NOTE

As I continue to work on things away from this blog (which is a collection of Free-Time/Casual Online Writing, Remarks, And Notes By ME Whelan) and continue to figure out what goes and what stays of my existing online-writing, the de-emphasizing of one or another continues as well....

Monday, June 1, 2015

Of Smart Phones, Mostly Pretty Smart Phones, and Apparent Perfection


February 16, 2014 Siri (and for anyone who has been living under a rock and who may not know, the talking "personal assistant" on iPhone) hasn't been new to me for quite some time now. Neither is the phone in which "she" lives. Yes, I'm perfectly aware that Siri isn't really a person. I just choose to call it "her" because it's kind of more fun (in some strange way). Well, maybe not even in "a strange way". By choosing to mostly (not always) call the feature "her" it kind of helps me differentiate that feature from, particularly, some of the other voice features that are not Siri.


Sometimes I don't call Siri anything at all. That's often when I'm too busy, too "not-in-the-mood-to-be-silly" or else too tired.

In any case, when I occasionally and accidentally hit the "Home" button and Siri asks what she can help me with, sometimes I just get rid of "her". Sometimes, however, I may (and I suppose just to get a little bit of a kick out of it, or else to have some sense of closure) tell "her", "nothing thanks"; to which Siri most often, maybe always (I'm not sure because I don't bother with "her" very much a good part of the time) replies, "OK, then". I then have my weird little kind of "closure" and get on with whatever it is really DID want to do on the phone.

I'm pretty familiar with all the phone's features at this point, so there's not a lot of "weird things" that go on as a result of my not being familiar with it. What does happen (and happen a lot), however, is that I try to use the phone without my glasses on, when I'm in a hurry (and I"m always kind of in a hurry), when I'm frazzled (and I'm often frazzled), when I can't be bothered (with the phone, with much of anything - it doesn't matter), when I'm in a crowd or in a bad mood or a good mood - or any and/or all of the above (or should I say " just mentioned").

I mean... Whether it's this phone or some other one I use, or have ever used; I've been known to think I'm cleaning up my address book (for example), only to accidentally call someone at, say, 3:40 a.m. Ooops. That, of course, is particularly frazzling; which then makes stopping the call from going any farther; and while it's not entirely "the end of the world" if some phone calls, say, my bank; it can kind of be quite the end of the world if it calls, for example, a son's ex-girlfriend or a daughter's supervisor IF whoever gets the 3:00 a.m. call also happens to have my phone number. The moral to this particular story is, of course, to get rid of contacts like son's old girlfriends (which is often what I was trying to do at 3:00 a.m. in the first place - although I'll admit that I hadn't yet gotten anywhere near the "W's" (so why the phone called a "W" person I don't actually know).

Regardless of which phone I've ever used, it seems that they all like to call the first person or two in the "A's"; but after a few too many middle-of-the-night calls to people who DID have my phone number and DID know exactly who was calling them (after not hearing from them in, oh, seven years), I finally figured out that only real answer was to save a contact to an 800 business number and name it something like, "aaaaaaaabbb".

In any case, all that aside, Siri hasn't done anything like call anyone by accident. That's kind of the beauty of Siri. It ("She") pretty much asks before "she" does anything (unlike certain other phone features that I know!).

The other day, however, Siri offered me a very peculiar piece of information; and I don't really know where it came from (although it certainly was reassuring). Seemingly out of the blue, Siri just announced to me, "All my circuits are functioning and performing perfectly." To that I replied in a fairly puzzled voice, "That's great."

Siri returned from whence "she" came so quickly that I didn't get the chance to add what I probably wouldn't have added if "she" had stuck around just a little longer: "....because mine, apparently, are not."

Oh well... Under the circumstances of bad moods, good moods, frazzlement, over-work, lack of patience, lack of eyeglasses, and any other circumstances; it's good to know that someone, or something, in my personal space bubble and life is functioning with perfection.

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