I removed Gemini and installed assistant. That made it searchable in my app list. Then I just plopped the button on my home screen. When I short press the button it pops up something that asks me to try Gemini, but I just say whatever it is I want and it does it just like it used to in the search bar.

The old assistant wasn’t bad, especially before they put lens in the search widget instead of being off in its own place where it belongs so that I can uninstall it.

I thought Gemini needed 6 more months of development to be ready for prime time. Apparently I wildly underestimated it. Simple tasks barely work and it offloads anything useful to the old assistant anyway.

I set up a separate assistant button because the assistant on the search bar, even without Gemini, only searches now. I use Firefox so I don’t need it for search. I use it to add things to my to do list and to set timers, the only two things voice assistants are good for in my life.

I don’t understand why they won’t just let me use technology the way I want to use it rather than trying to force me to use it their way. Well, I refuse to understand even though I kind of get it (if I used shit the way I wanted they’d never have the opportunity to show me an advertisement).

Edit: clarity

How many cows do they own in East Texas?

I’ll give you a nickel if you say it out loud.

That’s some good corned beef.

The day I realized that we don’t even know how to treat each other was a wild day for me. My friend group has been complimenting and building up each other for a while now. It’s amazing the change you’ll see just by having one dude say to another, “Hey, nice shirt my guy!” or something similar.

We opened for a national band tonight so a bunch of my friends were there. After having done this for a few years then reading this thread, I’m amazed to see just how much positive masculinity we had going on. There were compliments, talking up guys to others outside of just being a wingman (there was at least one case of being a wingman, too), lots of bro hugs, and a lot of genuinely happy guys.

It’s a hard thing to get going, but I’m glad we started doing it.

My boss didn’t need Recall to do that to me a decade ago. He called me out for going offline in our messenger app for an hour after lunch while I was helping another tech sort an emergency for a client from their machine.

I told him that’s fine, I’ll just let everyone know that I won’t be assisting and will show them that email every time anyone asks. He backed off, but not everyone is going to get that lucky to have a complete moron who is going to put dumb shit threats in writing without running it by anyone in legal, HR, or their own boss.

But they’re much nicer about it.

I turned down politeness all the way and watched it become Dallas traffic almost immediately.

The couch co-op for BG3 is pretty amazing.

Ethically sourced human? Same. Sign me the fuck up. Not for a subscription or anything, but I really want to try it.

Well you won. I’m headed in to work tomorrow to get started on marketing it to the C suite using this.

It’s nice to know the shit I got made fun of for years ago is now high fashion.

I think that’s why they’re big mad at Harris. They don’t have time to spin up a worthless investigation about her and Walz.

I forgot about him! I remember his Feel Good Inc nearly a decade ago then I just never heard about him again.

Thank you for reminding me.

It’s hard out here. They get drug tests because of the nature of their jobs. Weed just isn’t for me. I wish it was because the calorie count is so much lower.

Usually is! Except the time my lead guitar player/singer got too drunk before we went on and pissed himself then passed out halfway through the set.

I’m a Texas Drunk. He’s almost THE Texas Drunk. Except that trophy belongs to a friend that doesn’t live here anymore who I’ve personally watched kill half a handle of whisky and be functional enough to get a ride home.

Heavy rock music, mostly pop covers that we converted but we had to play my friend’s original about fucking his ex girlfriend’s sister about halfway through and a blues/rockabilly song another friend wrote about only missing a woman when he’s drunk to close out.

Now I’m watching a hard rock band cover a bunch of shit from the 50s. This is pretty cool.

Appreciate it. I did a 45 minute set tonight and now I’m getting drunk. The bad shit is all melting away!

I worked for a company where that happened a decade and change ago. It was a total shit show. I was lucky and got out.