My friends mostly had the attitude of "stop kicking yourself, Eric," however, which is fine with me. I need to do that on this matter, and am largely there. Though I slept very poorly last night, I'll admit.

One e-mail I got was from Andrea, which was comforting in a number of ways, though she didn't have much time. It's a bit of an odd fledgling relationship -- we're sort of moderate distance (a couple of hours by car doesn't constitute 'long distance' in my book) from each other, but Andrea doesn't own a computer. She reads and checks things at the public library (which is how she keeps up with this journal), and she... mails letters.

Beautiful letters, I would add. She has a fine command of penmanship, which in today's world is like knowing how to create illuminated manuscripts. She uses a decent pen (fountain, it seems to me, or a water based rollerball but the flow looks fountainish). And in writing real honest to god correspondence, she reminds me of the beauty and flow of the written letter. It's not a thing like e-mail, which habitual e-mailers forget. This is a record of time -- an essay in brief. An image as coherent as a poem. While e-mail tends to have all the beauty of a coworker sticking his head over your cubicle wall and asking if you want to walk down and get watered coffee in cardboard containers from the cart as it passes ever so slowly by in your fluorescent prison.

Have I mentioned I'm glad I'm not in corporate life any longer? The worst of all Corporate Environments I've ever seen was NYSEG, or New York State Electric and Gas, where I temped a few times when I lived in Ithaca. It was a soul-sucking place of horror and evil, and I shun them, shun them and their coffee cart with the little bell. Shun their cubicle farm and the hum of their lights. Shun their evil ways.

Anyhow, I like getting Andrea's letters and she likes sending them, and no doubt she wishes I'd get off my lazy butt and write them back. On the other hand, I do announce stuff about her to half of North America in the journal.

Wait -- maybe that isn't good.... Man, how do these relationship things go again....

Playing catchup from last week... today, "Tuesday, the Twenty-Third."

Tuesday Eileen, Fran and I had an Apple Tech Update, which Apple and Unicom (one of their big resellers) put on about three times a year to keep us up to date on all things Appley. This one was full of talk about the new G4s and the new iBooks, which was fun. We enjoy those.

And then came... <cue horror> the Other Companies and their testimonials.

There was one for curriculum design that nearly killed us. It was like our precious life was rooted in the green Earth, only to have a gigantic wheat thresher storm by and separate use from our necessary roots. That thresher's name was boredom, and it is a deadly killer.

Here's how not to do a presentation at a Tech Update, for those of you playing along at home:

1. Spend five minutes putting a live copy of your web based product on the big screen in the room, including establishing an internet connection. During this time, don't speak or have anyone saying anything. Get the whole thing ready.
2. Have your founder introduce the product without inflection or emotion. Bonus points if he never moves his hands and has his voice mike too close to his mouth/is standing too close to the speaker stack and getting feedback/both. During this introduction, do nothing with the display in the back of the room you've just spent five minutes setting up.
3. Have a user of your product stand up and start describing her school situation in something of a monotone. Though she is a teacher, have her do none of the things that make teachers interesting. Have her contradict herself several times during her testimonial -- including discussing the power of collaborative curricular design, then describe how the security protocols of the product keep your fellow teachers out of your curriculum. During this description, don't do a thing with the display in the background.
4. Have another person -- the one who set the display up -- occasionally stand and loudly interrupt the person giving the testimonial, correcting their glaring errors. While the interrupter clearly has Clue, make certain she is unappealing in applying it and makes everything the speaker says suspect. Oh, and still don't actually use the ten thousand dollar display to show the product rather than boring people telling about it at length and without benefits of outline or notecards.
5. After forty minutes of talk, begin to demonstrate the product on the screen. Have the loud interrupter sit at the computer working the demo while the speaker describes what is about to happen. Make certain that the demo is not of the same implementation the speaker uses at her school, so while she honestly knows her subject she's continually slightly wrong about what we'll see. Make sure the pair do not rehearse in advance.
6. Do not solicit questions at incremental times, but wait until the next presentation is scheduled to start before saying "do you have any questions?" Have the audacity to look shocked when no one seems to care about your product enough to ask one.

I wrote a sixty line poem during this presentation, A-B-B-A scansion. Fran walked out. Eileen fell asleep, Three out of three Brewster employees found it to be mind-numbingly dull.

Apple does seem to have started a "Think Education" campaign, with black and white photos of innovators in modern education (who are bright enough to use Apple products). Alan's face was one of them, which made us feel proud.

Other than that -- it's what you would have expected. We 'networked.' We talking to lots of Apple's brass. We talked to some of Unicom's brass. We talked our brass off.

From there, I drove to Kittery, Maine, and a Big and Tall that's there. While there, I bought underwear. Specifically, the combination boxer-brief type.

Now, if there's one thing I know people who read this journal aren't wondering about, it's my underwear. However, I need to upsell these things. They're comfortable, they resist wedgies, they don't let you chafe and they don't 'ride.' So. Buy them. Enjoy them. Live in underwear comfort. Ooo. Ahh.

Went to art class, had a good time there, went home. I now know why artists do that 'thumb' thing when they're drawing. So there.

Back to today. I've had two hours worth of meetings, and at least once during them I thought "no wonder people get upset that things aren't being accomplished. I'm here instead of accomplishing them."

I am so very tired when I'm at work right now. Everyone wants it, and no one can accept that any other priority trumps them. It has to be now, and they're surly about it.

There's just so fast it can work. I'm sorry.