MONDAY DIARY: ALMOST EXCRUCIATINGLY TRUE STORIES: MY FAVORITE TECH GOOFS

This post is not exactly in keeping with what normally appears on this blog.  I just thought these two technical glitches were funny and wanted to share them with you.  The first one comes from my cousin S.  I went to see him and upon walking in the door he announced, "Father!  I've learned a new word!"

"Really?" I responded, "What is it?"

"Februaryed."

"It's new to be too.  What does 'Februaryed' mean?"

"I haven't the slightest idea."

Then he showed me the magazine in which it appeared; the February 22 - April 7 2012 edition of "The Word Among Us."  It was from the Easter Vigil readings - a new translation apparently.  The context in which the word appeared is this, "Then Moses stretch out his hand over the sea, and the Lord swept the sea with a strong east wind throughout the night and so turned it into dry land.  When the water was thus divided, the Israelites Februaryed into the midst of the sea . . ."

A little further down is this, "But the Israelites had Febrauryed though the midst of the sea . . ."

Here's what I think happened.  Somebody sitting at a computer accidentally typed "March" when he was supposed to type "September."  So using the wonders of modern technology he executed a "search and replace" code to change all of Marches to Februarys wherever it appeared in the text - unfortunately it also changed the word indicating how people were ambulating (that is, marching) into Februarying.  Thank you to WAU for great laugh.

II

Then there was this one.  I was on a day away from the parish recently visiting my sister when I got a text.  This is what it said:

A hand full of seconds later a second text came through:

A few more seconds slip by and then came this text:

I had no idea what it was about.  Hours later, when I was back at the rectory, I went up to Fr. P. to see if he had any idea to what these odd messages referred.

It was the first time that I had read the texts out loud.  Fr. P got it right away but I needed a few more seconds.  At the tip of my consciousness this started to sound as though it should mean something.  Then it struck me.  There is a priest who has a phone with voice recognition.  He speaks into his phone and it turns it into a text which he then mailed to me.

I was supposed to dog sit for him that night and he was texting me to let me know that his neurotic and aggressively friendly dog was in the house.  When he said the dog's name into the phone, the phone kept interpreting it as "Had a kiss" but in actuality it was . . .