A New Tech Gizmo for This Sacramento Real Estate Agent

Thoreau was not talking about voice recognition software when he advised us to simplify, simplify. But I am considering buying it to make my life easier. Ah, the things we can’t do without these days. As an extremely busy Sacramento real estate agent, I spend a great deal of time talking to my cell phone. The problem with that is it types the weirdest things, sometimes using swear words that it didn’t learn from me, so I don’t know where my phone got it from. It must be sneaking off to pool halls late at night while I think it is charging. Although, actually the problem isn’t so much that it types weird crap, it’s that I click so quickly that I can click send when I don’t mean to.

Uh, oh. I hate that. That’s how I get into trouble. That’s when I have to actually call the person I just sent the nasty message to and explain I did not really say: screw you and the horse you rode in on, I meant to say: she’d love to give you the refrigerator.

Much of the time when I’m sending a text message or email via my phone to someone like my Transaction Coordinator — to a person who knows me well and the types of things I’m likely to say — I don’t even fix the mistakes, though. I just let them go through knowing that she will most likely figure them out. I suppose this drives her nuts. But she does a good job at figuring out the messages I am trying to convey. If my phone types: pls ask the cellar to shove it, she knows I meant for my phone to say: please ask the seller to sign it. Or, maybe that’s why my next door neighbor just listed with ZIP Realty . . .

The other day I found myself holding my iPad in two hands and shaking it. For just about 2 seconds there, I suspect I was trying to erase the screen, like it was an Etch-A-Sketch. Even more irritating, I was ready to send an email yet nothing was typing. I talked and talked, and it just sat there. That’s because I was working so quickly I temporarily forgot the iPad wasn’t my phone. Talking to it was not going to make it type anything. Gizmos can be frustrating. They all don’t do the same thing, even though they all meet up briefly through the “cloud” together.

However, my husband shoved his phone under my nose the other day and asked me to say something I would normally say to my phone. So, I said please find out from the bank negotiator when we will receive the short sale approval letter and whether it will come when pigs will fly, and it typed it precisely. I was amazed. Dragon software. That seems to be the answer.

So, if you find yourself talking to your iPad, don’t feel bad about it. It can happen to any of us. And you kids, get offa my lawn!