Rant #3,316: Electric Stories

I'm back after two up-and-down days.

As I have repeatedly said, when the Internet works, it is a wonderful thing, but when it doesn't work ... well, I can't think of anything more frustrating.

During the first day of the meeting that I had to cover for my writing/editing job, I was prepared as I could be, with my laptop, my tablet and my phone all at the ready.

The day's conference started at 8:30 a.m., and I went through the process of connecting to the meeting through Microsoft Teams.

I have to tell you, I used three different browsers and to my dismay, I could not join up with the meeting, which was held in Virginia Beach, Va.

I tried and tried and tried some more, and I simply could not get into the meeting. I was hooking up to Micosoft Teams, but it kept on telling me that someone would let me in, but it never happened.

I became very frustrated, and after about an hour of this, I was about ready to give up. During that hour. I contacted my superiors several times to tell them about the problem I was having--

And they had no solution to the problem, either.

Then incredibly, the picture came on out of nowhere--and I thought we had licked the problem.

But to my chagrin, the audio was "wtcfujrujndhkgfjjgg" ... it was completely inaudible.

I again contacted my superiors, and in the meantime, I lost the feed probably about three times in a two-hour-or-so span.

It didn't really matter, because I couldn't make heads or tails about what they were saying, anyway.

I pretty much gave up at about 11:30 a.m. or so, and I went on my desktop computer to do some work that I needed to do.

At this point, the video was fine, but the audio continued to be garbled ... but not as bad as it had been; this time, I could actually pick up about three out of every 10 words.

At noon, the meeting adjourned for an hour lunch break, during which time I sent my superiors a sound file of a few seconds to demonstrate to them that I wasn't losing my hearing, and that the audio feed was as bad as I had previously reported.

Now that I seemed to be firmly attached to the feed, I didn't want to disconnect, because I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get back on.

So I did the work that I needed to do, and as the meeting restarted at 1 p.m., I heard one of the moderators say, "can everyone find their seats" in a crystal clear tone.

So Voila! I was finally laser focused into the meeting, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

I assume thst technicians worked on both the video and the audio during the lunch break, and those efforts allowed me to finally settle into what I was supposed to do to cover the meeting.

The afternoon and the next day both went swimmingly, I somehow was able to cobble together a story less the morning session of the first day, and I sent in a halfway decent story even though I missed the early hours of the meeting.

This situation has actually happened before to me; one time, all who were tuned into the meeting had the same problem, and things got so bad that those running the meeting had to convene another meeting to duplicate what many people missed sitting at home trying to watch something of importance right smack dab in the middle of the pandemic.

So this has happened before to me, and it will probably happen again, because I simply don't think that these apps--Microsoft Teams and the like--are as trustworthy as we all want them to be.

They are full.of bugs.

This time, the situation had a happy ending, but that isn't a guarantee when things don't work out like we hoped they would.

And it just adds more agita to my mind, body and soul than I really need--heaven knows I have enough--and is annoying beyond explanation.

When it works, the Internet is a wonderful thing, but when it doesn't work--

Oh, the pain!

Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.