Wanna trade places?

10:30am

I'm sitting here waiting for another call from our outside tech support, my stomach in knots, over 300 people VERY unhappy with me (I'm the contact person), and I'm watching this situation unfold with NOTHING I can do to stop it or slow down the pace of the self-destruction. My eyes don't want to focus on anything for more than a fraction of a second. My breathing is short and shallow, with the exception of a few scattered deep sighs. I keep looking around for SOMETHING that I can do , knowing that there isn't a THING I can do. The result is that I and my company are going to come out of this looking VERY bad in spite of us having done all we could to remedy the situation.

A few miles from here are over 300 people who are expecting to use a Moodle site that resides on our server. The problem is that 300 concurrent users on the server is a LOT, and when you add in all the students in our districts who are also on, the system is on overload. The site has slowed to glacial speeds, making it unusable. The train has begun to derail. Trainers are moving from plan B to Plan C and D. My phone is ringing off the hook... er.. off my belt clip.

Have you ever been in that situation? What an awful, helpless feeling it is. Nobody wants reasons or excuses. Perhaps nobody is blaming me, personally. But, I FEEL the pressure and I feel personally responsible somehow.

So, wanna trade places?

The tip? Where's the tip, you ask? Well, here's one: If you haven't already seen or heard, Google Docs now has a Presentation mode. Create them then share them online. Lots of folks are talking about it, so I won't repeat. But, if you don't READ lots of folks, log into your google docs and choose New...Presentation. Very nice.

No, if you'll excuse me, it's time I crawl out onto the ledge - along with those poor trainers. "OK, gang, we'll all jump on 3. Ready? One... Two.........