Day 108: the hazards of homework

An 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:

1. (high-speed falsetto gibberish)
       (apologetic note in chat) "Oops, sorry, I sound like a Minion again, I'll disconnect and reconnect".
   
2. (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?"
   
3. (Cat's ears and tail amble past my face on the video feed)
   
4. (long silence in response to a direct question to a meeting member)
       "Um, X, you're still on mute..."
   
5. "Oooh, sorry, one moment, that's my grocery delivery arriving."
   
6. "Can we take this offline?"
   
7. (distracts self from pointless circular argument by answering email)
   
8. (distracts self from pointless circular argument by reading fanfic)
   
9. (my face is eclipsed momentarily by an entire cat butt)
   
10. "Oooh, sorry, one moment, the robot vaccuum is eating the carpet."
    
11. (slightly desperately) "Please can we take this offline?"
    
12. (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.)
    
13. "Oooh, sorry, one moment, the plumber has arrived to fix the geyser."
    
14. 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"
15. 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
    • Twitter
    • Dreamwidth
    • my active Witcher 3 taskbar icon
16. (sudden drop out of meeting as the geyser, yet again, trips the mains)