Research is King

"Rub a dub dub
Three men in a tub
And who do you think they be?
The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker
Turn them out, knaves all three."
--Traditional English Nursery Rhyme*



When I was rummaging around in my head for ideas about the "Getting to Know You" week of Blapril, the line "The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker" kept popping up.

I'd like to think it's because I putter around with hobbies, but I'm not exactly certain about that. I do cook (butcher), and I bake (baker), but the candles part? I seem to recall making candles the way the Colonial Americans did in 1776 as part of the 1976 Bicentennial celebration at my school (I was in First Grade at the time), but outside of burning candles in the fireplace** or above the mantle I haven't done much as far as candle making/usage is concerned.

But all three do have something in common: all three are things that people use their hands to work with. Sure, you can mechanize to your heart's content, but at their core all three are physical activities.

***

A lot of my hobbies require a certain level of manual dexterity. Video gaming is the most obvious example, but in the past my hobbies have included speaker building, homebrewing/winemaking, computer building, shortwave radio***, bread making, gardening, and car repair.**** Obviously, board gaming and pencil-and-paper RPGs don't require any real dexterity --and neither does reading-- but as my career does not require much manual dexterity at all I compensate by attempting to do a lot of other things myself.

At the same time, I also realize my own limitations. I know I'll never be as good as a contractor, and I have an alarming tendency to come close to electrocuting myself, so I farm out projects to contractors as the need arises. But I do have a stubborn streak in me that pushes me into learning as much as possible about a topic before deciding on a course of action. The mini-Reds tease me about my devotion to thoroughly researching a topic before starting a project, and they're not wrong.

***

Perhaps the reason why that nursery rhyme comes up when I think about my hobbies is that I am always interested in learning something new, researching it as much as I can, and then moving on to something else. There are hobbies that I return to, and ones that stick with me for the long term, but it is the fascination with how things work and why things are that keeps me going. I've told my wife on numerous occasions that when I retire I'd like to move to a town attached to a small liberal arts college or university; where I could simply become a fixture on campus, attending the classes I wanted, hearing talks and concerts, and enjoying the positives of being close to a place of learning. Oh, I don't have any illusions about what small towns are like, but there's something about being close to a university that the suburbs simply doesn't have.

#Blapril2020



*This is the version that I knew growing up; there are plenty of variations.

**I used to build fires in our fireplace, but after the "Smoke Incident", I stopped making fires. And no, you don't need to know anything else about that other than there were damp logs, a surprise backdraft, and an idiot (me) who had issues getting a proper fire built.

***Before you say that shortwave doesn't require a lot of manual dexterity, you've obviously never built or repaired your own outside antenna.

****Oh, the stories. My first car was a 1976 Plymouth Volare, which was a rust bucket in the truest sense. When I first began working on the car I discovered a bird's nest where the air filter would go, which was just the beginning of my life with what was christened the Silver Bullet. It even had a hole rusted through in the floor of the driver's side where you'd normally place your left foot, so to compensate I'd place my foot at a weird angle. To this day, I still use that angle for my foot which eventually makes my left hip ache if I drive for over a couple of hours.

When the Well Runs Dry

Another question nobody asks me is "Red, where do you get your ideas?"

That's not because I (sort of) answered the question way back in 2013 when I participated in the Newbie Blogger Initiative (NBI), but because it's not something that anybody ever asks these days. The presumption is that you have a method for coming up with ideas, because otherwise you'd not be blogging in the first place.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not true.

You might not start out with an idea problem, but sooner or later your pile of writing ideas will dry up, and you're staring at the blank page, saying "Now what?"

If you come up with a foolproof method for generating ideas, let me tell you that you could sell that and make a ton of money, because everybody hits dry spots when they can't come up with something new. Even my own method of jotting down whatever comes to mind into a text file or a notepad doesn't help when the ideas are obsolete a short time later.

So, what do you do?

Well, this is a gaming blog, so that means you do two things: play games and read other blogs.

Playing games for inspiration isn't exactly new territory here, but perhaps trying something new, or out of your comfort zone, will result in a few ideas. Or maybe you end up in a particularly memorable instance run. Or, to turn things on their head, you have a completely boring and predictable run; why was it so boring and predictable, and what kept you from dropping from that "boring and predictable" run? Or have you been reading Gen Chat, and watching the conflagration of lunacy over petty topics? Now is your chance to get the entire thing off of your chest.

