Tuesday 11/08/2022
Went down to the gym first thing. It only takes about 25 minutes to do all the automated round of things. The new gym equipment is all computerized, it adjusts the resistance per your program and prompts you through the reps.
In the hour before the writers meeting I threw together something. The prompt was, “a cultural experience that changed your attitude”. I wrote about our visit to Malawi, how weird it was to be standing around with an expensive SLR talking to people who lived in a grass hut, cultivated cassava with hoes, and cooked over an open fire. Others in the group had similar things. Nancy wrote about her time working for the state dept. (?) in Yemen, how everybody regularly had parties where they sat around chewing khat. Which I had never heard of before today.
At three, Jan’s Hearing Support Group was to meet in the Training Room, which has only recently been restored to usability after being converted into a Covid isolation ward back in 2020. Ian had volunteered to handle the event, thinking it only required a couple of mics. Then Jan had emailed saying the speaker wanted to show powerpoints. Could that be done?
I was to meet Ian there at 2 but I went there directly after lunch. What I found was a big (85-inch?) Sharp TV on the wall. Off to the side was a small podium with an HDMI port on the side. Now I remembered standing at that podium, showing some pictures, when I was asked to introduce myself to the Men’s Group back in 2019. The Men’s Group hasn’t since 2019 I think. Maybe time to revive it?
Anyway that HDMI port did nothing. I found the remote for the TV in a drawer. The TV responded in flaky ways to it but I managed to get its Source menu and try every source. None of them had anything but “no signal”. Then I got my iPhone flashlight out and looked behind. No bloody wonder. None of the input jacks had anything plugged into them. I had an HDMI cable with me and I plugged my computer into HDMI 4 and there we were. So that part was solved. Ian and I were congratulating ourselves when he remembered they would also need sound amplification. Where had that equipment gone?
In a closet behind a pile of tables we found a cart on which was an amplifier and speaker, and in the bottom of the cart, a wireless base station and a mic. Hauled all that out and plugged things in and together and ha ha! An amplified mic! Just as people were coming in for their meeting.
Didn’t do much else, but hey. Two accomplishments is enough for a day.
Codgerville 