PUBLIC SPEAKING

Wednesday, May 20, 1998

We had our monthly Cacophony planning meeting last night. There was one new face, and one guy whom we had seen before, as well as our regular crowd. Jayson didn't make it, not because of the new baby, but because of job training. I signed up to sponsor an event. Last year we had a series of Guerilla dance workshops at Gasworks Park, and I want to continue them this year. Tom "The Law" Lawrence and I will do some beginning swing teaching at the first one.

For some reason, I've been experiencing a real epidemic of spam in the last day or so. I wonder if I registered at some site that sold off my address? or perhaps it's just because I posted an announcement of the cacophony meeting in the newsgroups.

Journaler and Australian expatriate Amanda "Precipice" Page, and Australian journal reader Ed Heron, both informed me that "Gone Troppo" (the company name of the clothes I bought at the Street Fair on Saturday) is Aussie slang for going nuts, or going crazy. It's derived from going tropical, or being driven mad from the heat.

I bought some new (to me) CDs on my way to the meeting Tuesday night. The best one so far is "The Hits of Woody Herman" on Capitol. So cheezy to have no info on the liner! Name of the song and the composer, and that is it! So I have no idea when these were recorded.

The funniest tune is a version of the Herman classic, Woodchopper's Ball (we used to call this "the musical question, Do Woodchoppers Ball?," in music school). On this recording, it's done Latin style! Most of the other numbers are swinging, too!

I can't say the same about "Best of Big Bands: Sammy Kaye" which has one good song on it. The rest are blandissimo! Oh, well. I could have listened to these in the store, but that would have taken more time than I wanted to use.

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At work yesterday I prepared for a presentation I was scheduled to give ot an internal group. This was part of the evangelizing campaign suggested by a manager on my team last month. I'm not used to doing much public speaking, but X---- emailed me some good advice on attitude and mental preparation, which did help.

The presentation itself lasted about five minutes, and seemed to be over in a blink. I sent follow-up mail to the alias later in the day. You know, tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them. I also did an HTML version of the presentation, with more links and technical details.

This internal evangelism is a good extension of my duties, and no one else is tasked with it right now.

On our internal email system, when you send mail to an alias, you are guaranteed to be inundated with out-of-office notices from the alias members. This time, I noticed one from a guy who had the best last name: Honeybone! Oo, baby!

When I got back from the presentation, I found a sticky note on my monitor. My boss's boss wanted to speak to me. I wasn't worried by this, though. It turned out he wanted me to cosmetically improve a demo he had written for a press tour, and to add more content to it. Fun! Since it was only intended for the next version of our product, I was free to use all the funky CSS attributes that I usually don't get to use. The downside was that he needed a demonstratable version by 8 AM tomorrow morning. So I stayed and worked, and grabbed the free dinner they are serving to the group every night.

This was the first late night (I worked about three extra hours) on this product cycle, but I'm sure it won't be the last.

I was tired, but I wanted to dance tonight. I prevented a rain storm by carrying my umbrella with me to the Century Ballroom. It wasn't super-crowded, but I had a good time. Hep Jen really plays swinging tunes, and most of the partners I danced with were very good. Jeff, whom I've danced with many times, was unhappy with the way his lindy circle step felt. We exausted my fund of advice, so I dragged him by the hand over to Hallie, and asked her for a few pointers. She was able to figure out where he was going wrong, and give him advice that got him turning around properly again.