How do they see anything, then? Are their computers wired directly into their brains, or does everyone use a laptop now? (That would be sad – I love my large bright monitor and ergonomic full-size keyboard.)
Pretty much, that and tablets.
With what’s going on in the news, I thought everyone skipped over tablets and went straight to mushrooms…
This is the most wonderful text message I have ever received. It ranks up there with the best of James Joyce.
“Table next to your chair in the family room? Alright. It looks like it’s on a chair next to, I mean it’s on the table next to your chair in the family room. That’s an empty case. Oh, ok. Well did you look at the uh because I know I had it inside. Well, I did you put some, did you bring it in here? No, I just wondered if you brought it in in or I don’t think I have. That’s correct. Whatever it’s right here. Oh, ok. I can go back to that same place to see if I can hear you heard it right past the base of the stairs unless I was right. Give me 10 seconds. All right.”
As you say, James Joyce would be proud.
Speech to text is a wonderful thing. Most of us really don’t want a transcript of just how screwed-up and back-tracky our conversations are. Doubly so when the phone in our pocket is secretly transcribing our stream of consciousness out to the world.
I find it fascinating how people talk in reality. I write and study fiction and it’s interesting how you have to make dialogue sound “believable” when true dialogue is the most disjointed, indecipherable shit you ever heard. So so so much is picked up nonverbally. I was listening to a podcast today about atypical presentations of autism and it talked about how a lot of conversation entails constant tiny corrections in miscommunication and understanding. I don’t think we’re even consciously aware of it, but communication is an error-laden process. No wonder some humans find it mystifying.
That amazing wall of text was generated by an abortive phone conversation in which Mrs. J. was trying to help me locate my cellphone, which eventually was discovered in a kitchen drawer where I’d left it when getting a piece of duck jerky for Pluto.
It’s still great literature.
I figured this was more of a summer rant, even though it involves the workplace…it has gotten so humid in the building where I work that some of the A/C vents have started collecting condensation and dripping it on people.
Me too! I don’t know if it’s a result of my work setup (two ~21" monitors and a keyboard with a number pad), but I’ve gotten so used to big monitors that I’ve kept using a full setup for home use. Having a couple of giant monitors that allow me to physically spread out my open windows is oddly relaxing. The screen on my laptop might be a little better resolution, but it’s so crowded!
Yes, well, I do (did) love my new keyboard, but I wish to announce that I am, with deep regret, abandoning it. It’s all very sad because I really love the feel of the keys and how cool it looks, and my typing on it is much faster and more error-free than on the Amazon chiclet keyboard.
But the last straw, on top of the other issues with it for which I had workarounds, is that the keyboard is haunted. I noticed while looking at Windows task manager that about 7% to 10% of CPU time was going to “NT Kernel & System” (this is on a fast quad-core Intel i7). Deeper investigation revealed that this was all due to a massive volume of interrupt handling. WTF?
Long story short, replacing the keyboard and disabling the KeyTweak key remapping (which also necessitated a reboot) fixed the problem. Of course the reboot itself may have fixed something else that was amiss, but I have several reasons to believe that the keyboard was in fact generating spurious input, like the fact that it wouldn’t allow the computer to sleep. I had to disable “wake on keyboard” – in each one of the four drivers that this keyboard insists on loading instead of the usual single one.
So I’ve abandoned it despite how much I came to like using it. I’m temporarily back to the Amazon Basics chiclet keyboard until I can make it down to the computer store. With the two Microsoft keyboards with the worn-out keycaps in my closet and this new one, soon to be joined by the Amazon one, my closet is sprouting a veritable garden of keyboards. I never would have expected that something so basic could be so problematic!
My lovely Dell U2412M desktop monitor is 1920x1200, which is higher resolution than any of my laptops. One of those laptops is a conveniently small and light Dell Latitude with a 14" screen – the 1080p screen is very sharp and the colours are gorgeous, but man, the writing is small! 
This is making me happy about retiring all over again. I used to have almost exactly this same conversation with my principal every single time she was copied on emails about reporting requirements - reports I’d been doing accurately and on time every 90 days for 13 years.
This is a big part of the reason why most companies function better when everyone is in the office. There’s so much that can be expressed but is missed when each person is in their own little work world at home. I’m an advocate of doing some of my work at home but team meetings and training both work in person because of non-verbal communication.
Non-verbal communication can be handled pretty well through video conferencing. In my experience, the real advantages of in-office attendance are the very large number of unstructured interactions, such as running into a co-worker in the hallway or popping into their office for a couple of quick questions. The “popping into their office” thing was something I constantly used to do, sometimes to the annoyance of my co-workers. But that annoyance only manifested in highly structured, formal organizations where it was deemed more appropriate to schedule a formal meeting instead – and those were organizations that classically wasted enormous amounts of time in needless meetings.
That’s the real problem with interactions in the work-at-home environment: interactions have to be scheduled rather than spontaneous. And enterprises – by which I mean both business and academic enterprises and all human organizations – simply don’t operate that way. A large proportion of the communication that makes organizations effective is informal and at a low level of granularity, and indeed sometimes the result of pure happenstance.
