. Though, at regattas when we do have spectators they tend to be less stately, more motley and considerably louder.

Today I gave probably the worst training session I've ever done. Not my fault, really, and I think I did OK in the circs. I was asked to give my lecture at yet another site, tied to the one I spoke to Monday. Someone from the first site arranged the training, and worked with the people at the second site to set it up. We went together to the training site, where I was supposed to speak to all hands int he cafeteria. When we got there, none of the guys who were supposed to do set-up showed up until about 5 minutes beforehand. Then there was a problem with the projector - I think the one mounted on the ceiling had been removed. They got someone to bring another one down (by now the audience had all shown up), but it was antiquated. We finally got it turned on and projecting from my computer, but then the problem was that it was cutting off the top of the slides. (The whole projected image was onscreen, that is but the top third of the slides wasn't included in the image.) I fiddled with it a bit, but then found that the remote wouldn't turn on at all and the menu accessible from the main controls wouldn't let me adjust the image manually.

At that point I gave up, and made myself instantly popular, but not entirely educational, by saying, "All right, that's enough. I won't waste your time any longer." I spent five minutes giving them the main highlights, promised to get my slides sent to everyone at the facility and emphasized that they should call me with any questions. Short of keeping them there for as long as it took to fix the system, which would have made everyone too resentful to listen to anything else I said, or bringing my own projector, which I had no reason to expect to have to do, I don't see what else I could have done. I think the people who asked me to do the training were at least happy to have the high points communicated and that I didn't panic and fall apart - fortunately, I'm not really prone to stage fright in this sort of thing.