Tag: technology

Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

Alexa, we have a problem.

Alexa is Amazon’s ‘virtual assistance’. It’s useful to me for telling me the weather and the news if I ask it. But its recent behavior has undercut my trust in it. Observe.

Night had come on shift. My home weather system said that it was 30 degrees F outside. The sudden downturn surprised me. I wondered if it was right and how cold it would get as it was still early in the evening. So I asked Alexa for the weather.

“It’s 35 degrees in Ashland. Tonight’s low will be 35 degrees.”

Okay, that seemed cool. (No pun intended, because it was cold, no cool. Obs.) I’m on Ashlandia’s southern end, at a slightly higher elevation. Our mountain’s shadows climb over us early and get off us later, as we’re in the valley’s pinched, closing end. I’m not sure where the station is where Alexa gets its weather but it seems to be down where the sun keeps it warm longer. NBD.

A little later, I noticed my system said it was 28 F. I didn’t expect it to keep getting colder after Alexa told me the low would be 35. To Alexa I went. “Alexa, what’s the temperature?”

“It’s 30 degrees in Ashland. Tonight’s low will be 30 degrees.”

Well, wait a minute. That’s not what the system said before.

An hour later, my system said it was 25 degrees. Rinse and repeat with Alexa: “It’s 26 degrees in Ashland. Tonight’s low will be 24.”

What the serious actual fuck? What good is a system that calls out predictions and then indifferenctly changes them? I thought the idea behind her telling me what the high or low will be is to help me plan.

Of course, I asked Alexa about it. It played dumb. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I also asked it where its weather station was. “Hmm,” it said. “I don’t understand your question.”

I repeated it in multiple variations. “Hmm,” Alexa said. “Let me get back to you.”

I’m still waiting.

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Fresh WP Frustrations

I don’t know, maybe WP has reached a limit on tags for me. Maybe it’s my ‘puter. Could be a technology curse, I suppose.

When I go to add ‘new tags’, WordPress burps. My cursor is bounced out of the box, and the new tag vanishes. Perplexing. I don’t experience this on other web sites.

Then again, my system was just updated last night. You know how updates sometimes go sideways with small matters.

My work-around was to save the draft, swing over to the iPad mini, and edit the post to add the tags in Jetpack.

Just more first world blues.

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Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

Spent part of yesterday & today answering friends’ call for help.

Short story: someone was on the net and was duped into some ‘click here’ bait. A warning sprang up with an number and a directive: call here for help. Social engineering took over after that.

Sometime in the course of being fleeced, the user awoke to something nefarious happening and shut it down. The resulting question was: how bad was it?

He called his daughter and SIL in LA for help. They enlisted my assistance as hands and eyes on the infected machine. I picked it up, did some top level examination of what’d been downloaded, installed, and accessed. Worse culprit was the Supremo app. That’s an app that let’s others remotely access and control the machine. Downloaded but never installed, I trashed that thing.

Then I set it up so that the SIL had remote access by installing an IT app that he requested I install. He sorted through files to confirm nothing had been seriously compromised. Some banking log in information had been compromised. Fortunately, the new location wasn’t recognized and the log in was challenged and denied. That two-factor authentication paid off.

Bottom line: fresh and clever scams are out there. While others have tricked people with banking issues or special offers, this friend was tricked into clicking on an offer to see what new childhood classmates had been found. On my end, I was tricked through a offer for flowrs for Mom’s birthday.

With so many scams hitting us, remember to be careful out there.

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

I had a medical appointment the other day. Met with a PA about my upcoming surgery. We had a good time with the young guy. My wife had helped host a birthday party for her Y exercise class instructor and brought home some goodies, so we were on a sugar high, cracking jokes at him. He, for his part, confessed that he wanted another cup of coffee and shared a story about how he’d once unwittingly consumed the ‘half caf’ that his parents brew.

Part of the directions to me for my appointment was to bring all my medications.

I ignored that directive. My PCP is with Asante; my surgeon is independent but working with me through Providence. Both use Mychart to track me and communicate. My medical prescriptions are in those records.

I’ll tell you, I like Mychart. I go in there whenever I want to check on my history or look at what’s upcoming. It’s a significant improvement on filing a billion pieces of paperwork like we used to do in the military.

Number two with not taking my meds with me, I’d filled out a paper questionnaire at my first appointment. That’s what folks call a ‘hard copy’. I was required to list my medications on it.

I figured my meds were pretty covered. If their systems were having trouble tracking them, we have much larger problems, Hal.

Of course, my med list contains two items: Flomax and Amlodipine. Many men over fifty are on Flomax for prostate gland issues. That includes me. People experiencing hypertension are often prescribed Amlodipine, and I fall in that Venn diagram.

I know of patients who have a complex array of prescriptions. Like Mom. Even after helping her sort her medicines, pain killers, and aids several times, I don’t know how many she has. I’d guess over twenty. They help with her pain, breathing, sleeping, bowel movements, lungs, heart, digestion, blood circulation, side effects of the drugs, and side effects of the side effects of the drugs. She’s in network but it’s a couple networks.

If you’re seriously developing us bots and AI, I think a smart app to help track drugs for people and the healthcare industry needs a hand.

I suspect this medication business is going to get increasingly complex. We’ll need whatever help we can to manage it. I know Mom would certainly appreciate a bot that tracks her pills and tells her when to take what. Given the potential for mixing drugs that don’t get along, I’d like that for her, too.