There are certain people at my work who regularly freak out because they get emails from Accurint, an online records search tool. These emails warn that Accurint will be making some subtle change in their address, or some other aspect of their site, and if our organization restricts internet access to a specific whitelist that we need to change our entries to continue to access the site.
Every single time they panic and ask how we can avoid losing access to the site. And every single time I tell them the same thing… We don’t operate that way, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to browse the web. These emails should never go to regular users that don’t understand jack shit about IT things, because all it does is panic them. Not only that, but they are many times removed from anyone who would be able to do anything about it. Our agency doesn’t even manage such things directly, we go through a multi-agency proxy system run from some nebulous group at the state capital that we have no contacts for.
I tell them that this would be the equivalent of receiving an email warning that Congress needs to add a constitutional amendment or disaster would happen. If that were even remotely true, they’d be screwed because they have absolutely zero control over any of that shit or access to anyone who does. But in a few months, they are going to contact me with the exact goddamn email forward and hysterics.
Like you, I wish I could in any way remove them from that shit. It’s irresponsible for the company to do that. They will have specific technical contacts with our agency (we’re the government after all), they don’t need to be spamming every single customer about something technical that’s far beyond their understanding with the hyperbolic warning that they are going to lose a tool necessary for their jobs.
That’s just a variant on every home PC user being an “administrator” on their computer even if they have no idea what that means.
Accurint or whoever can’t (won’t bother?) tell the difference between an employee whose computers are managed by experts versus a home user whose computer is managed by themselves or by no one.
As to teh non-verbal communication and WFH, IMO that’s one small aspect. It’s an especially important aspect for training and for on-boarding acculturation, which is really training largely by osmosis.
The large issue I see with WFH when I’ve done it in the IT biz or in volunteer work, is that a sizeable fraction of workers, certainly including me, simply tune out. I can’t keep paying attention to Zoom. As a corollary it’s much too easy to “phone it in” for whatever degree of enthusiasm a task, even a solo task, requires.
Only with a good camera and monitor, and even then, in-person catches more. I agree about the unstructured interactions for sure. But, depending on co-workers, those can also hinder work. That’s why I advocate for a half and half schedule. I can get so many questions answered while in the office, but I can get much more “done” when at home. But it depends on the type of work each person does, too.
Right now, I am working a definite in-office job. And today, I’m not looking forward to it. My boss is tightly-wound and yells when things don’t go her way. Yesterday was a bad day for her. I understand that it is stress and not me, personally, but it is tough. Glad it is Friday.
I’m at the point where I go in once or twice a week and that’s good for me. But on meeting-heavy days I stay home because we’re still doing all meetings through Zoom and I hate taking Zoom meetings in the middle of an open office. I’ve never had a problem with communication in Zoom meetings from home, though, with the exception that we occasionally interrupt each other.
I agree that it’s the unscheduled meetings that make going in worth it.
Feeling like crap today and was seriously considering a sick day even though I’m not caught up from vacation yet and I have a couple pressing things. But Wee Weasel is sick sick. I told Spouse Weasel I’d take care of the boy today if husband could give me some time to get caught up on work tomorrow. Then I got a little lecture about how behind he’s going to be if he doesn’t get a full work day tomorrow. Like…I don’t know what to tell you? I have a job too. This is what happens when one of us gets sick… It affects everyone. I’m really tired of the guilt tripping.
Wee Weasel is so sick instead of breakfast he just slumped over the chair with his head on his stuffed racecar. I got him back in bed but he’s up again, and with how I’m feeling it’s just YouTube videos for him while I read the tome of Bradbury stories my husband picked up for me from the library. I have until July 26 to finish this 900 page book! Not a terrible way to spend the day, I guess.
ETA: Oh, and the new therapist is good! We had our first post-intake session last night and I came away with a lot of good homework. It’s classic CBT stuff but I’ve found CBT very useful in the past so I think it’s going to be a really good fit.
It would be nice to wear a bra. If the temp is over 60, I sweat, and then get a yeast infection under boob. I dont want to be seen braless by men, so what to do?
What I do about that is to wear tank tops with built-in bras, or else wear loose-fitting shirts with some type of pattern or design to obscure the fact that I’m going commando. I hope it works, but if it doesn’t I guess the grocery store cashier gets a thrill.
I want “pardon the pun” to go away.
Puns are much maligned in part because this phrase illuminates an opportunity to be clever and the speaker passed on being clever and will focus instead on the dull stuff they were going on about relentlessly. Also the hackneyed lowest hanging fruit puns are tiresome and those are the only ones identified as such.
But puns are a sharp poisoned tipped dagger! They don’t strike until everyone goes home for the evening and the meal conversations begin turning over in the guests heads when someone realizes the double meaning of some introduction hours ago. BAM! That is wit! Allow that! Don’t reveal that magic trick’s secrets.
Anyway, that is my bitching for today. Time to do some work.
Can breast-plate armor be fitted with freon tubes…?
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“Wait wait… let me set this thing to 60. Now, you were saying…?”