some stuff

[edenfalling]

It occurs to me that it has been A While since I posted here. I think my writing attention has just been diverted to other sites, which is a shame since Dreamwidth is kind of my prosthetic memory, as it were.

In summary: I did Thanksgiving in Chicago (drove there and back, which was annoying) with my parents, my brother, and my aunt. I saw Neil Gaiman live at NJPAC in early December, and spent a night with Susan and her family rather than make it a very long day trip. I did Christmas in the Twin Cities (via airplane because at a certain point driving logistics become intolerably unwieldy) with my parents, my brother, and my brother's dog.

I wrote a thing for Yuletide and received a lovely gift!

My work at the rental company continues in its mix of small triumphs and assorted annoyances. My seasonal work at Not the IRS has begun and corporate has made Some Choices of which the most notable is getting rid of all our actual telephones and routing all calls through Microsoft Teams -- absolutely nobody on the ground thinks this was a good idea, but apparently this was somehow better than, you know, just paying for each office to have a functional local voicemail system. *headdesk*

I may or may not get around to making individual posts about some of that stuff.

I have attended some classical music concerts, and skipped some others despite having pre-purchased tickets, mostly because I was very tired on the evenings in question and judged staying home to be the better part of valor.

The Three Sentence Ficathon is currently running at threesentenceficathon. I have not had the concentration to participate much, alas, but you should totally go check it out!

Um. And, you know, life continues on its meandering way, as life is wont to do. :)

Comments

[redwolf]

Gah! Teams. Yeah, same silly decision where I work. It's okay for making outgoing calls, but painful for incoming. You either need your computer audio up to annoy everyone around you or you have to wear a headset all the time to hear there's a call coming in. On the upside, it does give me a legitimate excuse to ignore incoming calls.

I particularly like the terrible UI on the answer call dialogue box. Every time it pops up I want to hit the obvious red icon to answer the call, but that's the call disconnect icon. Needless to say that I accidentally hang up on people all the time.

Then because you need a headset to use the damn thing, work opted for on ear headsets that I loathe. Combine that kit with way too many online meetings all day and it's painful. I ended up getting a wireless gaming headset, so I now can at least wander around the house while I ignore a meeting that should have been an email.

[edenfalling]

I don't even like Teams for outgoing calls, because I am usually reading a phone number off the computer screen, and having to type that into Teams instead of a phone means I have to keep flipping back and forth between program windows. (Copypaste is often disabled for the non-Teams program, alas.)

Our receptionist has purchased a Bluetooth headset with her own funds, because the provided one-ear headsets are so terrible.

[tielan]

Ugh Teams.

I mean, it's kind of useful, but also sometimes it's just easier to call someone directly.

Actually, at one point I thought we weren't supposed to use Teams for my work since data was stored on non-Australian systems. But either that requirement went away or they fixed it? Hm.

[edenfalling]

It's useful for group calls, I guess, and for video consultations, but I prefer an actual telephone system for speaking with clients about things like "can I schedule an appointment?" *sigh*

[branchandroot]

The computer-phone thing is _massively annoying_. My uni has been pushing it, too, and with everyone all over the landscape it makes a small amount of sense, but wow is it annoying. Sympathies.

[edenfalling]

The MOST annoying thing is that so far as I can tell, it STILL doesn't provide us with a functional voicemail system!

In theory, we get phone messages through Work Center, which is a proprietary software thing that integrates our tax prep program, our payment program, our tax notice service, our "please call your clients and get them on the schedule" program, and assorted other things... but in practice, I am not sure Teams is connecting to that, so missed calls just vanish into the ether. *headdesk*

[senmut]

Hey. Glad to see you.

[edenfalling]

Hello! I am alive! :)