I Hate the Movies

Not the actual model.

We have a (relatively) new library with a fabulous (ha) projector system that's supposed to play Blu-Ray and project laptops onto a screen that is supposed to come down and go back up in a reasonable fashion.

Me, I would rather sit and read to 50 squirmy kids for 90 minutes than have to try to operate this useless piece of techsrement. It did come with some sort of remote, but not the sort of remote that you or I use for watching DVDs at home - oh no! I'm not sure what it does, but the remote isn't in anyway useful. In fact, I didn't know we even had one until out of desperation in trying to figure something out, I opened the case on the wall. The remote was inside. Ah, so it wouldn't get lost, I imagine. It would have been nice to have known it was in there, even if it's useless.

This equipment, which was undoubtedly expensive, came with no guide or operation manual. If there had been one, the installers took it with them when they left, just before they hid the remote inside the casing. We have no idea what we're doing most of the time. The only advice they gave me was "Never turn this off," and the man pointed at the main switch. "It will mess up the programming." I have never turned it off. I dutifully put a sign next to that switch that says "Never turn off."

It would also have been nice if there was some audio input so that I could play my puppet show recordings, but no. I have to set my boombox up on the stage for puppet audio.

It's useless. Just plain without any sense or rhyme.

Today we had to show a movie, and I suggested we get going 45 minutes ahead because I know this trash heap can be ... finicky. We inserted the Blu-Ray, pressed the Blu-Ray button and a selection screen was projected. There was no way to make a selection and it would not move past that screen to play. We tried everything. By this time there are now three of us working on it. We tried the laptop, and that was taking forever to come up. We clicked the laptop button and waited for the disc to start up. Nothing but the blue screen of death was being projected. And the laptop wouldn't give the disc back. Finally, I pressed the laptop button again and it came on. We were able to choose "English" and the video progressed.

We were done with five minutes to spare and not all the popcorn was ready, but it was close. This happens almost every time we use the contraption. Something is always going wrong and we have to bash at buttons and find work-arounds.

Meantime, it's busy out in the Children's Room. People are signing up for Summer Reading and asking questions. Fortunately, the internet and wireless were down, so that cut down quite a bit of that sort of traffic. However, I was a quivering blob by then.

I hate that system. It's useless. I can't think of another word than "useless," unless with some sort of string of emphatic intensifiers. I can only hope that the next time they plan to show a movie (even more annoying is that the person who set up the movie schedule no longer works here to handle it herself), I will be either in another country or on another planet.

Please, please let us not show any more movies. Shoot me first.

shelfmonkeys - The Form

Write your own ending.

Curse You, MicroSquash Outlook!

I've just spent ten minutes on an internal e-mail that should have taken 30 seconds. I haven't used Outlook much and so I really don't understand it. And we all know how well I take to things that are new. Okay, not as badly as some ...
Anyway, it's almost imposs. to send an e-mail until you have your recipients straight and they have to be separated by semi-colons rather than the commas used by just about every other e-mail format I have ever used since I started messing around with the internet in 1995, and I started out with Pine-mail in ascii!
All I was trying to do was point out the handy article on creative dramatics in the latest issue of Book Links to my co-workers (who are scattered to the winds today: one out, one at circulation, and one busy putting together a storytime) and I had to re-send this e-mail over and over until I figured out I need to
1. use the semi-colons
2. delete the set of addressees with the commas
before it would actually send it.
I think.
Perhaps my co-workers have received six versions of this not-so-critical e-mail.
This is even worse than the confusion I have over tags (such as in the block below on my posting screen, which you can't see, but I assure you is there). Here in Blogger tags are separated by commas. Some places they are separated by spaces so you can't have two-word tags unless you run them together as one word or, in the case of some sites, put a "+" between them. We all know that my persona is alllllll over the web at this point (just click on the tiny claimID button way at the bottom of this blog to see some of the bits I know about), so I'm taggin' like a third grade class at recess here. Consequently, my tags might fall short of ideal. "You're It!" "Am not!" "I tagged you!" "You missed!" "Did not!" "Did too!" ad fisticuffs.
If I learn anything more about Outlook, I'll let y'all know when I stop bleeding.