Bad PowerPoints

I was talking to a coworker this week about the worst presentations I've ever seen and realized that I very weirdly* have a top 3 worst PowerPoint presentations I've ever seen, hands down. So, not that anyone will ever care, but here they are:

The third worst PowerPoint presentation I've ever sat through:

To be fair to the presenter, this was back when I was in college, which was the early days of PowerPoint, so no one really knew what they were doing. And it was before all the tools like blackboard or what have you, where professors could post stuff online for their class. That is why it is only the third worst and I feel quite forgiving.

The PowerPoint was the history lecture for a class on Chinese history in the thousands BC. And the professor was really trying hard to adopt this cool new technology. But the slides--yikes! Crammed with text! I mean, forget margins, every pixel was covered in text. And then, the professor read the slides to us. Which, as a literate college student was quite agonizing. I just wanted to say, "Email the slides to me and I'll study them at home in my pjs." Which would have been great, because the slides would have been phenomenal for studying for the exams. 

Second worst PowerPoint presentation:

This was a presentation on customer service, based on the Disney customer service training. And, again, I will caveat this with the fact that I already had a chip on my shoulder because I don't work at a theme park, so doing theme park customer service seemed absurd. I mean, I work in archives, which are about as far as you can get from a theme park.** But, my real frustration with the presentation was that every slide was a pithy little quote that when you really thought about it critically... well, let's just say that rarely have so many words come together to create so little meaning. Outside of bills passed in congress, which I don't know that bills lack meaning so much as they require an interpreter, but I digress. 

These were quotes that you would find on kitschy signs and pillows and stuff, and I just read them and kept breaking them down and they were just absurd. And didn't necessarily have a lot to do with customer service or what the presenter was discussing, so much as just trying to be cutesie sayings in a presentation. 

But the worst PowerPoint presentation, hands down, was a presentation at a professional conference. Now, the presenter was young, so maybe that was part of it. And maybe they were nervous being brand new in the field and presenting to more experienced people. Or maybe that is just how they learned to do presentations (it wouldn't surprise me). 

Anyway, the presenter built the presentation by describing the archival process/project she was discussing in terms of Saved by the Bell. And there were about 75 slides that were all just images from pop culture. About 10 slides in, the entire audience was busy googling the references they didn't get on their phones, which is not the desired outcome for a presenter. But, even worse, the presentation involved a lot of details that really would have benefitted from diagrams and flowcharts and that sort of thing. It was just a mess. 

So, I don't know that there's a takeaway, other than I'm really judgy about PowerPoint presentations, but now I'm super curious to know what can beat my worst presentations (I know there's something out there). And that's all, really.

*I think it's weird? Maybe not? 

**I guess being a warlord or a serial killer might actually be the farthest, but you know what I mean. I don't work at a place where people come for recreation. Unless they are way into records. Which, some people are and there is nothing wrong with that at all! 

Football, pshaw

A couple of weeks ago, my nephew (in-law) introduced me and my nieces to Slapfight, which more or less exactly what it sounds like. In this Russian/Polish sport--there are world championships, and if there's a world championship, surely it must be a sport, right?--two people take turns slapping each other. Yes. This is a thing.

Of course, the discovery of the sport of slapfight led to internet searches on strange and obscure sports, which I don't need to list here, because if you are reading this, you most likely have the internet and can do your own searches. And some of them are legitimately athletic, like Takraw. Talk about skill and athleticism! And underwater hockey probably takes a bit of athletic ability. But a lot of them are just, well, goofy. 

Like extreme ironing. There are extreme ironing world championships. And a Facebook page. And a documentary. Now, some of the participants are really missing the extreme part of extreme ironing, but others--yeah. Waterskiing while ironing? I think that counts. 

Other favorites are unicycle hockey, cardboard tube dueling*, ferret legging, shin kicking, hobbyhorsing, the giant pumpkin regatta, cheese rolling, toe wrestling, crokinole, pillow fighting**, cycleball, and slamball.***

Now, here's where the fun comes. As my nephew pointed out, most of these are sports that, within 10 seconds, we are all experts. If you are looking for a fun and cheap activity, here's what you do. Find videos of some of these strange sports. Find a friend or significant other or sibling or whatever. Watch the with absolutely NO comprehension of what the rules are (no cheating and looking up the rules online first) and no sound on and commentate as you go. Lean into it! 