That last idea leads into the other big source of ideas: other blogs. Those fellow gamer blogs aren't going to all mimic your own; people have different opinions than yours, can you can't tell me that those opinions won't clash to an extent that you'll want to write a "YOU'RE WRONG!!" post.*

Yes, I'm old enough to remember when Saturday
Night Live --and Dana Carvey-- spoofed the
PBS political show The McLaughlin
Group. (From Gfycat.)

Even if you do agree, explaining why you do is worth a post. Or perhaps the post inspires you to delve down a similar matter and approach things from a different angle.

***

So there are plenty of potential posts out there, you just have to be open to finding them.

Or, if worse comes to worst, have a pic of a cat in a box.

From ohmagif.com, ~2014.

Not what you expected, is it?

#Blapril2020




*Hopefully nicer than that.

Advice From Not an Overnight Sensation

If you're old enough to be part of the workforce, you've likely noticed that different companies have a different approach to employee development.

Some companies have shadowing for a couple of weeks, and then you're on your own. Other companies have formal training, but the net result is that once you're finished you're thrown into the deep end of the pool. A lot of service oriented companies take either of these approaches toward training, and I've experienced both. My first job --as a janitor-- was the first example, and a job I had just after I graduated from university* used the second.

Other corporations have a different approach to "employee onboarding", as it is described in corporate speak. Some take the approach of formal training, but in addition to that training they have a "training website" where you can access whatever virtual class you want. Proponents of such an approach talk up the ability of the employee to pick and choose the path of their career.

And finally, there are corporations that assign you a mentor when you're hired, who assists you with your initial training and then periodically meets with you to provide guidance, contacts, and training to progress in your career.

That last approach seems to be losing favor in the corporate world over the "self service" model, and the primary reason why seems to be the bane of all corporations: cost savings. It takes time (and correspondingly costs money) for one to one mentoring in corporations, and by offering a "self-service" model a corporation can say "Hey, here's all the training you could possibly need; go ahead and pick and choose what you want so you have control over your career."

But here's the kicker: that self-service model only works well for some people; it is most definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution.

***

Because I've experienced all of these different approaches to employee training and development**, I have definite opinions on what works and what doesn't. And the answer is "it depends".

Yes, I know it's a way of weaseling out of an answer, but there really is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Some people like the full mentoring process, and some people have a clear vision of the road ahead and are fine with picking and choosing which path forward. And still others are happy with some up front training and then just running with it.

And if you can see where I'm heading, then I'll salute you with a beer after hours.

***

Yes, employee training and development is pretty much the same mentoring in any other activity, including blogging. Some people prefer to dive right in, and others will pepper old hands with lots of questions.

As you can guess by the out of date nature of this website, you should probably not be asking me for design advice, although I will say that if you go the gif route make sure you can customize a gif to your liking. I've never bothered to replace the main graphic here at PC because every attempt I made at making it look more interesting --or timely-- just never came out right. I will say that ease of reading and accessibility to mobile reading are two things that I'd place a high priority on. Apparently Blogger made a change several years ago that prevents people from commenting on Blogger blogs using Safari (especially the iOS version) without requiring that Safari relax some security rules. If you're not fond of that solution***, I'd suggest looking at Wordpress. (PC is too ingrained here in Blogger for me to just up and leave, unless Blogger gets sunset by Google, which is always a distinct possibility. See: Chromecast Audio.)

Okay, that aside, I can't tell you how to write. I can't tell you that "if you write A, you'll get response B". I can't even tell you how to monetize a blog, because I've been bound and determined to never do that. There are friends who read the blog and I don't want to try to monetize their friendship, because I value their friendship too much.

But what I can tell you is that you have to write.

You must write.

A blog thrives on material, and if there isn't any, there's no blog.

Go with what you want to write about. Pour your guts out on the virtual page. You'll get better the longer you actually write posts --hell, I'm proof of that-- and you'll have content that you can point to when you comment on other people's blogs.

Also, don't try to be fake or hipsterish. People see through that shit almost instantly, and unless you're very good, any facade you create will eventually crack, and the real you will shine through.

