Does your cell phone have an auto correct feature? And does it sometimes wreak havoc on what you're trying to say to someone via a text message, an email or a Twitter post? Yep, mine too.
And the funny thing is that my iPhone seems to learn certain words, but retains a solid mental block against learning others -- as if it can passively bully me into adapting the vocabulary it wants me to use.
Often at the end of my texts to Special K, I'll sign off with "xo", but if I'm not paying attention, the phone will correct it to "so". And since my attempt at "xo" generally comes at the end of the text, Special K will often reply with "so what?", wondering why I didn't finish my thought.
I tried posting something to Twitter once, starting with "whoo hoo" and my two first attempts were met with iPhone edits of "shop hop" and "shoe goo". "Shoe goo"? Without a correction, my post would have read something like "Shoe goo!! We just closed a huge advertising deal!! Shop hop!!" Not exactly the effect I was going for.
Special K does not have an iPhone, but his device does have an auto correct feature and it seems to actually lose its memory over time and then has to be retrained. The best example is when it comes time for the NFL season to start again. Between the playoffs and the start of the following season, Special K's phone seemingly forgets the very important word "Steelers". So, for the first couple games of the season, Special K's phone tries to send text messages that exclaim "Go Puddles!!" instead of "Go Steelers!!" Again, not exactly the impact we're looking for.
(As an aside, the first time he told me about "puddles", I almost blew Coca-Cola out my nose, I was laughing so hard..... "Go Puddles!! Shoe goo!!")
And finally, tonight while I was waiting for a friend to show up at a restaurant in Palo Alto, I tried texting Special K "Hi hottie!" and it auto corrected to "Hi hogtie!" THAT just about made me choke on my red wine. I actually left it like that when I sent the text, figuring that Special K would either chuckle or write it off to my glass of Pinot Noir.
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3 comments:
Too funny.
The only thing I have close is putting together a HUGE manual for a group of Malaysian engineers as part of training (I had 3 weeks to pull together everything about running a pipeline). Anyway, pretty much the best I could do was to run Word's spell checker against the 600 plus pages that got produced. I had one of the engineers come up to my office with this puzzled look on his face--"What is this please?" It was supposed to be a brief chunk about safety in the welding lab with METAL work benches, but I had MENTAL work benches. I looked him straight in the eye and said, "Ahhh, that's where the engineer's go to think." He seemed to be happy with that.
Ha!! I totally remember this story!! I still laugh when I think about mental work benches. :-)
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