Went to a graduation ceremony. Couldn't see it and couldn't hear it, but I think it happened.
Glad that's over. We started with over an hour of political speeches by 4 different speakers - last chance to finish programming the students before they are released, and to let people like me know why we're terrible people. Not sure what any of it had to do with the event we came for. When that ended the reading of names started, but I had to give up trying to watch that. It was futile.
The crowd was what you typically get at graduations. About half the people didn't know how to act. Constant yelling, screaming, air horns blasting in your ear, balloons, etc.
Audio was fine during the political speeches, but once the "ceremony" started, it was inaudible. A few people thought it would be cool to stand up in an aisle in front of our section, and ignored some increasingly agitated requests (not from me) to sit down. Over time, this grew into a larger crowd.
As the ceremony progressed, people started getting up, having idle conversations, meeting up with their graduates, taking pictures, and leaving long before it was over. The noise level soon reached similarity with an overcrowded picnic or a shopping mall. Somewhere out there, a graduation was theoretically taking place, but it was hard to tell.
The closest I came to seeing the graduation was watching some graduates do their post-graduation family pictures in front of us, with the actual graduation still taking place in the background. Classy.
I've been to several graduations, and they always suck, but this is the worst I've seen yet. If people have become so selfish and badly raised that they can't exercise more consideration and behavioral restraint at a formal ceremony than a crowd of 10 year olds, then just do it in private. Waste of time.
But it's California so I'm not surprised.
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Looking forward to doing something more enjoyable over the weekend. Maybe work on the car and work on some PCs that need attention. One is my file server which has started locking up recently. Disabling PowerNow didn't fix it. I've long seen sporadic disk I/O complaints when it boots, so yesterday I swapped out all the SATA cables (which I've long suspected were junk). Time will tell. Also have a new (used) SSD to play with, and maybe start setting up a PC for a family member.