And finally, don't go into blogging thinking you'll catch lightning in a bottle and become the next Pewdiepie. Just don't. Influencer culture is --effectively-- a way for companies to shill their products without having to pay excessive amounts of money. The most popular influencers out there --including the aforementioned Mr. Pie-- rake in tons of money per year, but their effect on pop culture is pretty damn big as well and more than makes up for whatever money companies through at them. If you really want to become an influencer and wonder how you go about doing it, there is a book out there called Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media by Brittany Hennessy that goes through the details of starting a blog, building a brand, and pretty much a "how to be self-employed" manual without the details about how to report income on taxes. Yes, the book covers fashion for the most part --that's what the author is familiar with-- but the ideas are applicable to influencer culture in general. And yes, I felt somewhat in need of a shower after seeing the details about a career that simply didn't exist 10 years ago.****

So why blog?

You tell me. What do you want to say? Why do you want to say it? And answer those questions when you write.

If that's mentoring, then so be it. But that's the same advice that I'd give to anybody else who is starting a blog: you may not have a voice (yet), but you can write. And through writing, you'll find your voice.

#Blapril2020




*I worked at Radio Shack for about six months after graduation, before I was fired for lack of sales per hour. Yes, the now defunct (or effectively so) Radio Shack. The sales levels required to maintain your employment pretty much required you to sell a computer per week, and when I worked there the Tandy computers being sold were inferior to the 386 and newly released 486 PCs sold by other companies, and I simply could not recommend Tandy computers over Dell, Gateway, or other custom built machines by small businesses all over town. I could spend lots of time talking about Radio Shack and some of the idiotic decisions they made over the years, but that's definitely another time. But I will say that their audio equipment from the 70s and 80s are worth the investment.

**Sorry, I can't mention other employers other than Radio Shack because reasons. Rat Shack is now gone, so they can't come after me with torches and pitchforks.

***I have friends who read PC but can't comment because of the weird restrictions that Blogger threw up for no good reason. If you google "why can't I comment on blogger with my iPad" you'll find the solution to the issue, but I'm reluctant to tell people to give up some security for the sake of a comment. PC isn't immune from being hacked like any other site, so why risk it? Although I'll also admit loving to hear from friends who have those restrictions.

****I personally don't see how any real influencer worth their salt would accept freebies from another company and try to walk the fine line of promoting said product versus being "objective". I put that in quotes because --from my perspective-- being truly objective means you have to be willing to tell a company that their product sucks if it is warranted. Trying to soften the blow so you can keep the money flowing, in my opinion, compromises your integrity.


EtA: Sometimes I really hate cut and paste on Blogger's toolset. Corrected cut-and-paste issues.

Journey's End

Well, I now have my answer to the question posed in the last post.

Azshandra dinged in the throne room in Blackrock Depths. On trash, no less.

To be honest, it was very touch and go at the end, as our group wiped twice in the room with all of the Dark Iron Reserves, and it was a judicious run down the left side after some of the roaming mobs had wandered away that kept us from wiping a third time.

Well, there was also the bar fight that almost wasn't, because we simply couldn't start a fight by throwing ale at the patrons, so we resorted to stealing ale and turning the entire bar against us. A long time ago I recall myself as Quintalan, Soul's wife, and Soul trying to three man BRD and getting stopped at the bar by wiping on the hordes of angry bar patrons, so this was a bit of a flashback. Still, we persevered through that only to wipe in the next area because an Anvilrage Marshall healed a runner who then aggroed the next mob over, causing a wipe.

But in the end, the BRD run was totally worth it. It was a great group to run with, and I know I had a blast.

I still have a ton of BRD related quests in my queue, but the big overarching question of actually completing the instance is finally over.

***

Finishing Blackrock Depths, especially after all of my failed attempts in the past couple of weeks, demonstrates the power of persistence in the face of mounting odds.

Speaking of overcoming odds....
Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)
From 2016, Tommy Shaw of Styx and Damn 

Yankees playing with the Contemporary Youth 

Orchestra of Cleveland.

Oh, I don't think that Az couldn't finish the instance, but I was fighting a headwind where tanks were more interested in other instances than just BRD. Back when Az was attempting to get into Zul'Farrak, I was fighting the crowd where the first wave of players had largely passed Z'F and were no longer interested in running there, so it took me a couple of weeks to get Az into a Z'F run that actually finished.*

But the BRD headwind was completely different. The first wave had already reached L60 and were running end level instances, raids, and battlegrounds. With the exception of slowpokes like me who spent way too much time enjoying the ride, the second wave of alts was passing Az by.** And, it seemed, that there were few tanks willing to step up for a full BRD run.

