Last week I taught a one-night course on blogging, and I've been psyched about the course since, oh, November. Plenty of time to prepare, right?
In theory, yes.
I put together several pages of handouts and bookmarked lots of blogging resources to share. I even lugged my laptop over there two days early so I could test-drive the projection equipment and make sure that everything was running smoothly. I still occasionally have flashbacks of the multimedia presentation I botched in college speech class, and there was no way I wanted to repeat that experience.
Then I showed up a few minutes early the night of my class and discovered that I was assigned to a different classroom and a different projector. The outlets were all in different spots and the projector had different buttons. I plugged it into my computer and held my breath. No signal. I pressed a few buttons and restarted my computer. Nothing changed.
Then I asked for help downstairs, but they said it must be a problem with my computer. Uh, thanks... Not wanting to waste the entire 2.5 hours obsessing over an AV issue, I asked my class to gather round my laptop and we'd improvise. I must have hit the wrong key, because my keyboard got stuck on number lock.
Forty minutes into my presentation, someone delivered the correct projector, but it only magnified the fact that I couldn't type and was too frazzled to find the button that would undo number lock (it's obvious to me now).
After class, I met some friends for a (much-needed) white chocolate martini and they regaled me with their stories of projectors gone awry. I had no idea this was so common! Ever since my college speech professor humiliated me in front of about twenty other students, I thought I was the only moron in the world who couldn't work an LCD projector. Apparently, I'm not. Thank goodness!
The next day, I got an email from a student thanking me for the presentation. I also got a package in the mail with a special cord I'd ordered so I could hook up my laptop to my TV. It plugs into the same port as a projector, so I figured I'd spend my Friday night in another fit of frustration. Great. But at least nobody else would be there to witness it. I plugged in my laptop, closed my eyes, and said a silent prayer to the tech Gods. The silly thing worked on the first try.