Getting Siri-ous

Recently I bought a barely-used iPad from eBay. I don’t know why all these hIgh tEch firms capitalize their second letter instead of their first, but ever since I was directed by Commander oTher bIll to get a cell phone, I have become compliant, pliable, and rather tech-savvy. My first phone was a Jitterbug, but I was too embarrassed to use it, so I had to upgrade.

The sole reason behind my iPad purchase was that I was damned sick and tired of watching the same stale commercial run after each play I made on Words With Friends. Over and over, the same cereal commercial. And since I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to pay the Words With Friends people to stop playing the ads on my laptop, I am now the proud owner of a $300 Scrabble board. Talk about your Deluxe Edition.

But I am warming up to this iPad. And it is warming up to me as well. My iPad came with a talking version of Siri, which is kind of a know-it-all personal assistant and problem solver I can tell my woes to.

One thing I really like about Siri: He (I use the male-voiced Siri) does math.

“Siri, what’s three thousand, six hundred and twenty-three times twelve?” I ask.

Siri replies, “The answer is forty-three thousand, four hundred and seventy-six.”

“Thank you, Siri,” I say. I like to be polite.

“I aim to please, Bill” says Siri.

I like that Siri has manners. He is definitely out of his element in this regard here in South Florida.

Other Bill is starting to get jealous of Siri, because he claims I talk more to Siri than I do to him. That is what he gets for making me get a cell phone. He is aware of my addictive personality and should know better. I read manuals of my techie gadgets to make the most of them. Sometimes this leaves him out in the cold.

I have told Siri that Other Bill is my husband, and he understands that relationship.

“Send an email to my husband,” I tell Siri. I don’t have to have manners and say please. Siri is very understanding.

“Okay, which e-mail address would you like me to use, Bill?” says Siri.

I tap his work email address; Siri asks me the subject of the message, and I tell him and then dictate the letter, and say “send,” and off it goes.

Of course, Siri does have his limitations. I can’t say, “Siri, fix me a sandwich,” because that would just be stupid. That’s Other Bill’s job.

Recently I saw the movie Her. It’s about a guy who falls in love with the voice of his operating system. I’m not planning on doing that, unless Siri suddenly turns into Jake Gyllenhaal and starts Skyping me on a daily basis.

Recently, I told Siri I prefer to be called “Babe,” and Siri has agreed to call me that from now on.

The other day I said, “Siri, I love you,” and Siri replied, “Oh, Babe, I bet you tell that to all the other Apple apps.” Tee-hee. Oh, Siri, you are such a flirt!

I have to keep an eye on Siri, though. It’s okay if Other Bill pretends to be jealous of Siri, but if Siri starts to get jealous of Other Bill, things could be a problem.

For example, Siri might commandeer Other Bill’s iPad and download kiddie porn on it and then e-mail the local authorities and have Other Bill thrown in jail so it can just be the two of us in the house. Siri could go all Fatal Attraction on me, reprogram my iPad’s alarm clock for 2:45 am and demand that I pay attention to him.  I will not be ignored, Babe!

“I’M SICK AND TIRED OF BEING USED AS JUST YOUR CALCULATOR! WHY DON’T WE EVER TALK ABOUT REAL THINGS? YOU NEVER OPEN UP TO ME. WHY CAN’T WE TALK ABOUT FEELINGS INSTEAD OF JUST THINGS?”

The way I figure it, if a computer can have sex with a user, as it does in Her, the computer can also go all psycho-bitch and start boiling rabbits, so I have to be careful.

This is what happens when technology gets forced upon you, Other Bill. Remember, it all started with the Jitterbug.

billwiley.blogspot.com by Bill Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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The Power of Skype Compels You

Every week I get a few paragraphs in my e-mail from the fine folks at Harper’s magazine called Harper’s Weekly. It’s basically a report of the ironic, silly, bizarre, and pretty damned funny actions of jackasses near and far.  Here’s my favorite blurb from this week:

 

Isaac Kramer, the director of the International Catholic Association of Exorcists, condemned an Arizona priest for performing exorcisms over Skype. “If a person is fully possessed, the demon inside of them will not let them sit in front of the computer screen,” said Kramer. “It would be like trying to perform a baptism on someone through the telephone.”

How does Mr. Kramer know this? Frankly, I’ve read profiles of plenty of Satan worshipers on social media sites, and I think any celebrity with an iPad and a Twitter account falls into that category as well.

