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<DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Lucida Calligraphy">Food ...</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
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<DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Lucida Calligraphy">I found this fascinating, Mike !! I always am</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Lucida Calligraphy">interested in the subject of Food and the psychology thereof. How could these bright</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Lucida Calligraphy">participants be unaware that others are watching them eat?? I would be inclined to ask some of those what they are having and how it is. Seems rather natural to me. :)</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
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<DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Lucida Calligraphy">Fondly ...</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
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<DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Lucida Calligraphy"> Jingles in San Antonio ...</FONT></STRONG></DIV>
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<DIV dir=ltr style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt" <i><B>From:</B></I> <A href="mailto:pingleto@ncsa.uiuc.edu">Mike Pingleton</A></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt" <i><B>Date:</B></I> Saturday, August 16, 2003 22:27:07</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt" <i><B>..</B></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt" <i><B>Subject:</B></I> TheBanyanTree: The Access Grid Banana</DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>I used to run a department here at this major midwestern university but then I got a promotion of sorts. Now I'm a project manager and I spend most of my time dealing with other project managers at various seats of learning across the United States. We've got this really big computational project spanning five institutions and it's a never ending headache and<BR>most days I wish I was still running my little department.<BR><BR>Every Thursday we meet, us project managers, via video-teleconferencing. Every site has a room with video cameras and microphones and some fancy tech that allows us to hook it all together over an ultra-high-speed network. These video-teleconference rooms are called Access Grid Nodes.<BR>Each site sends two or three camera images to all the other sites, so the projection wall in our node room is filled with little rectangles full of people from miles away. And we're on a wall in their room too.<BR><BR>The meeting is at noon my time, so some people are eating lunch while we meet. It's only ten AM out on the west coast, so those folks usually aren't eating, the same with the Pittsburgh node. But there's a guy eating wok-food out of a styrofoam to-go box, and another shoveling in something from a plastic container. Looks like leftovers.<BR><BR>I don't eat during these video-teleconferences because it feels weird. You can watch people eat and they don't know it. If we were all in the same room, it would be terribly bad manners to stare at someone while they are wolfing down a bacon cheeseburger. Here in the Access Grid Node, nobody can tell you are watching them eat.<BR><BR>I watch people eat during the meeting. I can't help it. I don't have some weird fetish, I simply can't get over the fact that a woman thousands of miles away from me in San Diego is peeling a banana. In real time. Right now. How does she eat bananas? Will she take a bite and hold the rest, or put it down on the table? (Down it goes as she reaches for her laptop). The Access Grid Banana is a concept I just can't get used to. It's like having your neighbors peering through your dining room window at<BR>suppertime, and you know they are there. And it's supposed to be okay with all parties involved.<BR><BR>Perhaps this is a perfectly acceptable and terribly mundane social<BR>activity, and I'm making too much of a little thing. I should just ignore the people who are eating and pay attention to the project management task at hand. It won't be easy - I'm still wondering what that Chicago guy was eating from an aluminum cake pan. It didn't look like cake.<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>______________________________________<BR>TheBanyanTree <BR><A href="http://remsset.com/thebanyantree">http://remsset.com/thebanyantree</A> <BR><BR><BR>. </TD></TR>
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