Whatever your personal relationship with technology, you can probably appreciate the fact that mobile devices can be annoying. I’m sitting here with a frustrated David and a cheery Cheryl, trying to make the best of a cold and windy day along the Farmington River. We will sip adult beverages and play with the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt by Linda G. Hill. Click on that link if you want to play, too.
“Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is ‘whatever.’ Use the word ‘whatever’ any way you’d like. Bonus points if you start your post with it. Have fun!”
If we were having a beer, I couldn’t help but notice you pecking away at your phone.
“Whatever are you doing, David.”
“Slowly losing my mind, Dan. I’m not sure upgrading to this phone was a good idea.”
“When did you get an iPhone?”
“A couple weeks ago.”
“Why am I only learning about this now?”
“I didn’t want to mention it during Natalie’s visit. By the way, that was fun.”
“That was fun, Dan. So, David, did you set up Apple Pay?”
“No Cheryl. I barely trust this thing to send an email. I’m not giving it permission to start spending my money.”
“But this is your day to pay…correct?”
“Yes. I’ll have some John Howell’s Bourbon, a snifter of seltzer…”
“And a glass of ice. I know what you drink, David. Dan, I’ll get you a Corona. Unless you want something stronger for your tech-support session.”
“A Corona is fine. I don’t even know what he’s having trouble with.”
“Hey guys – I’m right here. Stop talking about me in the third person.”
“Sorry, David. What’s wrong with your phone?”
“It changes the words I’m trying to type.”
“Here you go David, maybe a splash of bourbon will help. Dan, here’s your beer. Good luck.”
“Cheryl, what’s this?”
“The sword? It’s a cocktail pick, Dan.”
“Since when did you guys go upscale?”
“The owner bought umpteen gross of them when Covid started. Somebody knocked over a box.”
“Pffft, so what, you scoped them off the floor and stuck one through my lime?”
“Ha! No, we threw those out. The owner told us to use these for everything until they’re gone. Some little kid asked if he could have one, I put a handful in a Baggie for him.”
“I’m surprised he wanted to play with something real. Isn’t there a swordfight app?”
“Dan, your client awaits. I’m going to go check the lounge.”
“David. I’m sorry. Back to your problems. When you say it changes what you’re trying to type, do you mean it’s correcting your typos as you go?”
“That might be what it’s trying to do, but it’s making them worse.”
“Give me an example.”
“I typed the word ‘for’ but I missed one letter. I don’t even know which one, but it changed the word to ‘gif’ – what’s a gif?”
“It’s a type of image file.”
“Then what’s a ‘Visio’ another image file?”
“No, Visio is an illustration program. It’s mainly used for diagramming. It’s part of Microsoft’s Office suite.”
“Well, I was typing the word ‘vision’ and this stupid phone changed it to Visio – with a capital ‘V’ and everything.”
“It’s trying to help you. It’s call predictive typing.”
“Yeah, well it seems to be predicting the typing of a teenager, not an old man.”
“Well, the people who wrote the algorithms are closer to their teenage years than their golden years.”
“Given the cost of this thing, you’d think my golden years contained real gold.”
“Don’t start, you’re still paying.”
“Fine. But what’s with apple?”
“Huh? Apple, as in the company that made your phone?”
“No, apple as in the fruit. Every time I type the word ‘apple’ this stupid phone capitalizes the A.”
“They did make the phone. Besides, how many times do you type the word apple?”
“Cheryl, could we have another round.”
“Already? I mean, of course, David.”
“And stick some of those swords through my cherries.”
“I’m not sure I should give you any weapons, you seem pretty spun up.”
“Don’t worry. I paid way too much for this stupid thing to stab it.”
“Do you want me to show you how to turn those features off?”
“I don’t think that’s going to help, Dan. I want spellcheck, but even that is screwed-up on this phone.”
“Why do you say that?”
“For example, I typed ‘Od’ – clearly a typo, but it suggests, ‘odor’ ‘do’ and ‘or’ but not ‘of’ – which is the word I was trying to type. The letter D is next to F.”
“Yeah, there isn’t an ‘I have fat fingers’ option.”
“And look at this. I typed the word ‘Photo’ – I mean, that’s a real word, but this stupid phone suggested ‘phptp’ – which is not a word.”
“No, but it’s a common fat-finger mistake for photo, so there’s a lot of content on the web that includes that word.”
“But it’s not a word, Dan!”
“Yes, but the way the algorithms work…”
“Stop. I’m not interested in your defense of technology.”
“Whatever, David…cheers.”
I want to take a minute to let you know that we will have another guest next week (making up for no guest in January). Jan Sikes will be joining us to talk about her new book, unless David submits his questions in writing, then I’m not sure what we’ll be talking about.
No Facilities 
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