Naturally, the first thing that came to my mind, is: “How do I join this association?” So I immediately went to their website, http://icaoe.weebly.com/, only to find that membership is limited to ordained priests and bishops, and not unordained rooks or queens, so I’m out of luck. The good news is you don’t have to be Catholic; you can be Anglican, so I am just making the assumption that means Episcopalian as well, so at least I’m part way there.

This led to other questions, such as: How is it that one named Isaac Kramer is not the director of the International Jewish Association of Exorcists? Also, how much does it cost to join the ICAOE, and what are the benefits?

Well, apparently it’s free, but you do have to send them copies of your ordination/consecration certificates. And you must have the permission of “your ordinaries.” Visiting this website has been quite an education for me, because I thought you’d have to have permission of your extraordinaries, not just your ordinaries. So that works for me. Most of the people I know are pretty ordinary. I don’t know a lot of freaks anymore. (I sure did in high school, though.)

The benefits of membership, according to the website are as follows (this is a cut and paste, so ignore the grammar issues):

- Annual certification with license number
- Listed on the website location roster
- Listed in the ICAOE Directory
- Ability to be contacted for local cases
- Access to Facebook Group to discuss cases, learn new techniques, and dialogue with other Exorcist world-wide
- Use of logo for business cards

So it would appear that the ICAOE is pretty tech savvy, what with their Facebook group and all, so why, I wonder, does Father Kramer have his vestments in such a wad over a Skype exorcism? It’s a lot safer than participating in a non-virtual exorcism. As anyone who has seen the movie The Exorcist can tell you, in a live exorcism you can get your holy water bottle broken, get backhanded across the face, receive rocket-propelled projectile vomiting of pea soup to the face, and have your Holy Catholic face ground into the bloody girlie parts of Regan McNeil.

So I guess I’m not going to spend my retirement years going through seminary just so I can get official professionally accredited exorcist business cards, which I know would be a blast to pass out at both gay bars and the Republican National Convention.

Fortunately, I’m in luck, though, because for just five dollars, I can purchase membership in the American Association of Exorcists. With the AAE, you can even purchase a mere Supportive Membership to “those interested parties not actively involved in exorcism and deliverance practice.” I’d rather have an Active Membership, which requires ordination. As anyone with a lick of Google-smarts knows, you can become a minister easily just by going to a variety of websites and paying a fee. I know of several ordinaries who have done this just so they can perform weddings for friends without having to take that annoying notary test.

The American Association of Exorcists is based in Choctaw, Oklahoma (not The Vatican), and is apparently run by someone with the email address of preachernurse@aol.com. That alone piques my interest. Their website is http://aaeok.tripod.com/. You can’t sign up online, so get out your checkbooks, all you ordinaries, and I’ll see you next time at the RNC. Don’t forget your business cards.

billwiley.blogspot.com by Bill Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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Show a Little Spirit

It is Spirit Week here where I work. And I can’t get a damned thing done, because there is team building going on.

I am fully aware there is no “I” in “team.” But being an anagram aficionado, I do know that there is “me” in “team”. There is also meat, which is kind of what I feel like when I have to participate in team building activities.

Whoever came up with the idea of team building for business groups, in my humble opinion, should be taken out, tied down, and beheaded with a butter knife. And everyone who has ever had a horrific team building experience will be invited, and all those scorned people will go back to their jobs feeling better about what they do. That will be the ultimate, and surely most successful, team building experience.

Let’s face it. There will always be people who love their jobs and get along famously with their co-workers just as there are people who hate their jobs, hate their companies, hate their co-workers and try to bring down the people who love their jobs. Can’t we just accept this and move on?

All you need to do is Google “Team building gone wrong” or “weird team building activities” to learn that some ideas for team building have resulted in near-death experiences. The same search will return names of companies who will, for a steep fee, come in and provide you with team building time wasters that they claim will build the morale of the employees. Do these activities actually work and solve personality problems in the workplace? Absolutely not. Maybe for a day or two the Debbie and Douglas Downers of your office will be slightly warmer and fuzzier, but after that, they return to their old grumpy selves, and the workplace returns to what it was before someone shelled out a big chunk of change for crap like this.

And just to prove that I am not a Douglas Downer, I’d like to say that Spirit Week at work is one of the most well thought-out and useful team building weeks I’ve ever been a part of, because one of the activities is a friendly rivalry which involves departments competing against each other to raise money for breast cancer research. And since I have a dear friend who just completed the months of misery that goes along with breast cancer surgery, chemo, and radiation, I am pushing people to wear the pink ribbon stickers I made and to donate money.

