AKMA’s Random Thoughts

From Behind the Firewall

Greetings from Olivet Nazarene University, where the network (wired and wireless) is so tightly buttoned-down that the open kiosks in the students cetner won’t let you online unless you know the local secret handshake. By inadvertent social engineering — I didn’t mean to manipulate anyone, honest — I’ve found my way online, so I’ll blog out the exciting events from yesterday as they developed subsequent to my awaking from my waffle dream.

Yesterday morning began with getting Margaret off to the airport for her trip to Major University; she got going on time, looking so sharp, and in due course arrived safely. She’s having an exhausting time, but is learning more about the program she’s visiting.

Next, a number of us went to donate blood, which (as you may recall) is a big deal for a chicken such as I. All went well, however, and I returned home somewhat depleted. I then dashed off an on-deadline letter of recommendation, ran to pick up Pippa, hastened back to the house, and threw some clothes in a case, hopping in the car at a little after two o’clock to make the two-hour dash down to Bourbonnais to finish up my paper, print it in time to give a copy to my respondent (this is a University campus, right, so public printers should be all over the place?), and give my keynote address.

After about twenty minutes, I was lodged in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I remained locked into traffic for about two hours, which got me only to the southern parts of the Chicagoland mmetropolis. I had another hour of driving ahead of me; I was tired and irritated, I was running low on gas and food — so I stopped for a late lunch at a Subway, or (to be more precise) a sandwich shop to which Subway transfers employees too slow and too sullen to make it in the high-pressure Subway location in, possibly, Two Silos, Iowa. After negotiating with the reluctant servers to extract my veggie sub from their preparatory clutches, I drove the remaining forty-five minutes to Bourbonnais, drawing nigh unto my destination near five o’clock. I stopped by a video rental place to pinpoint my destination, and pulled up to the registration desk shortly after five. I got to my room at the Olivet Alumni Inn, showered rapidly and changed into my conference suit, put my final editing touches on my address, and whirled by to the conference center, only to discover an aggresively PC-only network, that the only printer around had only a serial port — no USB.

At this point, I gave up my illusion of control over my circumstances, handed a rough draft of the talk to my respondent (with due apologies), and settled in.

The address went very well; the attendees had lots of probing questions and positive feedback for me. It was encouraging to observe that people seem more ready to respond affirmatively to the kind of argument that I’ve been amking for a long time. Maybe the ideas have been around long enough to seem less startling, more comfortable; maybe the social validation makes a difference, so that ideas that sound ludicrouus when an assistant professor makes them in the obscure meeting-room where a Semiotics group holds its sessions, sound more convincing when a full professor makes them in a keynote address. Whatever the cause, it’s a treat and a relief that the conversation was active, pointed, and encouraging.

Posted by AKMA at February 21, 2004 02:04 PM | TrackBack