To add to the frustration, the quality of interactions in LookingForGroup seems to have declined a bit of late. A few players have taken it on themselves to provide commentary on some guilds who host open raids, and that provoked other reactions from even more players, and in true MMO fashion the shit hit the fan. I'm actually surprised that the player made LFG group on the Myzrael-US server hasn't seen more traffic lately, given the lack of drama there.

However, I didn't give up on Az's Blackrock dreams. I deal with enough drama in real life that I wasn't about to let the crap in LookingForGroup --or anywhere else in MMO space, really-- get to me.

***

And now it's done. Az is at L60, Blackrock Depths is complete, and I can move on in the direction of Scholomance and Stratholme. And from there, Dire Maul and Blackrock Spire.

Leeroy Jenkins, here I come.

#Blapril2020



*Ironically enough, Cardwyn has experienced no issues getting into Z'F --or any other instance-- for that matter. I suspect the reasons are twofold: Mages are in demand (Rogues not so much), and people are running alts all the time now.

**It's been kind of weird seeing people in Cardwyn's friends list show up in groupings with Az. "Oh hey, [insert name here]. We've run before, but on my Mage alt, Cardwyn." "Oh yeah, I remember Card!"

The Blackrock Blues

The real question for me lately is whether Azshandra will complete a full Blackrock Depths run or hit L60 first. Given my recent luck in BRD runs, I'm betting on L60.

Oh, it's not that the runs devolved into acrimony or something, it's just that they fall apart.

I had one where we simply ran out of time: people had to go to bed to get up for work the next day. There was another that one person said they only wanted an Angerforge run, and after they left the tank left, and that was that. A third stalled at the mobs near Bael'Gar, and a fourth stalled after a wipe near the entryway to Molten Core. In between, there have been a couple of small runs that I knew going in that were going to end fairly quickly, like the Marshall Windsor quests, but I was fine with that.

And in another recent run we wiped in the gnome area, and during the subsequent runback some people had to split.

But Az did ding L59, so at least there's that.

***

The most memorable run so far has been one that we knew almost immediately that we weren't going to get to the end, but we decided to see how far we were going to get.

You see, the evening began with me wanting to get into a Blackrock Depths run, but the runs that evening only wanted AoE DPS --basically Mages and Warlocks-- so people could farm experience. A single Rogue such as Az was not on people's radar. So, when a Sunken Temple run appeared, I was happy to join.

Once invited to the group, I realized that I'd run with half of the group before*, so I knew this was going to be a solid bunch. We spent a bit of extra time doing a full clear of the entire Sunken Temple complex --as a lot of groups simply skip the sewers portion-- and once done we began to go our separate ways.

However, the healer spoke up about how she wanted to do some more instances tonight, and how does BRD sound?

"That's what I wanted to do this evening," I replied, "but people only wanted Mages in LookingForGroup. So count me in."

One player didn't want to run, so we said goodbye to him and the four of us hearthed out and began the trip to Blackrock Mountain while asking around for a fifth.

A fifth quickly joined us, and it was yet another toon I'd run with before. Surely this meant that the stars were aligning, and I'd finally get that BRD run completed.

Well.....

One of our group disconnected mid-flight.

"Um...." I said.

"Oh, I bet I know what happened," one of the group said. "He said he was going to check his phone, and because of lag he was using it as a hot spot."

It turned out to be the case, because after he rejoined he told us he'd rebooted his phone as it was slow and had completely forgotten about using it as a hotspot.

Well, since he died mid-flight, his corpse was stuck somewhere near Karazhan, so he had to run all the way back to Darkshire to revive. Once there, he picked up some water for the healer (who'd run out and forgotten to get more) and headed out on the flightpoint once more.

While he was en route, the tank yawned and said that she couldn't keep her eyes open, so she was going to have to call it a night. We tried getting a tank, but no dice. There were two or three BRD/UBRS groups vying for tanks at the same time, and while we said "no reserves" in our call outs the other groups were offering gold as bribes. Things kind of degenerated from there into the other groups getting into a fight with some people who "claimed" to be tanks, saying they weren't offering enough incentives to tank

At that point, the healer basically said "screw it" and said that we should just go with the four of us (Druid Healer, Two DPS Warriors, and Az the Rogue) and see how far we get. The four of us were fine with that, so we figured with some luck we could at least get through the Arena portion and up to Angerforge.

