This made me laugh far too hard….
Author Archives: Court
Conference Call Etiquette Should be Required Teaching in Schools
Today children, let’s discuss how to be a good conference call participant. I attend many conference calls, for better or for worse. I can tell you with iron clad confidence that there is only one critical aspect to being a good con-call participant:
Treat your mute button like a walkie-talkie
That’s it.
There’s just no reason you need to snort, sniff, sip, cough, breathe, gasp, chuckle, smack, slurp, swallow, blow, whistle, whoop, grunt, puff, groan, squeak, sigh, or wheeze even once that your fellow call participants can hear. When you have something to say, collect your thoughts, come off mute and say it. Then mute again. Simple. It also has the following side benefits:
- It improves the audio quality on your end (and for everyone else) Â since it reduces the bandwidth needed (don’t ask why I know this, but I can assure you that sadly I do)
- Your friends/coworkers will appreciate it too, with fewer interruptions in the audio stream that sound like interjections that result in those awkward go/no you go moments.
- You may find you are more purposeful in what you say since it’s not just an open channel for whatever falls from your brain onto your tongue. That could mean shorter calls, and everyone can get behind those.
That’s it for today, kids.
Sometimes, just hiccups
There’s just nothing that makes me laugh harder than Nikki’s hiccups. Fifteen years now, same reaction…
Marketing for Masochists
I won’t tell you where I had the pleasure of trying this piece of medical equipment out, but let’s just examine the dubious marketing at play here for a moment. From the (twisted) mind of Dr. Ho, A Pain Relief Expert comes the catchy name: Circulation Promoter. That’s it.  It sounds almost helpful, but that name is deadly boring and I propose, downright deceptive. My circulation may not require promoting, I actually don’t know for sure. But after trying this device out, I definitely question Dr. Ho’s title of “Pain relief expert”. I therefore have a better name in mind, keep reading.
Before we rename it, I thought I would explore the product’s features and functions. I can tell you from personal experience that this evil little device relieves way more symptoms than just those listed here. For starters I quickly found that it relieved me of “taking for granted I have full muscle control of my lower extremities”, and also relief from “forgetting that we are mostly made of water and electricity does frigging weird and painful things to us”.
Overall, a better name for this product would have been “Sparky Sweatstain’s Downed Power Line Simulator”. It more accurately describes the product’s use and the experience you have while using it. For instance; I have never seen my feet and toes do THAT before. It’s like watching a horror movie starring ten little contortionists. They all went to market, and they came back changed forever.
I fully expect a call from Dr. Ho’s people to discuss acquiring my copyright, and payment thereof.
The Running Dead?
I’m just going to leave this here.
Severed Feet Keep Washing up on Pacific NorthWest Shores
I have noticed this story before, and yep it’s still weird.  I used up all my puns on those two blog posts (I even made a hokey-pokey one), I really have nothing LEFT (ok I still amuse myself with these things at least).  A really strange coincidence is that almost all of the feet were wearing running shoes. Exercise kills, people.
16 feet since 2007. Â I’m gonna keep my feet in Ontario, I think. it’s slightly less weird.
Old timer discovers Podcasts, shakes stick
I am realizing lately that I am auditioning to become a certain variety of old person. Â I haven’t got the part yet, but let’s just say I have received a call back. Â I’m going to be a geek, certainly, but my particular flavour of old geek is one that enjoys music and radio a lot, as much as or more than I always did as a normal person.
The old geek I will become recently discovered he likes podcasts. Â If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically free radio episodes you download over the Internet. Â Most people use an app that let’s you discover the latest episodes automatically, you can listen to them off-line, and there are other technical details that appeal to the (eventually old) geek in me just fine.
I never really caught on to podcasts before now, I couldn’t really even tell you why.  I knew they existed, but maybe there were just too many to decide which ones to start with.  There are podcasts for every damn thing under the sun out there, seriously there are so many.  It seems to me that most podcasts follow a talk radio kind of format, so you may have to hunt around before you find one you really like.  Personally I haven’t found any of those that interest me, however there is another kind of podcast that definitely has caught my attention.
The Black Tapes podcast and my second recommendation TANIS are fictional serialized dramas.  These podcasts aren’t just inane chatter about whatever the hosts want to talk about.  This is a story, written with care and following an arc that takes you through it in a satisfying way.  The voice acting is generally good and there is care taken in production values, etc.  The whole experience rewards listening with headphones.  Both of these podcasts are actually from the same media company, which explains a few things, and some of the voices and people are the same in both.  They both also share some similarities in that they are just ever so slightly creepy.  If you want to try one, I would start with The Black Tapes since I find it to be slightly more accessible in nature.  It’s a paranormal-flavoured story line, but the overall arc is really good, the characters are great, and I’m hooked.  Season 2 begins soon, you might have time to get through the first season before it starts.
TANIS is quite a bit different, it’s definitely got a bit more of an X-Files theme to it. Â It’s weirder, darker, and cooler. Â It’s also newer so it has a little further to go before I can say for sure which one I like better. Â I’m actually leaning towards TANIS at this point, we will see.
Also, if you do like what you hear you can support them via Patreon  (The Black Tapes link) as well, which I have done because that is also the kind of old geek I am auditioning for.  Why I am compelled to support and pay for things I enjoy that are generally available on the Internet for free is the topic of another, probably lengthy blog post.
There you go people, grab these things for a listen and tell ’em old Court sent ya.
Get off my RSS feed, you kids.