I sat down in the gate area, took the notebook out, and looked it over.  The back left corner is cracked and the main chassis has a slight arc now along the back edge.  With a deep breath, I opened the lid and watched it come out of sleep mode!  Keyboard and trackpad worked, but it wouldn’t find any wireless networks available at all.  Feeling sick, I packed it up again and got ready to board my flight thinking that I was going to have to repair this laptop or buy a USB wireless dongle just one month before buying a new laptop.   How bad is that.

My flight from Atlanta to Raleigh-Durham went quickly, helped by the new XM radio system available on the flight.  At home, I did a full shutdown/reboot of the laptop and the wireless system came back to life!  This afternoon, I downloaded the hardware service manual, disassembled the main chassis as far as I could, vacuumed out all the cat hair (yeesh!) and reassmbled it.  This removed the curve from the rear of the chassis and everything is working well again.

I’m virtually certain had I been carrying a Dell notebook yesterday I would have found it in parts in my backpack.  They just don’t have the same rugged quality as Thinkpads.  I don’t know about Toshiba or HP notebooks.  I look forward to the new Lenovo ThinkPad T61p I’m planning on buying very soon.

Thursday morning, I video-taped the “Green Forum: Beyond Darwin and Lincoln” workshop. Interesting factoid: Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day in the same year. Both candidates for the 2009 UUA Presidential election spoke and answered questions from the audience. I’m almost entirely apolitical about UUA governance so this was my first experience with the candidates. Both impressed me. I may say more about them at a later date. The workshop was interesting and some very cool questions about the interface between liberal religion and science came up. In response to a question about engaging advocates of Creationism and Intelligent Design in science classrooms, Rev. Morales presented a powerful argument I had not encountered before: Creationists who claim there is s in the scientific community over the theory of evolution are bearing false witness. They are flat out lying. I knew it was lying, but couching it in the traditional biblical terminology confronts Creationists with the actions on their own ground.

Thursday evening I monitored streaming video for the Service of the Living Tradition. The SLT always impresses me, even when I’m sitting in the production area off to the side of the hall instead of the in the audience.

Today was my heaviest workload: Streaming video coverage for Friday Morning Worship and the third Plenary session, than videotaping the “Theology of Peacemaking” workshop right after lunch and back for more streaming coverage for the Bridging Ceremony in the evening. I don’t remember much of the Morning Worship although the music was very cool. I just wasn’t awake yet. I love watching Gini Courtier manage the the Plenary sessions. It takes a special person to do that job and she’s definitely got the skills for it! I about fell out of my chair laughing at some of her humorous lines….

I really enjoyed the “Theology of Peacemaking”(video) workshop. It was a reprise of a similar workshop given last year that was scheduled into a too-small room for the massive crowd that showed up. UUA volunteers had to herd protesting GA attendees out of the room because they had gone past ‘full’ and ’standing room only’ to ‘packed in like sardines’ to see the Rev. Dr. Bill Schultz speak. One attendee protested so strenuously that he caught the attention of Rev. Schultz and ended up getting asked to join the workshop as a presenter this year. I encourage everyone to watchi this workshop. Rev. Schultz is an amazing speaker.

Given his past work with the UUA and Amnesty International, his position on peacemaking surprised me. He falls in between the “Just War” and “Pacifist” positions on the scale of using force to oppose oppression and violence. I thought he was a full-on pacifict type. His argument is that sometimes the only possible response to violence is use of appropriate force. Force employed only when all peaceful solutions have failed and with conscious decision to use it to protect the helpless and innocent from the actions of malicious and malevalent agents. He strongly supports the recent developments in the UN that provides for emergency response forces that can act in such situations. I need to explore this more, but my gut feeling is that he’s right.

More later. I need to sleep and get up early.

I’m impressed with the convention center so far.  It seems to be laid out nicely so I won’t have to lug a video camera and tripod hither-and-yon to reach my various assignments.  Last year’s center was a sprawling complex and I routinely had 10 or 15 minute walks just to get from room to room for my assignments.  This year everything seems to be close by.  I’m glad.

As I write this, I’m sitting at our table behind the production crew monitoring the streaming video for the opening ceremony and worship.  The opening always makes me proud to be a UU and be part of the effort to bring General Assembly to UUs who can’t be here with us.  Currently, our steaming service has 135 connections, which easily blows out our max connections from last year.

I hope to write more about GA this year as it happens.

Peace
–[Lance]