On piggers taking control of a zoom meeting

It was a while ago now but I keep on promising this story so I guess I'm going to have to put out at some stage. I've been off grid for five years and adapted my life to work and home. Some people would see me as a comrade living in North Korea: sitting in the dark with a wind up radio. That is pretty close. Candles are nice. I've had a single solar panel powering what a solar tech guy recently called a motorcycle battery, in not wholly admiring linguistics.

So, given that the campuses had shut down and we ran all our tutorials and meetings via zoom, it was a time for maximum exploitation of tech and time. I got onto it pretty much a week before anyone else (except the insurers) because I'd been working remotely for years anyway.

Apart from the laundromat and my friend's back veranda, both with power point and internet access, this was my most common teaching room. I've run it from my car.

It's my in-range spot and a great place to make calls, five kilometres from my home. This is also not a great place to call anyone during a storm. Ten days ago ... see below.

photo courtesy of OzStory

 I've spent several hours at a time on the phone at this in-range spot, while the original pandemic stuff played out and work meetings went online, full of peering administrators trying to work out who was there. Some meetings were funny and joyous, particularly with students, and others were like aghh.

During this particular meeting, I was still feeling smug about having a work meeting in a karri forest rather than the bedroom or cramped office that I could see everyone else zooming in from, when a 4WD full of people and dogs stopped beside me. 
'Are you okay?' one of the blokes asked. 'Not broken down or anything?'

It's the nicest thing to do and something I've noticed a lot when I'm in my in range spot in the forest recently. I'm having a work meeting and people stop to ask if I'm okay. The problem with this occasion was that they were pig hunters, I had my dog on the back and I was intently listening to how someone had just run a 'virtual field trip' while the campus was shut to students.

Yes, all hell broke loose. Their dogs spilled off the back of the ute (pig hunters leave one side of the cage open so their dogs can smell wild pigs and get started) and started trying to attack Selkie through the open window. My dog went ballistic and the worst thing was that I'd forgotten to turn the mute off my mic during the meeting. I'm shouting, they are shouting, all the dogs are shouting, everyone is shouting. A bit of fruity cursing.

The only people not shouting were my boss and colleagues, staring from their living room desk tops. I'd pretty much shot down the whole meeting. Lesson for the day? Turn on your mute button before the pig dogs take over your zoom meeting and assume total control.