In ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’, Douglas Adams wrote of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products....

 “It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all."

 And so it is with my car’s infotainment system. Don't get me wrong, it connects with my phone easily enough; displays maps, plays music and so on -- and sweetly wishes me 'Good morning ' when I start the car (quite unlike my wife's grunt, as I have pointed out to her).

 Unfortunately, being an ex-adman, I was intrigued by the Voice Command claims. In practice, the 'Hey Toyota' system doesn't understand most of what I say. It will phone my brother, Mark, but is foxed by Indian names. Entreaties to turn down the air conditioning are met with incomprehension and "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

 Of course, one could achieve the same end with the flick of a finger, but it's the principle that matters.

 And in a protracted interaction, I can sense a change in the system’s tone. Impatience creeps in. To complicate matters, the infotainment screen can also connect to Android Auto and voice control through Google Assistant.

 In fact, after a lengthy discussion this morning, the car -- on its own -- switched on my phone's Bluetooth and petulantly announced "Android Auto has been activated. Goodbye." I could almost hear the subtext: "Talk to that bitch and leave me alone."

 And no, voice commands on Android Auto are no better; so it's back to the old ways, though this aging dog tried his damndest to learn new tricks.

NEWFIE

When I was working in HongKong, my immediate superior was a Canadian.  A man of few words, perhaps ten years older than me. Not unpleasant,not at all,  but dour.  He rarely smiled and getting him to say anything was like extracting teeth.

I questioned some other Canadian colleagues about him, and they dismissed it with, "Oh, he's a Newfie."

That didn't mean anything to me.

Many months later, we were having a few drinks after a client conference and he finally unbent enough to tell me about his childhood.

He grew up, he said, in a wooden house on a cliff looking out to sea at the Northern end of Newfoundland.  Across the water from Greenland. 

The house was unheated, though it had a big cast iron wood stove that had to be constantly fed.

In winter, he said, the pack ice would form, stretching for miles from the shore.  And the polar wind would come down from Greenland, screaming over the miles of pack ice, getting colder and colder, and when it reached the coast, it slammed into this lone wooden house on the cliff.

The house would shake.  All the timbers in the wooden frame would groan.  The door, if not locked, would be violently blown open.  Every window rattled.  And if the wind brought snow...

Glenn was a copywriter, so he could describe a scene vividly.  

And now, though I have never knowingly met another one, I make allowances for Newfies.