A Word in Your Eye

Over here http://www.sfnovelists.com/2010/12/23/you-cant-teach-passion/, David B. Coe blogged about "You Can't Teach Passion." And...

For some reason, the title, "You Can't Teach Passion," kind of itched whenever I saw it. So I've been thinking about why that feels like fingernails on a blackboard to me.
( You can't? )
You can't teach passion. But you can quench it, so easily. And, on the gripping hand, you can encourage passion. Heck, you might even find a teacher cheering you on. And that's real learning.

Just a quick note about one quirk that reinforced a lesson for me on our recent trip. See, the hotel had wireless, with a large sign on the desk advertising that it was highspeed. And for the first couple of days, I suffered with it being less than highspeed. But then trying it in the conference rooms, I found that the service was actually pretty good! So I went down to the desk and asked if they could do something about service in the room.

They offered me a bridge - a gadget that plugged into the USB port and the network connection. I was dubious, but tried it. And lo and behold, the network in the room was reasonably fast that way. A bit awkward with this dongle hanging off my tiny portable, but it was only for a few days.

One lesson I drew from this - don't just suffer silently, let people know and ask for help. It's a lesson that I thought I'd learned a while ago, but I still stumble over it every now and then. Usually when I assume that there's nothing that can be done, that this is as good as it gets. And then I find out that there's a better way! Goes along with that aphorism about the squeaky wheel getting greased and so forth, I guess.