Clueless Professors
So, I like my computers, and figure I'm fairly well versed it most common issues (although I bet if anyone asked me to solve one on here it would be one I haven't encountered), and this landed me a work study job at uni this year with IT. We have one particularly technologically clueless professor who seems to think they can do anything.

I was in her Ornithology lecture and lab (I showed up to the first class, went online 50 minutes in on my phone and dropped it), and she decided that she wanted to do a class project. When I told the guys up in the IT office about this, they just shook their heads and laughed. She decided that she wanted to build a falcon platform, since they have specific nesting requirements, and habitat loss has endangered them here in the US. The basic idea is a three foot wide circular platform, mounted on a forty foot pole. She's planning on putting this somewhere along the beach, between 300 to 1500 feet from the nearest computer she could commandeer.

To make this better, she wants to put a camera up there with a 24/7 wireless video feed to a website. Now, she's either going to have to set up a wireless router and several relays to further the signal (along with hundreds upon hundreds of feet of power cables for these relays and the camera), or run several hundred feet of ethernet cable and power cords down the pole and underground to the nearest building. On top of this, her birds of choice are endangered, so if something goes wrong with they camera, say the bird knocks the power cord out and the battery dies, the tech sent to fix it will have to do so while fighting a pissed off falcon, since they legally can't move the things.

Last year in one of her lectures, class was delayed for 20 minutes, because sound wasn't working on her power point. A tech walked over, and after chatting for 20 minutes waiting for the class to start, we heard the tech kindly tell her speakers need be plugged into a power source to work properly. I feel bad for my friend who got stuck with the web cam project there.
( Ithyphallophobia, Tue 29 Sep 2009, 11:07, Reply)