I had an interesting experience this morning. For a presentation to some of my colleagues, we needed to borrow a projector and screen from the Tech center on campus. My colleague went over to collect the equipment. The screen would not fit in her car. So she called another colleague with an SUV. The students working in the Center watched her make two trips to carry the rolling suitcase and then the unwieldy screen down from the third floor to her car.
When we got the screen to our second floor location (no elevator) in another building, and mind you this is quite heavy and about 7 feet long, it was difficult to figure out how to open the tripod legs. Then the screen itself, which retracts into the housing, was stuck. It was evident from the dirt in the end of it, that it had been dropped out of doors and damaged. We asked a co-worker in a neighboring department if we could borrow his brute strength and significant height (read leverage) advantage to help us open the screen. Through that strength and improvising with a scissor blade since we had no screwdriver, he was able to open the screen after a bit of prying.
Then we had to find an extension cord for the projector since it is three prong and not all the outlets in this building are three prong. We actually had to unplug a computer and printer to do this (luckily this office is not currently in use). The projector quality was dubious – it significantly changed the colors of the images we were projecting from our computer.
I asked the Tech center to please come pick up the equipment (they wanted us to bring it back to them). Apparently this was too much to ask – they don’t have access to a van or a van driver or something! Clearly we need to look into getting our own equipment!