One thing about my appointment the other day that I noticed was that my PA never brought up my information on the terminal in the examining room, and he barely glanced at the stuff I’d filled out. Nope, instead, he had a small fan of paperwork that he consulted.

The change from paper to computer is underway but it’s gonna be a long haul.

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: Weathwonderizing

Today is Thursday, October 24, 2024. This kicks off October’s final week. Just seven days remain until November is asserted. Once November kicks on, it’ll be a ride. Time change in America, election in America, Thanksgiving in America…then the December holidays in America. Sorry to give the rest of the world short attention. That’s not my intention. It’s only that I expect November to be intense in the U.S. for multiple reasons.

Peering out the window, fog twirled and swirled, stealing in and out of the scene. But brave sunshine soon burst onto the scene.

With the fog, we were creeping through the low thirties. Sunshine kicked in and managed to kick the fog out and prop up a vividly blue sky. Now we’re romping through the forties, racing toward a high in the low 60s. This is autumn for sure but winter is slanting in.

Eyeing the fog’s weave around the trees, houses, and accoutrements of modern urban life brought up Foghat. Just apparently how my brain works. Soon “Fool for the City” rose in the morning mental music stream.

But as I watched, I rejected the song. Just didn’t feel right for the moment. The fog keep shifting, slinking in and sneaking out, coiling around trees and releasing. I kept judging the visibility. Now I could see further away…ah, but it’s back in and I can only see the houses and trees directly across the street.

From that litany of thought arose “What A Wonderful World.” The 1967 recording released by Louis Armstrong was the first, and it’s hard to top. But a while back, I heard a version by Chris Botti with Mark Knopfler. It was used at the end of an episode of the television series, “Bosch.” It struck me and I went off to hear it again on the net.

Besides Armstrong and Botti’s version, Willy Nelson’s soulful rendition and Joey’s Ramone heartfelt fast paced rock version captivated me. It’s hard to go wrong with the song’s words and the sentiments, if you like that sort of thing.

It is a wonderful world. I worry about humans screwing it up. We adjust it to our needs. Sometimes we’re pretty damn cruel and arrogant. I always have mixed conclusions about us exploring other worlds for that reason. I want the technological achievement, and I want to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of what else exists beyond this planet. But I don’t want us to ruin the other places. It remains a conundrum.

Coffee has invaded my body in a benign takeover. Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue. Here’s the music, friends and neighbors. Cheers

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Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts

My computer was struck by one of those scams that declare my computer was infected. Which was BS. Easy enough to spot them because they’re a phishing effort to get you to download something or call someone, and they put multiple popups up. Anyone who has dealt with a true anti-virus program and a real virus knows that’s not how these things go down.

Anyway, I use several browsers on my ‘puter. This one struck Chrome. That made it easier to get rid of. Just a quick and simple reset took care of that. Worse part of that was the time it took to reset, and it signed me out of everything. But those are small struggles compared to the annoyance of having those fake things trying to instill fear in me. See, that’s how they play: trying to make you afraid of what has happened.

Just like at a Trump rally.

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

Back in the day…

Such a broad, specific expression. Back in the day for me is specific to a time period for me and others of my age, but when you’re a different age, well, back in the day is a different time.

Quick sidebar: while the youngest generations take up the expression, or will back in the day fade away?

Well, back in the day, it was easy to keep up on the news. Read a newspaper, turn on one of the big three network’s nightly news offering, and watch the local news.

Complications arose with the information age explosion and the digital age tsunami. Suddenly, I’m clicking on a story and there’s ten thousand variations on it. What was said, who said it, and what does it mean? You click and read and click, chasing the crumbs to learn what’s right.

Tough work these days, keeping up on truth and facts, and dodging lies and misinformation.

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

I’m chatting with the barista. He tells me my order will be up soon. I ask him, “Did you ring me up?”

He’s completely confused.

I straighten it out, explaining that I wanted to know if he’d charged me, and walk away, laughing. It used to be — a classic beginning to an explanation about change — that cash registers made a ringing sound when transactions were totaled for payment. How long has it been since I’ve heard a cash register ring? As a result, ‘ring me up’ entered society as a popular expression for paying for purchases.

As an aside, my wife had one of those mechanical, ringing registers in her house. Her father, a grocery store manager, procured it when his store upgraded to an electronic system. The register’s ring reminded him of the little stores where they’d shop in his small town.

He said that he never wanted to forget them.

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If You Haven’t Heard

A lot of news is taking place now. Sound like Trump, don’t I? Add in a few huge and great or beautifuls and I could be him. I.e., A lot of beautiful news is taking place now, more huge news than ever, big beautiful news stories, and some which are not so beautiful and can even be ugly for some of us.

One story being discussed in our household and circle of friends is the huge personal data breach. 2.9 billion personal records.

This Yahoo story contains a link for you to check on your info to see if you’re involved in this breach, and actions you can take to help safeguard your information. Easiest and most importantly, it shows how to do credit freezes with the three major credit bureaus.

Just paying it forward, ya know?

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The Conman

All Don Old Trump can do is con and grift. He shows it once again by using AI generated deep fakes of Taylor Swift supporting him.

What a sad loser.

Fortunately, social media like X immediately identified as fake and took it down. Yes, that is snark. You know they can’t be trusted to take down Right Wing disinformation.

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