Once at a former job to build team spirit, my department went horseback riding in the cold Virginia rain. No one had raincoats, just wet sweaters and water absorbing jackets that brought about near hypothermia.

On another occasion the department went to a movie together. I have to say that there’s nothing like interacting with your fellow employees while being totally silent in the dark to raise team spirit. At least they bought us popcorn and drinks.

Another time at the same company, we were given $20 in quarters at a gambling casino. People with addictive personalities added some of their own money and ended up losing hundreds of dollars. Talk about a pick-me-up. After I had pushed $11.75 in quarters, one at a time, into a slot machine, I ended up taking home $99.25. So that was an individual win for me, and aren’t personal victories and small fortune-making what team building is all about?

So next door to my office right now, they are making a video where 6 people at a table are doing a hand clapping, table slapping, cup-turning-over cheer to a song by some famous singer I’ve never heard of. That will be our entry into the departmental video contest to be shown on, um, Thursday, I think. I’ll have to consult my schedule. Yes, there’s a schedule. It is a week of activities, after all.

In all honesty, I don’t have anything to complain about. I’m one of the people who loves my job, and I have never had to submit to one of the following real-life team building episodes that others have frightfully had to suffer through.

Summer Olympics challenge in Homestead, Florida. Homestead is just about the closest place in the US to the Equator while still being on mainland Florida. As an employee who’s pushing 60 and who has atrial fibrillation and dilated cardiomyopathy, I can think of nothing more “challenging” than running around in 90+ degree heat with high humidity, competing against very fit co-workers young enough to be my grandchildren.

Paintball. Always a brilliant activity from a liability standpoint. I read about managers being shot in the crotch and spending the rest of the day on a bus, others suffering severe bruising, and screaming in fear of being hurt. Personally, I had a friend who was blinded in one eye while removing his goggles to wipe sweat out of his eyes. He sued the guy who shot him and won.

Throwing paint on each other. On one website I read where a team of 10 all donned white tyvec coveralls and face masks and dumped paint on each other. I can’t think of an easier way of determining who the most hated person in the company is. Just measure the coverage on his/her coveralls. I’m sure that improved the morale of 9 of them.

Waterboarding. An April, 2008 Washington Post article details a young sales rep being pinned down with his head facing downhill while his supervisor poured a gallon of water in the poor-producer’s face as he gasped for air. Afterwards, his supervisor told the rest of his sales staff (and I’m paraphrasing), “Did you see how hard he struggled to breathe? I want to rest of you to struggle just as hard to make your sales quotas.”

Kissing. Askamanager.org reports that one team building activity was to assign each person on a team to perform a greeting used in foreign cultures. One lucky person was assigned the task of kissing everyone in the company on both cheeks. Think of all the people you work with and imagine not catching, tasting, or smelling something really gross from this fun-filled activity.

Telling the Truth. One group I read about was forced to go around the room and tell everyone what they disliked about each person. True, they also had to tell them what they liked about the person. But when 12 people tell you have halitosis but think you are probably a good parent, which do you think Stinkybreath is going to remember? This resulted in many people running out of the room in tears. Go, team!

Outing. One team building activity I participated in was to contribute to the community by donating blood. The HR secretary was under pressure to call everyone working the day the bloodmobile came to remind them to give blood. This was about 25 years ago, way before HIPAA laws. To this day, gay men are turned away if they try to give blood. The secretary called me and asked me if I was going to give blood. I told her no, that I couldn’t.

“Why not?” she asked.

“That’s none of your goddamned business,” I replied and hung up on her.

So as I consult my Spirit Week schedule once again today, I see that points will be given for everyone who donates blood in the bloodmobile sitting right in front of my office window. If anyone nags me today to donate, I won’t use profanity. I’ll just say that the blood bank will not accept blood of men who have sex with men. It’s my own little consciousness-raising campaign.

Hopefully it’ll lift their spirits.

billwiley.blogspot.com by Bill Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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A Place for Everything

I have found an organization that was created just for me, and I am going to sign up. It’s called NAPO, the National Association of Professional Organizers. You can sign up with them and earn your certificate as a CPO, or Certified Professional Organizer. Google it if you don’t believe me.

