Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Webcam voyeurism

When you spend your days researching and writing, you end up devoting copious amounts of time to searching the Internet. Most of what is out there is pure, unadulterated fecal matter. Your mission is to sift through said sewage to identify the nuggets worth writing about. It's not glamorous work by any means - for that you need to know how to lip sync on past-their-prime sketch comedy programs - but it certainly beats sifting through the real stuff.

Sometimes you come across a resource that seems to have no logical reason for existing. But for some reason you find your eyes drawn to the screen like Lot's wife to the city of Sodom or, more recently, Uncle Duke to Daisy's, um, attributes.

As hard as you try, you simply cannot rip your gaze away from the surreal scenes unfolding before you, so compelling are they to your psyche.

Such is the case with this site. A colleague sent it around earlier today. I have no idea why it was built. Perhaps to showcase this company's fine assortment of network traffic utilities. Who knows. Who cares. The truth of the matter is it's fun to watch a series of webcams showing people at work.

The site includes some fairly extensive choices for cameras, angles, and other features. It's best viewed during business hours (the company's located in the U.S. Central time zone) because that's when the theoretical rats in the office maze are most active.

Watching the obese guy chomp down on a burger at his desk was especially priceless.

Warning: addictive.

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