31 Days...and it was a day of mind-numbing powerpoint presentations

I'm back in powerpoint land. Help. Someone rescue me.

On Tues AM in the PDX airport, I followed a link on ArtsAndLettersDaily to an article on the abuse of powerpoint. The author, Edward Tufte, is probably my new hero. The timing was ironic considering the powerpoint hell that I quickly descended into this morning.

Today was spent in a hotel ballroom listening to local, state, gov' t professionals talking about critical infrastructure and homeland security. Of the 15 speakers or so - only two of them used powerpoint to ILLUSTRATE the main points of their talk (and the luncheon speaker was exceptional in the presentation of content and illustration). The rest of the speakers and panelists read

• every
• single
• bulleted
• sentence
• fragment

After reading Tufte's article, my mind inevitably wandered towards a critique of why I couldn't listen to banal speaker after banal speaker. They each unconvincingly delivered their spiel about the great things being done to secure our nation's critical infrastructure. These civil servants may be doing great work but reading a bulletized spiel was a discredit to their efforts.

(Segue: Most of our nation's critical infrastructure is privately held. And in the push to deregulate the energy sector, deregulated utilities now operate to maximize profit with little incentive to reinvest in improvements to the power-grid. However, power consumption is increasing every year without a comparable increase in production or transmission capability. It'll be the gov'ts problem when things crash but until then the private sector is reluctant to sacrifice profit to build the capacity and resilience that our power-hungry country requires. The luncheon speaker - the best presenter of the day - was basically at odds with an earlier speaker who was the prototypical political appointee of this administration who defended the 'private sector' against the intrusivenes of gov't.)

And, when I looked around the room, I noticed that most of the people were probably in "higher-grade" jobs than I do on a daily basis. As statistics were cited about the estimated costs to the national economy based on the failure in one of our critical infrastructure systems, I started calculating the cost just to my agency to have 5 people attending this conference. I am a lowly GS-12. There was one GS-13, two GS-14s, one GS-15, and a Lt Col from a district office. Of the GS-employees from my agency, $165+/ hour of salary (not including benefits) was being frittered away as slide after slide flashed up on the screen. And I know there were many other employees (of what is now probably the 2nd largest cabinet level agency) in attendance.

Powerpoint is not inherently evil. Rather, the inherent mind-numbing evil culprit is the lazy presenter who doesn't take the time to concisely describe the issue, directly outline possible solutions and processes, and present data relevant to their argument.

And, I do solemnly swear to do my best to never deliver a boring powerpoint presentation in my life. And, I hope that there is no correlation between bad powerpoint presentations and career advancement. But there is no evidence to indicate the contrary.

(Everytime I reread this - I find one more sentence where the verb-tense is all screwed up. I'm embarassed, but will let it go now.)

32 Days and Counting . . . and 4 of those days I'm back in Maryland/DC

It's a 5 hour flight from Portland to Dulles (non-stop) on United and I arrived at PDX in plenty of time for my flight. It's been 104-days since I left the MD/DC/VA area. For this trip - I packed only one carry-on and one personal item- just like the airline rules stipulate. Quickly exited the Dulles airport in a zippy dark blue Neon and headed east on the Toll-Road, then north on 495 following the signs for Baltimore. At 4 PM, traffic was already backed up on the American Legion Bridge heading towards Virginia. Only when I approached the convergence of 270 and 495 did the flow of traffic in my direction start to slow. But the Old Georgetown Road exit comes pretty quickly and I was off the beltway before the big beltway interchanges of Wisconsin and Connecticut Avenues.



As I drove the rental car toward Maryland and through downtown Bethesda, it was eerie to navigate the same old roads and familiar scenes but know that I couldn't 'go-home.' My last year in DC was so fractured with business travel that perhaps, now, every place I go just seems like another brief pit-stop and even my ties to MD/DC aren't as strong as I thought they were.

Later, I emerged out of Dupont Circle Metro to meet Catherine of the Calculus and her husband Nate 'Zach-Braff' Watkins for dinner, I saw the D2 bus zip past towards Glover Park where I once lived. And I saw the 42 bus roar up Connecticut - the bus I used to take to Adams Morgan where the company I worked for when I first arrived in DC was...er...'headquartered.




Over dinner at the new Heritage India (no finer Indian food in DC), Catherine, Nate, and I talked a lot about the present and the future. But we also talked about the past - studying in the common area of Alban Towers, making an almost inedible red-curry dish, the good ole days when we were 'just-students.' I have 5+ years of history here in DC. Two jobs, one degree, one marathon, a handful of friends, the start of a yoga practice, 4th of July picnics with Popeyes chicken, a tennis obssession, sultry summers, snow-silent cityscapes, a rat in the toilet, and so much more. The rhythm of daily DC life seems so distant now and a Portland rhythm is in utero. Perhaps in 32-days...

Maybe it's good to look at the past firmly in the eye to recognize it is no longer your present. On Saturday evening, I will board a non-stop flight out of Dulles to Portland. This 4-day visit MD/DC is just another brief pit-stop and I'm at home in the present.

However, I'm happy to say that I still can walk up the entire length of the Bethesda metro escalator and only puff just a little when I reach the top.

39 Days and Counting...

The other day, I measured out the condo with the help of MichelleAndScott.
This is what I came up with. It's still a little wonky but fairly accurate depiction of my home-to-be. Most of the furniture items depicted do not actually exist in real life. Well, they exist in stores, but money has yet to change hands.



In addition to ordering window coverings for my bedroom, I think I'm going to order a shower curtain. I go back and forth about whether to buy 'brand-new' furniture or take the time to scavenge through all of the Portland secondhand shops and furnish my place that way. The latter idea appeals to certain parts of my ideology. But a large part of me just hates shopping - and going the second route definitely entails a lot of shopping.

Happily, I'm almost done with my taxes. Love turbotax. It has been relatively painless this year.

It was meant to be.

I made it to Hawaii! And to assure the good tax-paying citizens of the U.S., I am working hard. The fact that I even made it to Hawaii is a minor miracle in itself. This trip was meant to be despite my best efforts to screw up the trip.

Read on...

Sunday, 27 February 2005

6:45 AM - Alarm goes off.

7:30 AM - Call cab

7:40 AM - Cab arrives.

8:00 AM - Reach airport. Check in for my 10 AM flight.

8:10 AM - Wander through Powells. Wander through Nike store.

8:20 AM - Go through security.

8:30 AM - Reach gate and see my boss, Mike.

"Hey, it's about time you showed up! The flight was delayed. But we're now about to board at any time."

"Uh, yeah. We've got plenty of time. What do you mean delay? Why are we about to board?"

And so it begins to unravel and the situation slowly begins to reveal itself.

The flight from PDX to SFO was always scheduled to depart at 8:10 AM.

And for the past week, I was convinced that the flight was supposed to depart at 10 AM. The only reason why the plane hadn't left was because of cloudcover in the SFO area. Mike had reached the airport at 6:45 AM - the same time I had set my alarm. It took a while for Mike to believe that I hadn't known about the delay. He thought I had looked up the flight status online at home and then decided to take my time to reach the airport.

I was shocked. I was stunned. I had never before spaced out to such a degree. With my heart pounding, I went to get a cup of coffee (as if I needed more stimulants at this point in time). When I returned to the gate, I looked at my boss and said, "I can't believe I almost screwed up this trip to Hawaii. I guess the only way I can think about this is that there is a REASON why I'm going to Hawaii. Some higher power must be intervening to make sure I make it over there."