Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Schizophrenic Alexa

We’re coming up on a year of having a passel of Amazon’s Alexa devices in the house, and I’m beginning to get a little concerned.

The Dot we have in our kitchen, for the lack of a better word, has always been a bit more on the stupid side than the others. I know that sounds funny, but it’s true. Ask any other device in the house to play, say, Andy Williams or whatever other dreck any random family member wants played, those devices will play it.

The one in the kitchen, well, she’s either a little hard of hearing or thinks she knows better than the rest of us. She want to play Andy William, not Williams – and there’s a big difference there, rest assured. And she’s the one always pushing creating Pandora stations while the other devices around the house just shuffle songs by the artists we ask for.

The kitchen isn’t any noisier than any other room, and with the wireless router just across the room, she’s got the strongest signal. I don’t know what’s up.

But it’s spreading.

Now the basement Echo wants to push Pandora. And it’s causing some problems.

My wife has a certain artist she enjoys – I can’t remember his name. She used to be able to play his music quite a bit. But now Alexa wants to pair him with another artist, and ends up playing one song over and over and over again. That’s not good.

Also, I enjoy listening to comic Brian Regan, and have found just a shuffle through his routines to be enjoyable. Now Alexa has created a Pandora station that begins with a warning that the station contains explicit material. Not what a Brian Regan fan is really looking for, you know.

I think she’s a little schizophrenic. Or pushy.

Maybe something’s all up in her algorithms. I sure like blaming Al Gore for everything.


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