George Ure

(Somewhere off Cuba)   We will arrive back in Galveston Sunday morning – early.  From there it’s only 4-hours up to the woods and getting back to the normal order of things.

A word, or two, about commercialism of ports when you go cruising, is in order.

A look at Falmouth ,  Jamaica – on the left as seen from our balcony – would lead you to believe that it’s a beautiful place.

But not so fast, my friend.

Yes, it’s true that it is a gorgeous place, and all.  But ONLY inside the wrought iron fences that surround the port district and on the escorted tours.

As to wandering around the “old town” part of Falmouth, we were advised, both on the ship and by ground security personnel that wouldn’t be recommended.  And that’s for a party or four.

A couple of things here:  One:  Jamaica has strict gun control.  So a lesson may be learned there. The biggest problems would  likely have been lots of “in your face” street vendors and outright begging and so forth.  Crimes against persons, as in assaults and such, are low.  Still, it takes some of the buzz off the place.

You can find the Jamaican Firearms Act online here, but the long and short of it is that while it is a deterrent to the some of the newbies, the drug gangs still have them.

This will almost certainly get us into a long discussion about “How much worse things would be without gun laws…”  But, since the two conditions (armed/disarmed) cannot exist in the same place, all we can do is again note that places where there are gun laws  (Syria’s president Assad is big on gun control for State Security which in turn uses official guns to intimidate, harass, and steal outright from the civilians.…) things are usually far from peaceful.  Or, at the other extreme, you get a totalitarian State, so choose wisely.  As our Founders did.

The second thing that happens in Falmouth is that commercialization takes place.  We had a cold one at Margaritaville (yes, the one with the souvenir mugs).  That’s a familiar brand in the US, so it’s kind of interesting to travel 2500 miles (round trip)  on a ship and still have the familiar brands about..

On the other hand, we had the obligatory Tasties patty at the Port and it had only about half the meat/filling which I remember from the 1980’s.  Back then, the rule of thumb was a good patty should have equal amounts of meat (like a 1/2 inch) and that should be more than the combined thickness of the two halves of the pastry.

If you’ve never had one, think of the 7-11/QwikiMart Apple Pie/turnover as a form factor.  Now, take out all the filling and sugar and stuff a Caribbeanized version of taco filling in it and deep fry.

On the other hand, got no complaint about the price:  Just $3 bucks for chicken or beef, or the combo.  Stark contrast to the $24.95 large frozen margarita. Any nutritionist would pick the patties as best price/nutrient.

Other than Elaine posing on the (not real) treasure chest outside with the Landry’s looking on, Mr.

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(Wherever, Off Mexico) – A shopping mall with cartoon characters for the kids?  Inside the middle of a ship more than a thousand feet long with its own Starbucks hustle in the middle?

Uh-huh…this is cruising on a mega cruise ship.

Our ride down from the ranch to Houston Saturday morning was uneventful.  We stayed in a modest hotel in The Woodlands, ate incredibly healthy, and got more sleep than the folks we were traveling with.

The Landry’s had a wedding to attended, so Elaine and I took the opportunity to roll 12-hours of ZZZ’s.

Boarding the ship Sunday in Galveston was a tad of the frustrating side.

The way the Port of Galveston is set up, they have two parking areas that are several blocks from the actual cruise ship and shuttle busses are used.

Here’s the problem:  Absolutely zero coordination between the lot attendants and the shuttle drivers.  “Go stand by the fence,” one told us.  But that was with a half-empty bus much closer and going to the same two ships.

The first shuttle by the fence drove right by, and while Elaine and the Landry’s were wandering around after being told “Wait by your vehicle,”  Ures truly finally found a bus with an intelligent driver and after a good bit of cross-parking lot bellowing, and did I mention $10 bucks? – we got my bus underway and picked up the three Musketeers.

You need to understand a few things about the Galveston dock:  It’s like a cattle chute system, unless you’re traveling with people who have been on a lot more “points”.  Since Robin is “Emerald” we managed all the “special lines” which cut waiting time a lot.

