New Friend

Last night, after watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune with Paul, (and suffering the bantering of a 17 year old for watching these shows), I went upstairs to read my books. (The Foundation by Asimov and When I Say No I Feel Guilty for some self improvement). I detoured over to my new laptop. It was still early so I thought I'd amuse myself with the speech recognition feature. Its facinating to me to be able to talk to a machine and have it respond. How cool.

One of the fun things about talking to your computer is that the people around you are taken a bit off guard. "You talkin' ta me?", "What?".....

With the speech recognition feature, it is required that one 'trains' the system to recognize one's voice, and, I suspect, one's diction or lack thereof. So practice makes better. I spent some time with the tutorial to learn the programmed commands then took off on my own. I opened a Word Document only after many tries. The computer opened 'Otto' (a game), HP Photosmart, and a menu for Default Programs, among others and I had to figure out how to 'close' all those before I finally got Word opened.

"Start Listening" I said into the mic, and then the old standby..."Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country". And "Period". What I got was "No way in tell good come bandaid all the trees". Chuckle. No problem...according to the tutorial you tell the computer to 'find' the words you want to change...so here goes "Find 'No'". Well now my sentence looks like 'No way in tell good come bandaid all the trees. Find no' Hmmm. Need to practice editing commands. But moving on, I dictated and dictated. The ensuing translation made by the computer to my dictation was the most entertainment I had had in some long time. I laughed and laughed until I was crying and choking. Paul was laughing at me laughing. There was a sentence about 100% queen, and company rollover, and barking dogs under the couch...My document read like a C.S. Lewis piece.

You know how how intimacy increases when you share the big laughs and tears with someone? I'm feeling sort of intimate with my computer. Now I need to give it a gender and a name. Something to keep my mind working on instead of the blood clot in my leg preparing to move and cause me a pulmonary embolism.

Back to work.....Peace.