I think I was subjected to the worst presentation ever today. The presenter was from that company in Redmond, WA. The presenter's opening remarks must have been inspired by Steve Ballmer's monkey dance, only she wasn't nearly as entertaining. Apparently, the logistics weren't quite setup to her liking in Houston, so she gave us remote parties the play-by-play of microphone and speaker placement before she continued on. That way, we could picture the chaos of reconfiguration.
Then, she launched into the presentation with the speed of someone who pounded a few too many expressos. She frantically spoke and wildly clicked at the Office 2003 suite of products. She was connected to us via Net Meeting and we had terrible lag in Findlay. Consequently, the voice we were hearing and the results on the screen were terribly disconnected. With each new Net Meeting connection I could see the refresh rate fall in real-time.
Many people joined us from remote locations. They dialed into the conference line and connected to the demonstration via Net Meeting. It was distracting to see the presenter approve each person who joined via Net Meeting during the actual presentation. To make matters worse, apparently a few people dialed into the conference line and once on the line with us put us on hold. The result was everyone dialed in heard nice relaxing elevator music on top of the presenter's voice. This music chimed in at several points and was soothing.
The presenter found (during the demonstration) that several of the features she wanted to demonstrate didn't work. Apparently, she didn't do a test run of the demonstration in our highly managed environment. She was tripped up several times due to surprises of her own making. At one point , she couldn't figure out why a feature wasn't working as she thought it should. She blurted out, "I was talking and not really paying attention." I guess that explains it.
She demonstrated a few features that did work but was interrupted by one of our employees who explained that that functionality won't be enabled in our environment. One would think that the content to be delivered would be designed for the intented audience. I guess that was asking too much. I left the presentation early, did some work, and returned at the end to pick up a free lunch.
I played basketball tonight in the Marathon league as a sub for the 6pm game. I was able to score 10 points and achieve a personal best. Unfortunately, we didn't win. However, I played with my regular team for the 7pm game and we won. I was able to score 2 and get a few rebounds. I am pretty tired, but this is good preparation for the waterskiing season.
I just finished The King of Torts which was written by the master story teller, John Grisham. You can't go wrong reading any of Grisham's books. If you are perceptive you would realize from my blog that I have read quite a few books recently. I have been travelling on the road for work the past couple weeks and enjoy spending the time in the airport trying to catch up with my reading queue.
Govenment officials confirmed today that France has raised its Terror Alert level from "Run" to "Hide". The only two higher levels in France are "Surrender" and "Collaborate". Officials said the alert level was raised in the aftermath of a fire which destroyed one of their primary white flag factories, critically reducing military readiness.
One Point Safe is an engaging and scary story about the safety and security of nuclear materials and weapons.
"One Point Safe. This precise term of weapons engineering refers to the standard that every U.S. weapon must meet, so that in case of an accident, the chance of its producing an explosion with a nuclear yield greater than four pounds of TNT is only one in a million."
This description of security agencies that protect the U.S. from nuclear terrorism sounds similar to the findings of the 9-11 Commission: "Bungling, arrogance, logistical chaos and the unwillingnewss of agencies to communicate were paralyzing their ability to defuse the worst nightmare of the post-cold-war age."
"Plutonium dust kills for at least 24,000 years. Wherever and however the dust might be ingested, breathed in, licked by mistake, it was the world's most potent killer."
"John Goggin, a veteran of the Manhattan Project... was eighty-one years old... The octogenarian walked slowly around the table. He studied the mysterious Building 33 as he walked around again... Tarmiya was an exact replica of John Googin's building at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home of the calutron weapons program... 'The Iraqis took the unclassified information on the U.S. calutron program and then they innovated.'" The Iraqis were well on their way to enriching uranium to make weapons.