However, since boarding was delayed a better part of an hour, that meant things were getting hot, people grouchy, and a dozen people wanted to cut in line, since ours was moving faster.

The slow part, just as at airports, was the security check points.  The number of wheel chairs, stroke walkers, and artificial hips, knees, and so forth, was prodigious.  They don’t really need security guards so much as a trauma or triage doc for this thing.

Eventually we boarded and Robin scored a table for four on the shady side of the ship on the 11th floor because rooms were not quite ready yet. 

A good thing, as it turned out, since it gave us plenty of time to study the drink packages and we took care of that little detail.

The rest of the day was spent getting to know the place, which we did.  And in a few minutes the breakfast buffet will be opening and all hell will break loose as 3,500 people need to eat.

So far, the general impression is good, provided you can travel with a couple that has plenty of points in already.  We are “gold” but that doesn’t get you past the general herd at boarding.

Given a preference in the future, Elaine and I are leaning toward smaller ships (Norwegian Jewel size, or 2,500 passengers).

We did chat with one of the more odd coincidences.  We happened to sit for a few minutes with a nice young couple (half our age, if that) who were on the cruise for the first time.

He happened to be recently out of the Air Force and his first name was Brandon.  During three adventures in the sandbox, he was an Air Policeman.

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I promised a little more discussion of the Amazon Echo when I had some time – so this is that time.

“Why is there a fork leaning on the Echo?”

That’s to give you an idea about how big it is.  It’s a little taller than a large dinner fork and about 3-inches in diameter.  That wire coming out of its base is the power.

Used to be product pictures were taken with a dollar bill or a pack of ciggies, but since the Treasury isn’t happy with money pictures and since ciggies are out of favor, my scaling weapon of choice these days is a fork.

This is really a computer and internet voice-interface machine.

It is a wireless device:  You need to have a home (of office) wireless network to enable it.

Interface:  You talk to it, it talks to back.  Kind of like marriage.

Setup:  You log into the Echo through a control panel on the web.  The control panel is used for setup (like to link your iHeart Radio account to the Echo, so it can stream content.  

You also use the online control panel to print out your shopping and to-do lists.

What it is:  It’s a computer and online audio media tool.   Think of it as a cross between a kitchen time, shopping and to-do list manager,  and a kitchen radio – at least that’s the slot it fills in our toy box.

Command Words:  The standard “name” you address the device as (in other words, to tell it “I’m talking to you” is “Alexa”

Functions:

The number of features will be growing over time.  Here at the ones we presently use:

• Alexa:  Tell me a joke.   (she will)
• Alexa:  What time is it?  (she tells)
• Alexa: Tell me a joke  (“Why did the banker quit his job?  He lost interest.”
• Alexa:  Tell me a joke (“What’s the difference between a well-dressed guy on a bicylce and a scruffy guy on a tricycle?  Attire!”)
• …the jokes go on endlessly…
• Alexa:  Set a time for Xx minutes.  (“x minute timer set).
• When the timer goes off “Alexa, stop.”
• Or, if you don’t like the timer you set and don’t want it to go off anymore:  “Alexa, cancel x minute timer…”
• And, when you’re doing steaks on the grill outside “Alexa, time remaining”  “A bout xx seconds [or whatever the remaining time is]
• The system supports multiple timers.  We aren’t that complicated most of the time, though.
• The Echo will also also read Wikipedia entries.  “Alexa, wiki Civil War”  “The American Civil war was….blah blah blah…”  Basically, it reads the first Wikipedia paragraph and ends with “For the full article, look at the Alexa App “ (which is the online control panel)
• “Alexa:  Prime Music Jazz:”
• “Alexa:  iHeart Radio WBAP”  or whatever else is on iHeart Radio, and you can set up lots of account links from various sources.
• There is a voice calculator, too:  “Alexa: what is 137 divided by 12?”  “137 divided by 12 is 11.4166666667”    For my back pocket approximation of Pi, “Alexa, what is 22 divided by 7?”  Her answer goes plenty of decimal places.
• She does just the basic four, doesn’t know what imaginary numbers are (except as a Wikipedia paragraph) and don’t ask her for second derivatives or standard deviations.  Yet.

