I was writing a little bit about my family earlier and I noticed that every time I input my fathers name “merkle” into the Firefox window a little red line would pop up suggesting that I had spelled something wrong. Naively assuming that Firefox had added Merkle to it’s dictionary I moused over and right clicked for some suggestions. The results were disheartening. Berkley, Berkley’s, sparkler, Berkly’s, sparkle. My first thought was obviously that this Berkley character must have some sort of advertising deal with Firefox, but you can’t really blame him, he probably owns a nice family tavern somewhere and is just trying to get his name out. What really insulted me was that firefox had the audacity to imply that in my attempt to tap out “sparkler” I had somehow ended up with merkle. I don’t know how many of you have keyboards in front of you, but a quick referencing of a standard qwerty shows that it would take an extraordinarily inept typist to confuse the two. I admit that I am no Mavis Beacon but I’m certainly not a Jarvis Brakon either.

This isn’t the only run in I have had with the bully that is technology. My phone of choice. Verizon Wireless SLVR(pronounced Sliver). This little phone, along with many others like it has a feature built in called “itap” variations of it may also be known as t9word. Verizon would have you believe that it is time saving feature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITap Actually it is an asshole.

Basically what this thing is supposed to do is minimize keystrokes for you the texter. After typing a few characters it “predicts” what you are trying to say, and lets you scroll through a list of possible options.

My first although minor beef with itap is that it fails at even simple words. The simplest. I. You or (I) would assume that advanced predictive technology would be able to guess that a single push of the 4 key should result most frequently in the pronoun I. itap has different plans. Here is a sample text if I were to let itap take control.

“Yo G need to get out of here. G just wanted to say whats up. G don’t need your attitude.”

Let’s ignore itaps direct attempts to undermine you by making you sound like a very aggressive and insecure third person known simply by his rap name, G, and consider another feature.

Most people don’t realize this, but itap remembers. It remembers words. Unfortunately for you it won’t remember helpful words like Merkle. This thing specifically chooses your most pathetic textual moments and reminds you of them when you are at your most vulnerable state, like the time you texted a former crush using her nickname, sweetybarn. My personal version of itap(who i refer to as Ken the douchebag) really enjoys sweetybarn. This guy Ken(a douchebag) would have me believe that in his honest opinion, every time I begin to type the words sweet, sweep, or sweden, that HIS BEST GUESS is SWEETYBARN? I mean maybe that is an honest mistake. He is a robot after all. How would he know that sweetybarn is not only not a common word, but also not a word. I got a little suspicious though when another word began cropping up quite frequently. Which I am pretty sure itap(Ken[the douchebag]) PLANTED. I have a good friend named Kevin. The guy has a lot of nicknames, Kev, Kevdawg, Kevan, K-vine, kerovingian, and according to my phone “jetcockticklemaster.” Yes this is not a joke. My phone actually suggests the word “jetcockticklemaster” to me frequently. Sweetybarn. A mistake. Jetcockticklemaster. Malicious.

I mean i wouldn’t complain except that this took place. A conversation that should have gone:

Friend: Yo. I got an extra ticket to the game on saturday. You want in?

Me: Sweet. I let you come last time, so you let me come this time.

Friend: Deal. Pick you up at 8.

Into a conversation that went.

Friend: Yo. I got an extra ticket to the game on saturday. You want in?

Me: Sweetybarn. G jetcockticklemaster you come last time, so you jetcockticklemaster me come this time.

Friend: Fuck you.