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Comment by hellothere007 | Hacker News Reader

I had a cron job that sends automatically a text to my wife each morning along with a joke, she's in another country so is something I did to keep the communication open

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You automated a part of your relationship. This is awesome!

Reminds me of this reddit user that automated 'liking' his girlfriend's Instagram posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/70udwq/what_routine...

This is a great suggestion - will add it asap!

I thought so too, until I realize she could immediately call and ask what do I think about the picture.

Like + email with the picture? :)

Just spin up a good computer vision algorithm!

Reminds me of the day when, while helping debugging stuff on my father's old Solaris server, I came across a email_birthday.sh script run by a cronjob every year at my mother's birthday.

They are happily married for more than 40 years and counting ^^.

this is another webjob I did but for my father's business, it sends the company's clients an email and text wishing them happy birthday :)

This sounds terrible. Even more terrible a lot of people (probably you also) don't find it terrible.

Damn am I so old school that I prefer real voice (and believe me, Skype over Hotel networks is awful (and floss alternatives are no better), but that's better than nothing). Automating that part of my life seems so soulless...

I like voice better of course but what I didn't mention is that the cost per minute if I call her is $0.60 and that quickly adds up and she doesn't have internet over there, so if a text costs me $0.003 I might as well be using it

Ahhhh... Now I get it. And was bout to post something along the lines : "well, I shouldn't have judged like that, I don't the complete picture, maybe he has some good reasons...

Now, to be more constructive, where do you get your jokes ? Do you write them yourself or have you some kind of database ?

No reason to be so harsh. She's married to a techie. This is a techie thing to bring a little bit of happiness is all.

You're acting like he used a markov bot to reply to all his wife's messages.

No point arguing over whether this was harsh or justified--what matters is how GGP's spouse feels about it.

Imagine two Neural Nets trained by husband and wife to do the usual conversations. Now add a solarcell and a speaker- and some noise generator for starters on a gravestone- and long after the couple is gone, the beloved ones arguing goes on.

This is brilliant! No, it is not, this is one of your worser ideas. Oh, Madam is constructive again today. You want me to say my true opion or not.. This is how you always swing that- no matter how rude - its freedom of expression in danger.

I feel like this is an SMBC comic not yet illustrated.

You might have a case if 'hellothere007 doesn't write the jokes. I interpreted their post as meaning they write the jokes, queue them up with the cron job, and use it to schedule them for delivery at some time more appropriate to the wife's timezone.

Did the text message come from a separate account or were you able to use your cell phone number? how did this work?

it was an azure webjob using twilio api to send the message, I randomized the time and the selection of jokes to make it seem like I was doing it :)

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