Real Life Crap

[cornerofmadness]

Well, I have a lot to say but right now I’ll separate the lots into two updates. This one will be about the job interviews. Want to watch Dana go nuts? Fly to central Florida right now and get a ring side seat. Now, I’m thrilled about getting three job interviews. The one last week was great training for the two next week. And heck there’s two MORE jobs in Wisconsin I really want so cross your fingers for me as I send in my resume.

Anyhow, Kansas is making me fly out there for the interview. In fact I need to get in touch with them and see if they want me to do a teaching presentation which everyone else does (reasonable, I am interviewing to be a college professor after all). This isn’t just somewhere Kansas, it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere Kansas, nearly 4 hours from Denver and 5 hours from Kansas City (it doesn’t appear I can fly into Topeka which is mid-way). So I get to spend lots of money flying in and driving all day afterwards. Sigh.
Utah, on the other hand, is allowing me to skip the expense of flying out there (bless you Utah). They’ll interview me by phone. This is fine by me. However, I have to video tape myself doing a 15 min. presentation on the circulation of blood through the heart. Well, this sucks. If I were in class, no problem. However, my school is on semester break and the professors are out of there. It’s their week off and they won’t be back until I have to have this tape in. Fine, I’ll call Kinkos. As some of you know, this didn’t pan out. Kinkos in the north where I’m from are set up to help businesses do teleconferencing and have fully equipped PowerPoint projector rooms. The Kinkos here don’t even have so much as an old-fashioned overhead projector. Sigh.
So I call the libraries. The local one has an overhead and the one two towns over has PowerPoint and the computer to run it (the local one had PowerPoint projection but you had to bring your laptop. I don’t have a lap top). So, while my parents are here I’m trying to a) arrange these rooms b) create a PowerPoint presentation. I don’t own a camcorder. My dad’s is so old the battery pack assembly doesn’t work and it has to be plugged in so I said, leave it home. Ditto with another friend’s system. So I go to DeLand to rentacenter yesterday to get one. 45$ is a lot cheaper than the 500$ it would take to fly out to Utah not counting hotels, dinners and car rentals. I bring it home and charge it. I call the library to make sure that I have the room and they say I do but I have to sign a form for ‘official’ approval the day before so I drive back to DeLand for this. Now I’m irritated (easy to do). I try to play with the camera after it charges most of the day. The tape part won’t open. ARGH! I curse. I beat it up. Sharon takes it from me and she can’t open it.
Fine now I have to go back to rentacenter before going to the library and god forbid they can’t fix it because they didn’t have another one. I get there to find out the problem is the battery won’t hold a charge and it has to be plugged in (hell, if I wanted to do that I could have borrowed my friend’s or my dad’s.) Grrrrr. I don’t have time to run home and get an extension cord so I have to buy one. Fine another 5$ is still cheaper than flying but by now I’m ready to bite someone.
I get to the library and they set me up. I have my PowerPoint in hand. I’m very upset with it because you see, my new computer with the CD burner has no PowerPoint (something I hope to rectify soon). My old computer has it but doesn’t have a burner. PowerPoint on the old computer has corrupted and the templates are all gone. So I have ugly plain slides but hell, at least they’re there. The new computer has a virus attached to media player and I’m busy trying to get that dealt with through all of this (thanks Chris) So, I do my thing and find I can’t save it to A (if I can save it to a floppy I can bring it to the new computer and burn it to a cd). I had to take out ALL the pictures but one and then it fit on a floppy. I burn the cd. The library’s computer is so old it doesn’t have a cd player. Thank god I brought bought copies. They also don’t have a pointer/slide advancer. I now have to cock-eye the projector so I can reach the keyboard (actually have to hold it or I’d be moving out of frame each and every time I advanced the slide). It takes about a half hour to figure out how to set the camera on the lectern (thankfully I brought a booster from home). I’m casting shadows on the screen because I’m tethered to the keyboard so I give up and just TELL the committee on tape why this looks like it does (and thank them for allowing me to do it this way. Might as well start kissing butt now). It’s not pretty but at least it’s done. I rewind the tape and look (sans sound) to see if it’s there. It looks okay.
I try to eject it. It won’t open. ARGH. I try and I try. Finally it opens and it STRIPS the damn tape out. I stamp around nearly breaking my high heels then I examine the tape. It’s not broken so I wind it back in, and look. Hey, it’s scratchy but it’s playing. Fine. It’s going to Snow College just like that.
Now, let’s see if I end up in Utah. Hell, it’s western Utah. It appears to be in the mountains. That could be fun. I like snow. Then again it’s Utah. Is there anything to do in Utah?