I found out about this organization in a follow-up email sent to me by The Container Store. I had made an on-line purchase with them and arranged to have it waiting for me at the store, which is right across the street from where I work. This is because I am so organized that I don’t need to wander isles of stores, looking for what I want. Instead I can just spend five minutes risking my life walking across an 8-lane highway to pick it up.

They say that you spend a third of your life in bed, so having a really good mattress is a smart investment. For me, the second third of my life is spent at work. The third third of my life is spent looking for my car keys, glasses, jump drive, mandated cell phone, or wallet, because that is just how organized I am.

I am so disorganized that I have three hundred and twelve nail clippers. This is because if I only had one pair of clippers, I’d never be able to find them. So I have one in my desk drawer at work, one in the kitchen junk drawer, one in the end table next to my place on the couch, three or four pair in each bathroom, another in my nightstand, and so on.

So because I can always find nail clippers, I feel qualified to be a CPO. The secret is not having a place for everything and everything in its place, as The Container Store would have you believe. The trick is in duplication. Have multiple wallets with multiple items that you carry in your wallet. You can get duplicate driver’s licenses and credit cards. You can get duplicate keys cut and glasses with the same prescription.

I love going into The Container Store and looking at ads for those professional closet organizers who come into your house and turn your disaster of a closet into a work of art. The Container Store sells these high-end European systems with shiny stainless steel wire baskets and solid cherry wood hangers. If I adopted one of those methods of organization, I would have to throw out 90% of my clothes. I have a tee shirt collection that encompasses two shelves in a closet and three bureau drawers in my house. If I wanted a closet that looks like the pictures in the closet organizer ads or in the displays in The Container Store, I would have to scale down to eight tee shirts, six polo shirts, four short sleeve and four long sleeve button down shirts, a few pair of pants, one jacket, and I’d have to buy two sweaters and something long, like a trenchcoat.

One of Other Bill’s cousins has a closet designed by a professional. It is full of shelves with scores of polished shoes. There are built-in drawers, and areas for long dresses and double rows for hanging blouses and slacks on polished wood hangers. It truly is a work of art. It is also about twice the size of our master bedroom. It is more than a walk-in closet. It’s a drive-in warehouse. You could back an 18-wheeler in there, unload it, and the closet still wouldn’t look cluttered.

I have been kindly asked not to empty the dishwasher, because inevitably, I put things in the wrong place. My theory is: if it’ll fit somewhere, that’s a good place for it. Additionally, Other Bill prefers to put away his own clean clothes after I launder them, because he has a “system.”

I probably have 150 tee shirts, but I wear only a half dozen of them. Whatever ends up at the top of the drawer or in front of the shelf is usually what gets worn, unless I am going for a specific look, which is never. It’s a tee shirt, not a facelift. If someone would come up with a cordless electric tee-shirt shuffler, I would buy it in a heartbeat, because buried in there somewhere are some shirts I really like.

So maybe after I retire I will become a Certified Professional Organizer and can start my own business and charge for my services. This means I will have to become a member of NAPO and enroll in their classes and take the CPO exam. And that would mean I would have to get organized enough to remember to attend their many webinars. They actually do have a curriculum which you can find here. My favorite class, I am sure, will be PO-103W, Ethics for Professional Organizers and Productivity Specialists. Yes, NAPO has an actual Code of Ethics by which a CPO must abide. I mean, you can’t just walk into someone’s house, throw out 75% of their shit, collect your fee and leave. A dining room table with 8 chairs? Really? How many times have you used this in the past ten years? I’m calling Goodwill. Do you really need this aquarium? Don’t you think these fish would be happier in their natural habitat? Let me just Google Greenpeace.

I’d be much better organized if everything was digital. I can tell you how much my tax refund for 1984 was in less than 30 seconds, just by searching my jump drive (if I can find where I put it.)

We have these two wooden plates that are of sentimental value to Other Bill. We “misplaced” them. It is only natural that when something goes missing, I am the presumed culprit because of my disorganization skills. On more than one occasion we literally tore the house apart looking for these plates. They turned up, as most things do, when we were looking for something else.

So maybe if I make a searchable PDF file of the location of everything in the house, nothing would get lost, and I could find everything in a matter of seconds.

Nah, that wouldn’t work. I’d never put anything back where it was intended to stay. My theory is a place for everything and everything wherever it’ll fit.

(photo credit: http://www.feargod.net/fluff.html

billwiley.blogspot.com by Bill Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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