Day 13: Zoom

Yesterday afternoon I had a chat scheduled with my two daughters. At the last minute Eleni wasn’t able to join us, but I did get to talk to Molly and her feline Chessie.

Since so little is going on in my life, there wasn’t much fodder for conversation, so we used our time together to explore Zoom’s inner workings. Like, you can click a button and this is what happens:

All was going swimmingly until we investigated Zoom’s option to share computer screens. Just to test that capability, I enabled it and handed over the reins to my trustworthy daughter. Big mistake. What does she do but immediately rush over to Facebook and start to compose a post on my account, as me.

I wrested control from her before damage was done. Well, you’d think I’d live and learn, right? Once bitten, twice shy and all that? But I had a technical problem on my blog that we thought she might be able to solve. Within 30 seconds of gaining entry, she had the issue figured out. But before I could stop her, she then opened YouTube on my computer and started to play an ABBA video of Dancing Queen, a song that she knows makes me homicidal. Here’s something all Zoom users, and American voters, should know: if you give power to the wrong person, bad things happen. I started to click the little red Stop Sharing button at the top of the screen with increasing franticness, to no avail. The song burbled on and the images of four saccharine Swedes swayed across my monitor, while Molly blocked my attempts to cut her off. Here’s the truth of it: if the person to whom you’ve granted access doesn’t want to relinquish authoritarian control, you can’t stop him them.

Another auto-generated drawing prompt: A two-headed dragon reading a book.

Oh, cool: Today’s New York Times featured a list of movies under 1.5 hours for people like me with short attention spans. A few of the films looked interesting so, as a reminder to myself, I’m going to link to them here. Maybe you’d be interested in one?

• Paris Is Burning: Documentary portrait of 1980s Harlem drag balls.
• The Incredible Jessica James: Romantic comedy written to feature The Daily Show star Jessica Williams, whom I don’t know.
• Frances Ha: 2012 Greta Gerwig film about an aspiring dancer in New York.
• Jiro Dreams of Sushi: Documentary about the world of a legendary chef.
• Chasing Coral: Another documentary, this one exploring disappearing reefs.

My big adventure today, after not having gotten out of the house yesterday, was to walk in the light rain to the ATM (my branch office is closed for the duration) and then the half-mile to the farmers market, which remains open. An article in yesterday’s SF Chronicle said that farmers markets are safer places to shop than grocery stores. I bought a few things, like fresh king salmon.

On my walk home, as I passed a house reverberating with percussion—Bang de-bang bang THUMP, bang bang bang CRASH—I realized how lucky I am to be sheltering in place with Elana and not a drummer.

The day is still young but I think I’ll publish this now anyway. Bye.