We did a lot of line of sight pulls, and the healer did a great job of keeping the designated Warrior tank upright, particularly since she didn't have any tanking gear at all. We only had one stupid wipe at the beginning where we pulled once too many, but we made it to the Arena. "As long as we don't get something like the bats, we should be okay," the tank said.

We got the bats.

We wiped.

As we ran back, we debated strategy on how to take care of them, but it turned out to be for naught as the event had glitched and the bats had vanished. The way forward lay open.

"Let's see if we can take Angerforge out at least," the tank said, and led the way out.

We made it to Angerforge, waited for all of the Healer's cooldowns to finish, and we pulled Angerforge up the stairs and into a side hallway. Given the lack of that fifth person, we did pretty well in getting to within a hit or two of knocking Angerforge off, but we still wiped.

"Okay," I said as we ran back, "We've got this. just one or two more hits and then we'll have taken him out."

"Maybe we should pull him farther back," the healer suggested. "Like around the bend and close to the door leading to this area."

"That's fine. We'll wait there while the tank pulls. If the tank needs an extra heal, you can run forward a bit as needed."

So we set ourselves up, with Az (me) and the healer near the door, the other DPS Warrior hanging around by some cannons at the end of the hallway, and the tank ran past him and got ready to pull Angerforge.

"Okay, pulling," she called.

Suddenly the healer and I were surrounded by eight fire elementals, who quickly blew us apart.

"AAAAAAAAAHHH!!!" The Warrior DPS yelled.

"What the holy hell was that?" the healer asked.

The tank dropped the pull and ran back to see the fire elementals vanish.

"I was just standing here on the cannons, looking at the two of you, and you were both engulfed by those fire elementals. It was terrifying!"

The healer and I started laughing.

"It had to be triggered by my pull," the tank said. "You screamed as soon as I pulled."

"I'd have given a lot to have seen the look on your face, man," I said as the healer and I started a runback.

"I'd rather have a video of the view he had," the healer added. "It must have been some sight."

"It was, and I don't want to see it again."

During the runback we decided that this was likely a built-in protection that Blizz had to keep a Hunter from kiting Angerforge all the way and past the hallway. "Because Hunters," the healer added.

"Well, we can't kite that far," the tank replied, "so let's redo this and make sure people use their Chained Essence of Eranikus when each mob appears."**

"And if we kill Angerforge, make sure to click on him so we can at least loot him when we run back."

Our strategy in place, and everybody's abilities now completely off cooldown, we tried once more to kill of General Angerforge. And this time, we killed him before his second mob wiped us.

That had to be the happiest bunch of dead people running back to revive in an instance.

We mutually agreed that we weren't going any farther with just the four of us, so we decided to regroup some time later, get a real tank, and finish the instance.

So while Az didn't get that BRD run she wanted, what she got was a totally memorable run nevertheless.

#Blapril2020




*I had already friended them, which I typically do for players who not only do a good job but also make grouping enjoyable. Basically, they're the people I'd not mind having as guildies.

**The idea was to use one Chained Essence on the first mob, and the other one on the second. I, being a "nice guy", had given up my Chained Essence because I that's not how I roll.

Ya Gotta Have That Something, Kid

When we first started blogging here on PC, Soul performed some outreach to several bloggers that he followed to help us get connected into the WoW blogoverse. We picked up a few views that way, and were added to a few blogs, but that outreach never really amounted to much.

I should also mention that this outreach happened before Twitter blew up and became the Twitter that we all love and hate today, so if you thought Twitter is shouting into the void now, then you haven't seen the "before times".

But what I discovered that in those first few years of blogging was that it wasn't active promotion that garnered regular readers but rather the organic work of reading and responding on other people's blogs. If I had something interesting to say on other blogger's comment sections, people would follow my link back and check out PC. That's how we ended up on what was --at the time-- two of the most important WoW blog sites' blogrolls: Righteous Orbs and the Pink Pigtail Inn.

Times have changed quite a bit, given the rise of Twitter and the fine tuning of self-promotion to an art form. However, one thing that remains is the basic premise that you have to have something interesting to say if you want to keep readers. Being hip or edgy is not required. And all the self-promotion in the world won't keep readers if you don't have that interesting angle.

