Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Glory of Techmology

Werk recently upgraded to the latest Microsoft Outlook, which includes a voice-to-text for voice mail.

Let's back up: if someone leaves a message on my office phone, I get an email with the caller ID and a play button that I can either send to my phone or listen to via a media player on my computer.

PLUS... when I got a company-sponsored cell phone,§ they hooked my Outlook to it, so I get a copy on my cell phone of the email that contains a copy of my work voice mail when someone leaves a message on my work phone.#

Hans and I were toddling off to lunch yesterday, when my phone tick-tocked†† to tell me I had a message. When I checked it, I recognised it as a voice mail notification,‡‡ but it also had the following text§§:




Let's back up again: Brother wants to be black. At times, Brother has thought he was black. He's pretty hip to the hip hop culture, so I read the text and thought it was an actual text or an email maybe. At first, I said to myself, "Self, Brother is having problems with his autocorrect." Then I decided he was rapping some hep slang that I simply wasn't down with.¶¶

Two or three minutes of examining context and I realised it was voice-to-text## and it was kinda screwed up.

By that time, I really wanted to know what "brooklyn truck" was going to be.

Here's the actual voice recording:




And here's a transcript:

"Yo, it's your brother. I'm probably going to give you... drop you an email too, but I just thought I would check maybe if you could, um, drop by here on your way home today real quick so I can slip you a key, go over, y'know, what to do with the cat and stuff.††† Awesome. Alright, thanks. Bye."

"Brooklyn truck" is now acceptable Untiedt sibling slang for "real quick."‡‡‡


FOOTNOTE (crossed): And I use the term loosely.

FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Desk phone, that is.

§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Which isn't quite the treat it sounded like at the outset. I can't call the carrier for help, I can't add international texting - even if I pay for it myself - because if IT has to support too many odd requests they'll explode, and I don't have a mouseball on my phone and I hate that. As I whine about this, I'm wondering if I need to spend some time in a Third World country to gain perspective.

FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): ...can be in close, personal contact with work 24 hours a day...

#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Screw the Hokey-Pokey, *that's* what it's all about.

††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Because that's the noise I chose to represent notifications.

‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): It had a picture of a phone.

§§FOOTNOTE (jump back turn around): Which was the first time I'd seen text on an email with a picture of a phone on it.

¶¶FOOTNOTE (throwin' up gang signs yo yo): Word to your mother like it's hot. And a bag of chips.

##FOOTNOTE (in for a penny or two): When I said the Outlook upgrade was recent, I apparently meant, like, yesterday.

†††FOOTNOTE (I'm just so terribly cross): Brother and his girlthing are going to Costa Rica for a week. B-cat (Beatrice, Brother's cat) is a travelling man's cat and has always been perfectly capable of entertaining herself for days on end. Brother is blaming it on the girlthing - he says ever since Cindy moved in, B-cat thinks she needs attention all the time. Hence the need for a catsitter.

‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (we're on the right track): I feel confident I can speak for Brother too when I say, "Don't feel you need to be an Untiedt sibling to use this wonderful new slang phrase. Spread the world! Share with your friends!"

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Word.

Jeffe Kennedy said...

I'm gonna get on that Brooklyn Truck!

Marin (AntiM) said...

Drop it like it's hot, Kim.

You may not be surprised at how easily Hans and I have incorporated it at work, Jeffe. It's useful. And maybe addictive.

~Donna~ said...

We have that phone message texting stuff as well. It's quite amusing. A guy I work with decided to be funny and leave me a message.

He said "Meow meow meow".

The phone message to text almost imploded.

:)

Marin (AntiM) said...

That's marvelous. I hope the fun crowd at work notices this new thing soon. I anticipate (and look forward to) a flood of meow-esque messages.

Anonymous said...

Drop it like it's hot? Oh, man, I was shaking it like a Polaroid picture.