“Remoted” – Day 428 (Tuesday)

Today was the day – the final presentation for the Public Speaking class taken through work. Last week, the instructor and I did a run-through for the screen share of the slides to make sure I knew how to work it all smoothly. There were days of practicing with notecards and checking the timing to make sure I kept to the designated eight minutes, and for days, the time kept running over to nine minutes.

On Monday, a couple tweaks were made to the slides and a new PDF saved and sent to my personal email. The video conferencing system needs to be accessed from the personal system, so I made sure the file was ready and delivered to avoid rushing in the morning before the presentations.

Tuesday dawned with a Google weather forecast near the low 80s, which means no sweater needed. Attire was chosen to look good and professional on the video screen. Hair was combed, which doesn’t happen every day. Makeup was applied in an attempt to not look too pale or tired or scary. I felt prepared, confident, and ready.

The computer was logged on early, with the plan to check work emails then set the slides file on the desktop for a run through. Everything was going according to plan and it felt good. That is, until the slides file was opened, and instead of opening like a normal PDF like it did last week during the run through, it opened in a stupid Microsoft Edge browser window with different (unfamiliar) controls, all sorts of extra visible tools, and weird navigation to change pages. Panic set in, and quickly. The file was closed. And opened. And closed. And opened. Sweat was happening. Swears were ready to erupt.

Emails were sent to line up a backup plan for the instructor to have the file for sharing just in case I couldn’t figure out the file weirdness at my end. 

For two years and up until 8:30 this morning, the laptop now used for work has never had a quirk opening a PDF – just click on the file and there it is. And today, the day of the presentation with 9 slides and a screen share, the day it mattered, despite preparing and practicing, PDF stuff went sideways. Welcome to my world. Bad Technology Karma (BTK) is alive and well. I was close to either screaming or crying, but screaming would scare the dogs, and my makeup isn’t waterproof, so I kept looking for a solution.

For whatever reason, and the best I can figure out, the work changeover to Microsoft Edge one day ago seems to have done something. I don’t know what, only that a PowerPoint file created and saved as a PDF at work last week opened one way, and the same file with one edit on Monday opened a totally different way on Tuesday. The last-minute solution done under the wire ended up being downloading Adobe Reader to open the PDF, so the slides were accessible and functional.

Slides!

The presentations were very interesting and on a variety of topics including cruises, puppy mills, online dating scams, and family pizza making. My topic was improving cell phone photos by getting closer to the subject and compositional tips. I have no idea what I actually said, but afterward, kept remembering things that were forgotten. At least it’s over now, I have the certificate to prove it, and can cross it off the list. Done!