Day 108: the hazards of homework
Wednesday, 8 July 2020 12:53 pmAn incomplete and evolving list of the typical and atypical perils of conducting meetings virtually from home via Teams, Zoom or any other catchy single-syllable-branded meeting software which is probably sending snapshots of your hard drive, conversations, breakfast menu and taste in dodgy fanfic back to the mothership at frequent intervals:
- (high-speed falsetto gibberish)
(apologetic note in chat) "Oops, sorry, I sound like a Minion again, I'll disconnect and reconnect". - (child's voice/screaming parrot/angle-grinder swims in and out of audio)
(plaintively) "Please could everyone turn off their microphone when not actually speaking?" - (Cat's ears and tail amble past my face on the video feed)
- (long silence in response to a direct question to a meeting member)
"Um, X, you're still on mute..." - "Oooh, sorry, one moment, that's my grocery delivery arriving."
- "Can we take this offline?"
- (distracts self from pointless circular argument by answering email)
- (distracts self from pointless circular argument by reading fanfic)
- (my face is eclipsed momentarily by an entire cat butt)
- "Oooh, sorry, one moment, the robot vaccuum is eating the carpet."
- (slightly desperately) "Please can we take this offline?"
- (leaves long, futile, circular argument to faint creatively in coils on mute while I wander off and make myself another cup of tea. My absence goes entirely unnoticed.)
- "Oooh, sorry, one moment, the plumber has arrived to fix the geyser."
- cat walks deliberately over keyboard and/or mouse, causing random effect:
- disconnection
- hand up
- burst of gibberish in chat
- unmuting at wrong psychological instant (swearing)
- muting at wrong psychological instant (mid technical presentation)
- sudden burst of unplanned camera revealing I haven't brushed my hair this morning and t-shirt reading "I found this, it's vibrating"
- sudden realisation that my shared screen during tech support session is revealing not just the database browser window, but:
- five videogame walkthrough tabs
- eight fanfic tabs
- Tumblr
- Dreamwidth
- my active Witcher 3 taskbar icon
- (sudden drop out of meeting as the geyser, yet again, trips the mains)