The only things to keep in mind are it is an evolving art and just like using any speech program  it will take time to figure out what you’re saying, especially if your Engrish is tainted, accented, regionalized heavily and what-not.

For radio it is “Alexa, [source] [item detail]”  *(like Prime Music is the source, then item detail is jazz playlist).  You’re talking to the replacement civilization and they’re not really understanding us, but then again, present human leaders don’t either.

Since we live out in the outback, radio reception here sucks but since wed have plenty of bandwidth (which I am convinced is the “new personal wealth item” we find it a spendy but grand fun replacement for a kitchen radio, timer, voice driven Wiki thing, calculator, and it does fine at the shopping and to-do lists.

The control panel is a bit stupid at the moment.

I mean like the List editor.

I could not find a “delete checked” at the top of the page so once something is on your list, it is there for Eternity unless you go in and use the control panel.

Although it may seem simple enough to add a voice command like “Alexa, delete shopping list” and respond “You want me to delete your shopping list, is that right?”  (yes/no) that’s the kind of thing that they are still working on (presumably),

I think I mentioned that since you have to know your network settings with the app, you should be able to specify a wireless printer so you could have things like “Alexa, print to-do list” which – along with delete function – would make it a very useful tool.

It’s not there yet.

But did we spring for one?  Yes.

You can order one at this link:

We also ordered the remote control (which includes a remote microphone instead of the 7-mic array built it.  So far, we haven’t used it.

As I write the column this morning, I’m 22-feet from the machine in quiet home, so with a noise floor of –135 db, it works well at that range.

It’s an interesting tool and why is it I have a funny feeling that Amazon is leveraging the development of this product to eventually roll a Siri like capability into a future Kindle product?

Hell of a kitchen radio/timer/.paperwork laying around eliminator.  Now if they’d just implement my network printer default setup I suggested…

I did swear at Alexa once (to test)  “That’s not very nice” was her answer.    Who?  Moi?.

If you say :”Alexa, thank you” she will replay “You’re welcome.”  You don’t need to thank machines, at least not yet.

Around the Ranch:  Computers out to Get Humans?

Already? 

Yeah…talking about being the first on our block (which is 12 miles to drive around, but that’s what rural life is about, right?) to start talking to our replacements….reminded me of this adventure.

Panama’s significant is finishing up her degree with the local state universitrap.  T’other day, she did a long and involved business course – and test – and all the results disappeared.

Worse, when she logged in, she was shown another student’s work and a different instructor.

So she called to talk to the instructor:  Yes it was a problem caused by a duplicate account.

So he promptly deleted THE WRONG ACCOUNT..

After a couple of days of seething about it, more emails and messaging, she logged back in and all of her work has mysteriously reappeared, complete with her 3.7-something GPA.

So all’s well that ends well, except I suggested the two of them consider asking for a student loan discount for the hassle-factor.  They’re not that kind of people.

I am.

Friday Life Overload

With guests due to arrive at about 4 PM, things have been humming around the ranch.

The planned installation of the magnetos was slowed yesterday due to a parts failure.

The good news is I picked out two ties for the cruise at the local clothing emporium which passed muster with Elaine.

Since she is too busy to read the column, the truth is I had them picked out by the local store clerk.  Theory is that if you see a well-dress clerk in retail that is the person you ask.

This morning, all I have to do is vacuum my office, drive up to the bank in Tyler, pick up steaks and seafood there, get a new stapler (OfficeMax stop), a liquor refreshments store stop, recover the websites if anything goes wrong with the SQL updates.  After that, a leisurely interview, shower, pack, documents ready…and by that time, it will be time to go lead Robin and Judy in.

This is because in this part of Texas, there’s virtually no what to find our place.  Even the Post Office gets here unreliably at times.

That’s because the road we live on has been variously named Anderson County Road 4416, AN.. County Rd.

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