Week 12 Prompt II

60. I held you in my arms.

"Tom, would you like to go next?"

"Sure."

I took the evaluation form to the teacher, then returned to collect my laptop. I turned and faced the audience.

"Mitch." I called. "Mitch!"

He heard me the second time, and looked up.

"How do I plug this in?" I asked, gesturing at the laptop.

"To the projector?" he asked, coming up.

"Yes. I have no idea."

"Do you have a port for it?"

"Yes."

He plugged it in, and I started my speech. At the beginning of the semester an 8-10 minute speech would have sounded impossible, but now, it went a little quickly. I was doing Geographic Information Systems, one of my favorite subjects. I was showing how to manoeuver about in ArcGIS 10. I realized from the person holding up the time cards in the back that I was running out of time. So I hurried to show some functions. I show how to clip, then I realize that I am at ten minutes or so, so I hurry to show the finished product by turning the huge TIN layers on.

And the TIN's freeze the computer.

I fiddle with it, and get the time to explain that the TIN's are over a gigabyte and a half size for a small area. That it gives the appearance of elevation by turning contours for elevation into triangles. I tried to open my original file, while getting to explain that in GIS, patience is the biggest thing, and that something will generally freeze on you.

The person in the back with the time cards held up the 1 minute and 2 minute cards together.

"Good, I like that," I said to him, "Innovative, very good."

I cancelled the drawing of the TIN, then tried again. I eventually realized that I would have to give up and conclude my speech without a final product, and lose a bunch of points on the speech for not having it. I thought about doing my closing for the speech, but realized that I needed the finished product for it. Then I remembered that I had taken a screenshot of my map with the TIN's for my GIS class earlier that week that I had never used, and had not gotten around to deleting.

I hurriedly opened it, and hoped that it would not be slowed down by the TIN's still trying to load. It opened quickly, and I was able to show my finished product and get out of my speech at 18 and a half minutes.

"You only left me with ten minutes," the next person complained, "I'll have to hurry."

I got my grade back from the teacher at the end of the class, and I had gotten 80/80. She had not taken time off for almost going twice as long as I should have gone.

It's possible she thought I just did really good for my speech. Or she might have thought that mine was more interesting than the two it was sandwiched between, cheerleading and braiding hair.