We're Going to Powerpoint you anyway!

RantWoman had gone a really lovely spell without any bouts of Death By Powerpoint. Silly RantWoman to hope the trend continues; the last couple weeks have brought a couple spectacular episodes.


The first one occurred in passing at the Broadband Summit on the Microsoft campus, in the middle of the very navel of the Powerpoint universe. One of the presenters said in passing something along the lines of "look, we all know that the experience viewing this on our big screen in no way compares to the experience at 12"! But we are still going to Powerpoint you anyway!


Well, not RantWoman because she made a mouthy reasonable accommodations request and got the Powerpoints before they were available on the website. RantWoman did not of course plug her giant laptop in to check things out up close during the presentation. In fact, RantWoman rewarded an acquaintance's adhoc video descriptive service with quips about which presentation had the highest jargon density per slide. She also certainly filed the presenter's comment in her growing archive of Powerpoint insanity.

RantWoman's second, much more recent bout of Death by Powerpoint occurred in the context of such a wonderful inspiring presentation that RantWoman does not want to besmirch the topic by tagging it with her aggravations about Powerpoint. This time the culprit was amateu AV assistance and unfamiliar projection equipment. Before the presentation could be launched, there was much grinding of disk drives and beeping as a series of drivers got installed at the sort of glacial pace indicating either antedeluvial equipment or horrendous virus infestation--or both.

RantWoman does not particularly want to speculate as to the cause of the computer distress. The point is that the computer got several times to some kind of electronic equivalent to "Fatal error, I can go no further." The number of those in attendance was small and willing to hope more attenders would appear during the battles with technology. Ultimately, those there were passionate0--and patient, Still, after several rounds of technological mishaps, the tiny crowd decided they could all make a semicircle and watch the presentation on the laptop.

Again, not RantWoman. First, RantWoman almost never attempts Powerpoint without visual assistance / screen enlargement. Second, RantWoman could maybe have peered by pressing her nos almost up to the screen, but this would impede anyone else wanting to see the slides.

Third, RantWoman had her midsummer cold. RantWoman has a rich bouquet of reasons for RantWoman's face to hurt, and reasons with incompatible palliatives to boot. Thus, RantWoman was actually happy to realize the pain in her face likely was congestion related to the same stratospheric levels of airborne oak tree pollen that all of RantWoman's friends have been grumbling about. RantWoman was less happy that her nose was dripply decongesting in it's usual early cold fasion; RantWoman was really grateful to attend the presentation but still did not want to feel like a giant germ vector sharing her distress with the already undersized audience.

Mostly though RantWoman is very happy to note, she got a lot out of the presentation with or without Powerpoint!