This morning I was to give a lecture to a group of disinterested students about LiveText, the system for which I've been hired to manage. I walked into the auditorium to be blasted in the face by sweltering heat. By the time I walked in there, turned on the computer and projector, and then walked out of the room to find someone to turn on the a/c, sweat was beading up on my forehead.

I started class and tried to log into LiveText only to get an error screen. I tried a few more times thinking maybe I typed in the wrong password or had the Caps Lock on. Nothing I could do was working. Crap, what now? The whole lecture revolved around showing these students who could care less how to use LiveText. I cracked a few jokes before deciding to go old school. I pulled the projector screen up and grabbed a dry erase marker. My lecture consisted of me drawing out the screens on the board and talking about what would happen. Amazingly I was able to go for 30 minutes before I gave in that LiveText just wasn't going to work.

All of this comes on the heels of talking to a professor yesterday about a project they are trying to complete. Someone who has no clue about computers (can barely operate Word and email) initially wanted me to show her how to use Access to collect data for this project. Maybe I should just stab myself in the head now and get it over with. I find out from my boss before the meeting that this professor couldn't even fill out a template that had been created in Excel. All she had to do was type stuff in a box, but my boss had to do it for her because this professor just couldn't wrap her head around using Excel. I understand that not everyone is a computer whiz, but when someone shows you how to type in a box, can't you be a good little monkey and hit the keys?

I went to the meeting wondering how I would get out of setting the database up and managing it for her. Luckily the project was so big that it really needed a full-time person working on it for a couple of months to complete. That wasn't going to fly for me and they were reluctant to hire someone else to do the work. For a brief minute I contemplated doing it on the side, but I knew what I would charge would be at least double what they could talk a college kid into. I finally convinced the two professors involved that Excel would do what was needed with manual data entry by graduate students. But as neither person working on the project knows how to use Excel, I've been roped into creating the spreadsheet for them. I don't really mind since it's slow right now. I'd rather spend the 2 hours doing brainless, productive work than spending the days and weeks it would take to build a database.

As if that weren't enough, I'm in contact with a graduate student who has a professor wanting a database application to be built. The grad student has basic knowledge of databases and Access and I've been able to show him a few tricks, but his professor wants this big application that should be designed by a professional with a user-friendly interface. Of course the professor thinks this is a small task that can just be whipped out. I think I'd have a better chance of understanding topology than this student has in getting this application together. What happened to just using pen and paper?

For the record, topology is a bunch of drivel about balls and families that makes absolutely no sense.