I was poking around on this laptop last night and discovered I apparently have speech recognition software on it.

Always one to try something new, I switched it on.

“Start” I said.  It clicked on the Start button.  I was impressed.  I opened my text editor to see if I could dictate a letter to myself.

“Dear Grandad” I said.  This confused it and it offered me alternative spellings of Grandad, such as ‘Granddad’.  That annoys me when people haven’t the grace to know how to spell my name, so I told it the spelling was ‘Grandad’ and not to be so fucking smart.  “What was that?” said the computer.  I sighed.

I wasn’t sure what to say next, so I sat in silence for a couple of minutes.  “Roman” it typed.  What the fuck?

“Thank you for your recent letter” I said.  “Thank you for your recent letter” it typed.  At last, we were getting somewhere.

“Full stop” I said.  “Bus stop” typed the computer.  Twat!  “Delete that” I said.  It deleted it.

“Press enter” I said.  “Rare centre” it typed.  I sighed.  It closed my browser.  It was beginning to piss me off.

“Press tab” I said.  “Gall stone” it typed.  What the fuck?

“Help” I said.  It opened the Help thing.  Being a Microsoft thing, it was fuck all use to me.  “Close” I sad.  It closed Help.

“Show numbers” I said.  It immediately covered my screen with numbered boxes.  Now I couldn’t see what was under the numbers.  I sighed.  “What was that?” the computer said.  “I fucking sighed” I said.  “What was that?” the computer said.  I sighed again.  “What was that?” the computer said.  “Go fuck yourself” I said.

….

Apparently it understood that.

I had to step away quickly.

I know computers take things literally but that was going a bit too far.

I don’t think my laptop will ever be the same again.