For example, we did this with crokinole, which looks like it is flick checkers (you try to flick checkers to some spot on the board? Or past some spot? Or through a certain spot? No clue). Per us, you aren't even allowed to learn crokinole until you are 35, but there is an obscure exception where if you are the only descendant of crokinole players who have all died while playing crokinole, you can learn sooner. Which was relevant because the everyone at the tournament (including spectators) appeared to be over 35, except one of the players. Also, this explains why so many people in the US don't run for president. To run, they would have to confirm they are 35 and then they would be hounded by crokinole players to learn to play.**** 

And who knows? If we all take up this little activity, maybe improv commentating can become a sport, too!

*I know, we've all done this. But not as members of the Cardboard Tube Fighting League. 

**Yep, there's a pillow fight league.

***Basketball on a trampoline court

****To all crokinole players: My apologies if it feels like we were making fun. In reality, it looks like an interesting game and I support anyone who is learning, wants to learn, or plays. And anyone who can play ANYTHING at any kind of a professional level is admirable in my view, because I will never be that good at anything. So, kudos to you!

Updates

In the past two weeks, it seems like all my tech has updated to new operating systems. And, I do not like it, Sam-I-Am!!!

The biggest change--and the one I'm most annoyed at--is that I can no longer close selected apps. It's all or nothing, baby. Not being (ever) an all-or-nothing kind of girl, this chafes my personality. But also, it's legitimately a pain. Sometimes, I want to close one or two apps, but keep a third open because it's something I'm going to come back to. And, having to close all or nothing seems massively inefficient and/or battery draining to my non-science-y-teched-out-but-still-pretty-rational brain. And I just really want to know who it was that was griping about this problem. Who is it that was getting super annoyed by having the option to close individual apps OR all of them? It seems like a problem that didn't really need a fix.

And this is why people hate change. Well, one of the reasons. So often updates seem to fix problems that didn't exist and exacerbate problems that did, or create problems that didn't exist. Is this some kind of job security strategy on the part of software engineers? Because it's really not working out for me so well, and I'd like to figure out a new plan. 

Don't get me wrong. I know that change is important. Change helps us become better people, it helps us do better things for each other and the planet. And it is definitely part of life. Spend 5 minutes on this planet, and you are going to deal with change that just happens because it does. (Sorry, dear little new babies). 

But, we really don't need to go creating change just to have change and for no other reason (hear that, CEOs, execs, and managers?). And, can we really try not to make change that makes things worse? I promise--there WILL be jobs in the future, it's going to be okay. And, if you are just someone with a short "change attention span" who needs to switch things up constantly, move your furniture around. Or dye your hair. Paint your nails! Sit on the floor at work!!! There are so many ways without making me have to learn my device again practically from scratch for no apparent reason other than someone somewhere got bored. (Boredom--a definite nemesis).

And now, my rant is over. At least for you. I make no promises for anywhere else. 

Unmasking

Yesterday I went for a walk and for reasons I can't produce now, I decided not to wear a mask. Now, before you panic, yes, I have been vaccinated. Also, my state has removed the mask requirement outdoors if you are vaccinated. (Heck, I think my state has removed all of the restrictions in place due to COVID. I'm not entirely sure. It's like, once we hit the one-year mark and people were getting vaccinated, everyone kind of forgot it was a thing and I'm not seeing updates on it anymore. Ah, the human memory--so short lived!!)

I've mostly still been wearing a mask around, just because I take the "let's just all wear a mask until none of us really have to anymore" approach. This approach is based on my life experience with exceptions: once you make exceptions or try to have too many categories, you might as well give up. But also, a lot of the places I'm going are still enforcing mask rules, so why not just keep living the masked up life? Easier than trying to remember if I need one or not.

But yesterday, I was walking outside, not going indoors anywhere, and I was heading to an area where I knew I would be able to keep my distance from people. Even so, I just felt really weird walking around without a mask. 

It was nice. I mean, It was lovely to not have a mask on. But, yes, it was also super strange. And more and more I run into people who aren't wearing masks--no judgment!! It mostly just makes me unsure what the rules are these days. But, hey, guys! This is what the end looks like!!* Yes indeedy, there will come a time when the pandemic really is a thing of the past. Woohoo!

*we hope. Knock on wood. I mean, there could be another India scenario, but it really seems unlikely, so I'm going to be optimistic. Why not?