Skip to main content

Zoom nuisance

 If you are still in the job market and working at a medium to large sized corporation you have by now no doubt encountered the ill effects of zoom.

Ill effects I say?

For many it is an escape from having to drive to work. For some (including me many times) it avoids having to go through the overhead of dressing for work and then dealing with mindless chit chat outside of work.

But face to face interaction has its merits. For one you can see body language and intent clearer than a flat screen and that is if the video is on.

But the side effect of using zoom is mind numbing. For one there is no zoom etiquette for the most part.

Covid has given all employees a hall pass to do whatever when on zoom.

Kids yelling, crawling into laps of speaker parent is one example.  Some mutt barking uncontrollably like a background theme music and getting mentioned every time a person speaks is another.

Oh I wonder why Sparky is being fussy... 

Really?  Because he is an idiot being a canine and you are worse for harboring this creature in your house and letting him speak his mind when we are trying to find out if you have any.

Garbled phone connections is another. All these gen X, Y and Z after 24 months of covid have not yet figured out where their microphone is and what the speakers are doing.  For real.

Static on calls to people sounding like their car is going underwater as they speak are common complaints.  Maybe I am the idiot sitting in my office silenced from outside noise to maintain decorum while people are scuba diving while taking their work calls?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A few good books

 On an informal mission to read one book a week as long as the eyes allow for such ambition. Fiction or non is not important as long as it entertains and /or educates. To that end the past few weeks have brought a bounty in the form of some wonderful and then not so engaging literature. Among the notables are - Non fiction category: 1. Good arguments by Bo Seo (how to handle a dispute or debate the most efficient way possible) 2. Genesis by Eric Schmidt (and former US Secy of State Henry Kissinger, who recently passed) - how AI might affect our lives as we know it 3. One in a billion - Zarna Garg (an autobiographical look at an Indian born American woman with a bindi narrated in a standup format - yes it is at times cliched but still funny) Fiction: 1. Personal by Lee Child (a vigilante story with Jack Reacher the giant, nomad protagonist of Child's novels goes hunting for a sniper) 2. Ramayana unraveled by Ami Ganatra (she might disagree about it being a work of fiction but oh wel...

Back in DC

This time for a tech conference in the realm of what else? AI. But applied to an oft neglected space called Knowledge Management. The latter is a community of practice that focuses on analyzing, organizing and making available reams of data that have been gathered over time by various functions within an organization for anyone in the company to utilize. This function or process is ripe for applying AI agents (or agentic AI framework) and optimize for better outcomes. It was informative. More rewarding was getting acquainted with folks who practice this craft as well as learning of what they see in the corporate or public sectors. Since the venue was Washington DC it also afforded me the chance to take evening strolls albeit the weather was trying. With wind chill in the single digit it still is a glamorous place to perambulate through history absorbing what this country has been through since its founding days. I was able to visit the place Lincoln was killed along with his monument t...

Costa Rica

 Our first foray into Central America. That elongated isthmus that forms the geographic boundary between two vast continents of North and South America. Specifically landing for NYE 2026 in San Jose, Costa Rica. Capital city for this region that does not have its own army, instead relying on its big bro the Estados Unidos to the north is a metropolis of approx. 500K people. Largely wilderness and with both a Pacific and Carribean/Atlantic coast the country is rich in bio diversity. In Spanish it means the rich coast so named by Columbus landing in early 16th century and being mesmerized by the local tribes sporting gold jewelry.   Our stay included visiting the foothills of a large strato volcano called Arenal and enjoying the naturally heated thermal baths for a while.  Lunching amidst lush forest and watching indigenous species of avian noise makers fly overhead. Toucans, some sort of pea hens, multiple song bird species completed the spectacle. Iguanas and a lonel...