We Interrupt This Program....
Mar. 4th, 2021 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogTechnology isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I had a weird hearing yesterday. A client wandered into our office late last year, begging for me to represent him at a small claim hearing in a local city court the next day. First question was, Is it really happening? Many courts that had been slowly reopening through the fall went back into their shells in November when local businesses all went to the elevated orange zone and got shuttier. But no, it turned out, they were ready to go on a virtual platform. I had a time conflict, but using my mad skillz, I got it adjourned- until yesterday. Then followed almost two full months of trying to reach the guy to get his documents, his preparation, and dearest to my heart his retainer. Nothing- until a couple of calls to my voicemail at horribly bad times last week, followed by him calling me 15 minutes before the scheduled start, from out in my parking lot.
I've had worse- at least in terms of communication. But when I clicked the link provided by the court to appear by Microsoft Teams, I got this:
The link they sent had some kind of "safelinks protection" in it. When I checked other virtual hearing invites from the same court system in different places, their Teams link was just a short nycourts dot gov link with a six digit number after it. I even tried clicking on the earlier one, and it opened in Teams just fine. This week's court had no IT people to help, so we wound up doing the whole thing solely through audio. I'm fine with that- it's how I've been doing bankruptcy hearings since last spring- but damn, I had a suit and tie on and nobody saw it:P
Ultimately, the Teams link to the previous month's hearing timed out, and it produced this image:
Which summed up the events of this week- from refi to vaccine scheduling to general spousal communication- about as well as anything. Meanwhile, the client, who was supposed to go back and take care of my retainer, hasn't been heard from since.
Maybe I imagined the whole thing.
----
Or maybe that's just me channeling Wandavision, which literally does feature an episode titled "We Interrupt This Program."
This is the latest one-off Disney Plus series that's getting a lot of buzz. Wanda Maximoff and Vision are characters from the Marvel Avengers movies, and the first few episodes simply placed them in very artfully homaged versions of sitcoms- mainly Dick Van Dyke Show the first week and Bewitched the second. We nonetheless wound up bailing on it because we couldn't figure out if the otherwise cringeworthy tropes of stay-at-home devious mommies and clueless male coworkers were actually going anywhere, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or elsewhere....
but then I came across this review. It picks up after the events of Episode Four and completely spoils that episode (and everything before and likely after it), but it reeled me back into watching, because like the episode it describes, it helped me GET what the series is doing: tying it into both the events of Infinity War/Endgame as well as those of the current pandemic situation.
I've now watched that whole episode and the fifth that followed it, which reverts to the TV Trope Framing Device, this one at least partly homaging the 80s sitcom Full House that famously starred Elizabeth Olsen's sibling twins Mary Kate and Ashley. I found myself wishing they'd put some kind of saga cell before the first episode to at least hint at it instead of diving right into the "this is a vintage tv episode" trope with no explanation. But now I can finish it and see if it makes the cringeworthy stuff worth it.
I had a weird hearing yesterday. A client wandered into our office late last year, begging for me to represent him at a small claim hearing in a local city court the next day. First question was, Is it really happening? Many courts that had been slowly reopening through the fall went back into their shells in November when local businesses all went to the elevated orange zone and got shuttier. But no, it turned out, they were ready to go on a virtual platform. I had a time conflict, but using my mad skillz, I got it adjourned- until yesterday. Then followed almost two full months of trying to reach the guy to get his documents, his preparation, and dearest to my heart his retainer. Nothing- until a couple of calls to my voicemail at horribly bad times last week, followed by him calling me 15 minutes before the scheduled start, from out in my parking lot.
I've had worse- at least in terms of communication. But when I clicked the link provided by the court to appear by Microsoft Teams, I got this:
The link they sent had some kind of "safelinks protection" in it. When I checked other virtual hearing invites from the same court system in different places, their Teams link was just a short nycourts dot gov link with a six digit number after it. I even tried clicking on the earlier one, and it opened in Teams just fine. This week's court had no IT people to help, so we wound up doing the whole thing solely through audio. I'm fine with that- it's how I've been doing bankruptcy hearings since last spring- but damn, I had a suit and tie on and nobody saw it:P
Ultimately, the Teams link to the previous month's hearing timed out, and it produced this image:
Which summed up the events of this week- from refi to vaccine scheduling to general spousal communication- about as well as anything. Meanwhile, the client, who was supposed to go back and take care of my retainer, hasn't been heard from since.
Maybe I imagined the whole thing.
----
Or maybe that's just me channeling Wandavision, which literally does feature an episode titled "We Interrupt This Program."
This is the latest one-off Disney Plus series that's getting a lot of buzz. Wanda Maximoff and Vision are characters from the Marvel Avengers movies, and the first few episodes simply placed them in very artfully homaged versions of sitcoms- mainly Dick Van Dyke Show the first week and Bewitched the second. We nonetheless wound up bailing on it because we couldn't figure out if the otherwise cringeworthy tropes of stay-at-home devious mommies and clueless male coworkers were actually going anywhere, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or elsewhere....
but then I came across this review. It picks up after the events of Episode Four and completely spoils that episode (and everything before and likely after it), but it reeled me back into watching, because like the episode it describes, it helped me GET what the series is doing: tying it into both the events of Infinity War/Endgame as well as those of the current pandemic situation.
I've now watched that whole episode and the fifth that followed it, which reverts to the TV Trope Framing Device, this one at least partly homaging the 80s sitcom Full House that famously starred Elizabeth Olsen's sibling twins Mary Kate and Ashley. I found myself wishing they'd put some kind of saga cell before the first episode to at least hint at it instead of diving right into the "this is a vintage tv episode" trope with no explanation. But now I can finish it and see if it makes the cringeworthy stuff worth it.
And now...
Date: 2021-03-05 10:48 am (UTC)And...you have an ?? We have a Turquoise Level--but I think I'm still speaking with an accent, yes? :D
Re: And now...
Date: 2021-03-05 04:57 pm (UTC)Are you watching the series? It IS more confusing now that I know what Episode 4 revealed, but at least I know what is confusing about it.