Jedi by Knight

I was just telling StarWarsAnonymous the other day how much I enjoy having Cortana, the Windows personal assistant, on my Lumia phone.  You may be familiar with her if you use Windows 10; she is named after the Halo video game character (and even voiced by the same actress).

Sometimes, though…let’s just say Cortana knows me all too well and makes me come face to face with my life choices.  Twice recently she’s given me major guilt trips that would make a mother proud.

For some background, I’m Catholic and often attend Mass in my hometown—the church I was confirmed and married in.  I play flute in the choir there about twice a month, often at the 11am service.

One Sunday morning, it was an “off” week for our choir, and I had nothing scheduled on my calendar, so I dragged myself out of bed around 10:30 or 11, which, to be honest, is pretty typical for me on the weekend.  If I’m lucky I don’t have to get up until noon.

I grabbed my phone and was checking email, etc., and then pulled up Cortana’s app to check the day’s headlines (she knows I like science news).  Just below the headlines, where she normally tells me my estimated commute time to work on the weekdays, there was a different notification.  It said something like:

“With traffic, it’ll take you about 15 minutes to drive to Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt Church.”

Thanks, Cortana.  Her meaning was clear.  She was telling me: I see you sitting there on the couch in your pajamas, giving no thought to your immortal soul.  Is this how your mother raised you?  You can still make it to church if you forgo showering first!

Yeah, I didn’t go to church that morning.  But boy did I feel guilty about it.  So don’t worry, Mom, Cortana’s got you covered on the church attendance guilt trips.

Yesterday evening was another fun one.  I opened her app, and she pointed out a location on a map, asking: “Come here often? You can nickname this place to get relevant suggestions and easily set reminders.”

This is a helpful feature that I’ve used to label places like my parents’ house (or probably my church…) where I (and consequently my phone) spend a lot of time.

But looking at the small thumbnail map I couldn’t tell what location she was suggesting.  I opened the map to see a bigger area.

It was Taco Bell.

I think I need to go reevaluate my life choices now.