How to Irritate a Geek

Some things here are going to irk me eventually. Here at the BOE, I can’t connect my PowerBook to the network and if I tried to get any help doing it, it would cause unending amounts of bureaucratic trouble and constant questions about why I need to be online in the first place. ‘Why can’t I just use the computer across from me?’ Well, I can, but wouldn’t it be easier for me to be working from my desk and free up the resource of the other computer?

Yeah, I’m going to check my email, but is that really going to chew up bandwidth? Yeah, I might surf a news site or two, but am I really doing anything more productive here? Ah, the underutilization begins. (But the odd thing is that I would rather be underutilized so I can work on my own projects – selfish little me would rather be thinking about photography than teaching thank you very much.)

Damn it, now my mood has gone south. No fun. I wish Joe from Pangaea were here to fix my Internet and tell everyone else to screw off. That would be good fun to see.

Here’s another major reason I would like to connect. This morning, I would like to work on my self-introductions and my instinct is to type it out, keep it organized and make it look presentable (even if I’m the only one who reads it). Well, I can either try to wrangle some time on the other computer (potentially keeping someone from using it themselves) or I could work on it at my desk. When finished, I could email it to myself (or, if there is any sort of real network here, I could just download it off my computer) then print it on the other computer (or even better, just print it from my computer!). I would only need a minute on the other computer to do this and I wouldn’t have to work on a Japanese operating system with a Japanese version of MS Word.

In weeks to come, I will want to design teaching resource materials and I can do a way better job of it on this computer than over there and again, I would not be using up a resource. Logic fails here when someone wants to try something different, even if it is more effective.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004 at 12:00 am. It is filed under Blog, Japan, JET Programme, Travel and tagged with japan, Travel, travel log. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.