I got stuck on a lunchtime video conference today with some people in my department and a vendor. I hate meetings at noon, but with timezones being a factor, it was the only available time the vendor could meet. Usually, I’m only on these for technical consultation, so I rarely need to speak other than to clarify a point or answer questions about our infrastructure. Those are usually toward the end of the meeting.
That said, I just muted myself and ate at my desk because I was starving and would have plenty of time to eat a quick bite before it got to the point where I had to say anything.
What I did not realize was that even though I was muted, my webcam was on. So 6 people I work with plus three vendors all watched me eat a bag of tacos, and no one said anything!
Like, when I eat a taco with people around, I do eat it in a dignified way. Less so when I’m alone (or think I’m alone) and wolfing it down before I have to do something So, yeah, it was not a pretty sight.
I’m still mortified, but at least I am laughing about it as I’m typing this out.
Don’t be mortified. That was a power move. Lunch time is for lunch.
Yeah! If there’s any way to make a statement that says, “please don’t book stuff during my lunch hour” passive aggressively, that is it.
Didn’t even think of it like that! I like the way you think.
It also says, hey I’m a human and I need to fucking eat
Yeah, alls you hear is “no one wants to work anymore”, yet this guy is sacrificing his lunch to benefit his company. They need a raise.
that’s pretty funny and equally embarrassing. thank you for sharing. i admit, I don’t pay much attention to traditional lunch times becsuse i mainly meet with network ops folks who have no concept of time or work-life balance. 24/7 or bust. i have a beard so foods like ribs, and tacos that fall apart are my kryptonite. i feel like i need to take a face shower after a meal at times. And honestly after the quarantine period of covid i felt like i had to learn how to interact with society again. cheers.
I definitely feel better after sharing and laughing about it LOL.
Same about the “post-covid reintegration into society awkwardness”. Definitely struggled there, too.
Yeah best to laugh that off as the people in your meeting probably did.
So easy to beat yourself up over something minor you did for years and can never undo. (Of all the times to get extra sour cream, why Tuesday, WHY?!)
So true. As long as I learned something (and I did!) from the experience. 🤣
Good! In the end of the day we’re all human and we all need to eat when we get hungry. That’s just how our bodies work. You went out of your way to attend the meeting during what would normally be your lunch time, so I think it’s pretty much expected to have some lunch during the meeting. And sometimes we all need to devour a meal like it’s our last.
As an infrastructure person. You’re talking about me, and I don’t like it.
Accurate. Now take your upvote and getottahereee.
I never turn my video off to eat. If we’re having a meeting time during eating time, you all can watch.
One time the head of product scheduled an excruciatingly early meeting , and I stayed home, so they had me on the big TV while I was eating a bowl of Cheerios.
Fucking amazing
You should make this your thing. Next time eat a slab of ribs smothered in BBQ sauce
As others have said, I actually do this on purpose. Taco time, and camera on.
I can occasionally accommodate a lunch meeting; but in return everyone is absolutely going to get to watch me eat a taco.
I definitely feel less awful now, but not sure if I’m gonna make this my thing. 😆
I’m willing to bet, everyone else wanted a taco after that meeting.
Lunch meetings are a crime against humanity. Eat your tacos like tacos are meant to be eaten amigo.
I took an uber to a friend’s house, try to talk to the driver about whether its ok to bring lunch for friend, find out he’s deaf. I know some ASL so I can sort of communicate but I havent had practice for 5 to 10 years so I am rusty. Anyway the signs for “thank you” and “fuck you” are about 2 inches of vertical distance apart. Guess which one I accidentally signed at the end of the ride.
So thats what has been haunting me for the last week.
Oof! If it’s any consolation, a lot of ASL’s interpretation also comes from body language and facial expression, so he probably knew what you meant lol.
Don’t worry about it. If the room was big enough, many of them didn’t see you, and half of the ones you did probably thought it was just a flex to show your annoyance with being dragged into a lunchtime meeting. In any case, 95% of people would laugh it off and forget it, and the other 5% are probably well within the “meet an asshole everyday” crowd. With the camera on, they at least know you were there in front of your computer. My coworkers might not always be able to say the same thing about me on some of my larger calls where I’m just there so our org “has presence.”
and half of the ones you did probably thought it was just a flex to show your annoyance with being dragged into a lunchtime meeting.
This was my thought too 😆
There’s a guy who always schedules meetings at lunchtime, he says it’s the only available slot for everyone (I wonder why)
I’ll eat tacos during the meeting next time, I may even unmute myself “by mistake”
I’m just envying your “bag of tacos”
There’s a place nearby that delivers, and they were pretty amazing.
I agree with everyone who points out that this was a power move. Well done!
Certainly accidental on my part, but I’ll choose to see it that way haha.
Extra power move. Change your video background to a taco truck or stand.
My day consisted of users complaining about speed, everything on analytics looked fine, I checked some random high demand applications and they indicated that they were waiting on network IO pretty consistently, so I go to check the file server where the data for those apps is centrally located with no redundancy, and I managed to… Turn off the network interface on the file server.
🤦♂️
Don’t ask me how, I’m still confused about it myself. My manager calls me not 5 minutes later after he got a call from the client. I’m sitting there absolutely shitting myself trying to figure out how to turn the network card back on, and every method I’m trying to use to connect to the system is failing.
Even my manager had some serious trouble trying to figure it out.
Took about 45 minutes until the system was back on the network. Right at the end of the day, on one of the busiest days of the year for that specific customer.
I feel really stupid.
Ooof. I’ve accidentally done that (though on a less important system), but thankfully was able to get in via iLO console to reset it.
I… Didn’t have ILO or any ipmi to the system. It was a cloud VM on Azure. Looking at their management tools, they’re all IP based, which means you need a valid IP connection to the system to control it.
The setting I think that did it, was in the advanced network interface settings. I’m not sure which one, but long story short, whatever it was, messed up the network interface and basically everything was useless. My manager was doing something and I pushed an Azure CLI network interface reset, whatever he was doing, and/or what I did, eventually brought it back online. Luckily throughout this all the settings I changed were reverted, and the system was power cycled, so all evidence was destroyed… Unless it logged something to the system logs. IDK.
The programs are very file heavy and most of that weight is on IO, not throughput, so I was tinkering with the buffers, but I can’t be sure that the buffer settings were to blame. I’m sure I clicked on more than just buffer settings while I was in the network adapter settings.
I’m still pretty upset about it. Azure really doesn’t make it easy to connect to the stupid console. Then again, hyper-V is mostly the same way, so…
I prefer running another hypervisor technology, but we’re pretty heavily invested into Azure at my workplace, so I’m not sure that even suggesting it will get any traction.
The part that annoys me is that everything is built glass cannon style. Get big, fast systems in Azure, throw everything into those few systems and run it. It only takes one person running prime 95 for fun and profit(?) to wreck the ability for anyone to do meaningful work.
Glass cannon. Azure isn’t a golden ticket that can handle all the workloads with a minimal number of virtual machines, but we’re committed to a server-less architecture, even when the client would be better off with local, or colo, given their relative size. Like a quarter rack in a nearby colo, and a couple of hyperconverged systems and they would be very well served. It wouldn’t be very different from what they’re doing right now, either functionally or physically (or even cost-wise), but they would get a lot more out of it.
Suggesting it would be a lot like talking to a wall.
My day was pretty chill, pretty productive, and entirely too long.
The nicest part was sneaking out between meetings with my office fuck buddy (my spouse - I work from home) for a walk in the nice weather.