#Blapril2020

Have We a Dynamic and Creative Office Environment Yet?

"Tell him sorry but no. Homer, Virgil, and Milton all did it in 12. Big Dave don't break no rules."
--David Eddings, responding to an editor on a fan's request for more books set in the Belgariad universe, after he'd written a dozen books. (Possibly apocryphal)


I am, at heart, an introvert.

That shouldn't be a surprise to people who know me, and that my limit to social media is blogging* fits in with that background.

Of course, you can sit there and point out that I play MMOs, which pretty much require interaction if you want to engage with a decent amount of the content, and I'd agree that yes, you'd think that if I can play MMOs I can handle other things, such as Twitter or Discord.**

But I don't use other forms of social media, and I'm fine with that.

Twitter is too immediate and driven by emotion and the hive mind for me to utilize it well. As I've said before on numerous occasions --both in and outside PC-- Twitter would feed into my worst instincts by allowing me to shoot off a reply without thinking through it first. Whether or not you think positively of my opinions, my posts on PC aren't fired simply off-the-cuff. I write something, set it aside for an hour or more, and then come back and re-read it. I typically make some major changes, because my training and expertise do not lie in writing and grammar, and I also edit the content once my emotions have gotten back into a better state.*** With Twitter, that review period gets thrown out the window and it pretty much becomes "anything goes".

Discord --and related chat/video apps-- are not my friend. I look on the chat apps, including Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business****, as necessary evils in today's world. My actual job requires me to be available 24x7, which means that I have to respond to any texts or other alerts at any time of day or night. And because of that, the dreaded 3 AM text is a part of my life.

I've been on emergency work calls using Skype for Business that lasted 10-12 hours (don't ask), and I've been woken up at 3 AM for an emergency that required me to write code on the fly to fix a problem that was seen once about 10 years ago. So yeah, I tend to associate voice apps with work to an absurd degree.

But on top of that, I dread putting myself out there in an open Discord chat channel. It sounds silly, but I really do get a knot in my stomach when I have to get on Discord (or, in the old days, Ventrillo) for some reason or another. An MMO's party chat doesn't have my Spring sinuses clearly audible*****, and while I can't type as fast as I'd like during an instance, I don't mind that. After all, I'm supposed to be focusing on the task at hand rather than making some random quip after Archaedas says "Who dares the wrath of the Makers??!!" with "Oh, not me. I'll go see myself out now."

***

I realize that the entire point of the Blapril Discord channel is to provide a fertile breeding ground for creative synergies with fellow content creators, but for me that sounds too much like work. Especially for an introvert.

Besides, I've never promoted PC, and I certainly don't intend to start doing so now.

So, being both the introvert and the contrarian, I'm going to take a pass on joining the Blapril Discord channel. Sure, going outside of my comfort zone can be good in the long term, but I'm not going to break my internal rules concerning voice apps. For the time being, at least.

#Blapril2020




*And some obligatory Facebook.

**Or guilds in general, for that matter.

***Okay, confession time. I had a really hard time writing certain portions of One Final Lesson because of the emotions I got while writing. This extended into the review/editing period, when I try really hard to step back and properly edit the work for clarity and conciseness. On more than one occasion I said out loud (to an empty house) "This is nuts; I wrote this, dammit! Get a hold of yourself!"

****Teams is, for those who remember it, the Lotus Notes of 2020. Both Teams and Skype for Business, along with other old apps such as Sametime, are the bane of the modern office. I've been working from home for at least 17 years, and I really despise these apps because they frequently get in the way of work and collaboration rather than enhance them. And for people who opine that working in an office enhances collaboration, that only works if your coworkers are also in the same office. In a modern company where people may be located all over the globe, forcing people to come into an office just to then use Teams or Skype is silly, particularly when you can get distracted all the time in an actual office by just casual chatting with coworkers. (See: Office Space.) And on top of it, some companies use these tools to determine if you're slacking off or not, which will only get worse as the shelter-in-place directives spread over the globe.

*****The first time I got on a chat app for WoW, Soul asked me "what's up with your breathing?" And here I thought I sounded normal, until I realized that the microphone will pick up crap like my sinuses because it's a helluva lot closer to my schnoz than another person's ears.