Today. Was. Interesting.
My day started with my boss’s monthly 3-hour team meeting. I wasn’t looking forward to the meeting because I think no regularly scheduled meeting should last 3 hours This one ended early when an out-of-control car drove by our window on the sidewalk, crashing into parked cars, shrubs, light fixtures, and ultimately into another moving car. Students were screaming, etc. but no one except the driver was hurt. Still trying to figure out what happened there.
I returned to my office to get a call from my boss about how to embed a photo in a campus-wide alert. I assumed it was going to be about the crazed-driver-driving-through-campus-event-that-had-just-happened and was preparing to say why I thought a photo might be not so good, when it turns out it’s a “suspicious person” alert, e.g. “If you see this crazed alum, call security immediately and do not engage.” I look at my watch and note that it’s not yet 11 a.m.
I was glad the campus-wide alert didn’t have to go out last night because the school’s NETWORK WAS DOWN FOR SEVEN HOURS last night. Oh yeah, that happened too. This afternoon in our ISP smackdown phone call I actually got to say, “I’m not talking about 7 nines, 6 nines, or even 5 nines. Right now, we’ve had less than 3 9’s over the past 6 months…” (Our redundant connection will be completed at the end of this month)
Calgon ™, take me away!
essprit said:
Sep 12, 08 at 2:54 pmJust out of curiosity, what’s the structure to the three hour meetings? I can imagine scenarios where this could be productive, but sounds like they’re not.
On a related note, I think there should be a “Calgon take me away” job litmus test. Too many of those in a defined time frame (at least the ones that aren’t self-created), and it’s time for either big changes or moving on.
admin said:
Sep 12, 08 at 4:45 pmHere was the structure to the last meeting:
15 minutes for update
30 minutes to review the new cellphone allowance policy [at this point the car crashed onto campus]
30 minutes to review the conflict of interest policy
15 minutes for “break and fun activity” [was going to be making quilt squares–I’m not joking]
30 minutes to review our violence prevention policy
30 minutes to review our fall meeting schedule [kill me now]
30 minutes where they’d asked me to present on strategic planning
One of the major issues with the above agenda is that, as you may be able to discern, there was no clear objective. We didn’t need to approve the policies. Everything above other than the quilting and the strategic planning discussion could have been done via email or a wiki.
essprit said:
Sep 12, 08 at 5:02 pmOy. That’s almost as bad as when I was a faculty member and our department chair used to spend half of each faculty meeting reading us memos (out loud) he’d previously distributed by e-mail and in print copies to our mail boxes).
Sukey said:
Sep 12, 08 at 6:32 pmI think the crazed car thing was a clever sabotoge attempt planned by one of the meeting attendees.
Seth Vidal said:
Sep 12, 08 at 10:26 pmWas the violence prevention thing BECAUSE of the meeting? Was it like a necessary step to keep meeting attendees from hurting one another?
Maurry said:
Sep 13, 08 at 10:51 amDid anyone remark that the car crash occurred on 9/11 and was part of a grand terrorist plot? I guess I noticed this fact because I am part and parcel a believer in conspiracy theories…specially ones that I have concocted.
admin said:
Sep 15, 08 at 4:04 pmLet’s just note that the violence prevention policy was unable to be discussed due to the out-of-control-car-driver and that my boss couldn’t attend the meeting anyway to discuss the policy because she was in a conference call with The Law about what to do about our “suspicious person” on campus. Oh, if only this violence and threats of it could have been prevented!