:: Adventures in Text Messaging ::

Minutes ago, my office phone rang. I picked it up, and instantly heard a recorded message. The pleasant-sounding robo-voice told me that I had received a text-message from a Rogers Wireless customer. This was weird, because not a lot of people have my work number, and those that do are not likely to send me a text message.

But I pushed 1 anyway, to listen to the message, and then the Stephen Hawking-esque voice told relayed to me the following message:

"I once sliced a piece of deli meat so thin it was invisible."

This is the text message some random person – with a number I didn't recognize – deemed necessary to send to my desk. I was baffled, to say the least.

I instantly began trying to figure out who this message-sender was, and my first suspect was Mike (as it usually is when weird, random things happen). Also, years ago he sent a voice/text message to my house at Christmas time.

I then Googled the phrase, to see if it was some long-lost quote or inside joke from our Kamloops days. I thought maybe it was from Space Ghost, or Strong Bad, or something similar. The search came up empty though.

I then realize the number was 604 area code, so Mike was quickly ruled out.

Turns out it's actually a Seinfeld quote – when Kramer gets the meat slicer. And after quickly scrolling through the numbers in my cell phone, the culprit was, in hindsight, a likely one:

Kyle. I should've known.

"Oh, that was meant for your cell phone," was his response.

Ya think?

:: How much I love technology ::

In my department at work, we have nine computers. Each of these computers is also equipped with an e-mail address, and in some cases, two e-mail addresses. One of these addresses gets many, many e-mails a day, submitted through our company website.

Due to the high volume of mail to this address, we don't have anyone who monitors this account on a constant basis, nor do they send replies back. It basically exists so people can send us information, so they don't necessarily expect a reply, and it would take an extra full-time staff member to do it, anyhow.

However, recently we had two people call to make sure we received their message, as they hadn't heard anything back from us, and we expecting at least a confirmation. These calls are annoying, so we finally came up with a solution: set up an autoreply. (It's amazing it took us 8 months to come up with it).

This autoreply - which many business people use when they go away on vacation and won't, therefore, be answering mail - basically just says "Thank you for your submission. Blah blah blah..."

Good idea, no?

Well this week...not so much.

Turns out that, in a rare instance, someone did actually use this e-mail account to send an outgoing message. No trouble usually, except the would-be recipient of said e-mail was, well, away on vacation, and had set up an autoreply of his own.

So for approximately 19 hours straight, these two e-mail addresses played tag back and forth.

"Thank you for your submission."
"Sorry, I'm away on vacation."
"Thank you for your submission."
"Sorry, I'm away on vacation."
"Thank you for your submission."
"Sorry, I'm away on vacation."
"Thank you for your submission."

And so on and so forth. Overnight.

Needless to say, our tech guys - who just happened to be in the office upgrading most of our computers - were impressed.

And, while we're discussing technology, I'd like to talk about my BlackBerry, if I may. I don't know the name of the default text messaging/typing system on BlackBerrys, but it's the one where you type a few letters and the phone tries to guess what word you are trying to type, and lists a few suggestions. You pick one, and continue. In the beginning, it was incredibly frustrating because you'd constantly try to spell words your phone didn't know, and it was often quite a task to get it to say what you want. You get used to it though, and the phone gets used to you through it's "Custom dictionary."

Basically, every new word you introduce - be it a person's name, website, slang, typo - gets added to the custom dictionary, so the next time you try to spell it, it's available in the list. The trouble is, all kinds of typos, abbreviations and other gibberish get saved in there too, so now and then it's good to go into your dictionary settings, browse your list of custom words, and delete the ones that make no sense. After a few months, there's tons.

I did that tonight, and after clearing out most of the garbage, I was impressed by some of the things I have taught my BlackBerry to spell. Among my phone's new words are:

bobblehead
bullshit
confuddled
c*nt
douchebag
douchebaggery
fabulicious
fuck
fucked
fucker
fuckers
fuckin
fucking
fuckstick
fuckingfucks
gongshow
hungover
jager-bomb
jerkass
moochy
pastrami
ratbag
ridalin
samesies
shitfaced
sloot
Steppenwolf
Trebek

The fun part is trying to remember how and why I would've used most of those words in a sentence or conversation. The best part is that I taught a piece of high-tech machinery eight different ways to recognize the word 'fuck.'

'Tis a proud day. I imagine it's not unlike the feeling a beaming father gets upon hearing his young son speak his first words. (Assuming, of course, the son's first word isn't douchebag or fuckstick.)