Day in the Life of an Idiot

I mostly wanted to log-in to tell you that an interview I did with Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith went up on GayYA.org sometime ago and I missed its debut. It's a fun little conversation about all the hassles they had during the process of trying to find a publisher for their novel Strangers (which I read and enjoyed.) The interview is called: "The Question of Queering the Mainstream Novel..."

Otherwise, I've mostly been lazing about enjoying the heck out of my Christmas/New Year vacation. I had to work yesterday evening for five hours at the Maplewood Library, but otherwise I've been doing a whole lot of nothing. I'm an extreme pro at nothingness. Turns out, I can do it pretty much all day when I put my mind to it. To be fair to myself, I've actually worked quite a bit on the novel that Rachel and I co-wrote as the School for Wayward Demons. I even had a few brilliant insights into how to work tie some scenes together, so that's a win.

I should probably download some of the pictures I took over Christmas/Solstice and post them here so you can see all the fun stuff we got. Naomi asked me what our favorite gifts were this year, and I think for Mason it was the book by the XKCD author What If...? and the giant LEGO set of "Metalbeard's Sea Cow."  Shawn favorite things were a pair of garnet earrings that Mason picked out for her and a pair of fuzzy hand warmers I found for her.  Me, it's hard to say.  I got a lot of nice things, but probably the best for me was the money got from my folks which I instantly ran out and put on a coffee card at Claddaugh and, of course, the two pound bag of foreign coins that Shawn got for me.  Okay, this is a weird thing you probably didn't know about me, but I LOVE weird, old foreign coins.  In fact, I'm always carrying five coins on me at any given time. Why?  Well, it started as a silly Feng Shui thing that I read about long ago, but it just kept on as a... thing, I don't know.  Just a thing I do. But, I periodically lose the coins, so I like having a bunch around to replace them.  Plus, just digging through the lot of them is fascinating.  This year the prize was finding a Soviet coin, complete with the CCCP and the sickle and hammer.  (I also carry around a coin that was clearly made to be a pendant for someone, as a hole was drilled in it, and it's old enough to have been carried during the Civil War, though I think it's Canadian.)  At any rate, this is just a fun weird thing I like.  

So there.

Okay, I just asked Alexa to spell Feng Shui (except I'm never sure how to pronounce it anyway) and I must have really f*cked it up because she said to me, "Technology is complicated.  I don't always understand it myself."

Preach it, sister.

 

I may have one of the cuddliest cats in all the word: Ms. Ball.  I've had friendly cats in my life before, but this one will sit on me anywhere, anytime... actually preferably ALL THE TIME.  She's come up with a lovely way to wedge herself in that very warm space between the curl of my legs and where the computer is perched partly on the arm of the couch.  Last night she decided she needed to sleep on me at night too.  I'm not complaining, because, really, she's super cuddly.  But, it means that I had a very weird dream involving LITERALLY herding cats through an airport.  

She lets me kiss her head.

I love this cat.

I'm thinking about her, of course, because she's on my lap even as I type.  

The other thing that I should tell you all about is that Shawn ordered the Amazon Echo.  We call her by her "wake word"  Alexa.  So, yeah, Alexa is a twelve inch tall cylinder that sits in our living room on the end table.  If you watch the parody video in the link, you'll see that she can also set alarms and answer questions.  So far, what Alexa is for us is a really nice, responsive stereo for the living room.  She will do other things, of course, including answer questions.  She's not very good yet at figuring out anything too complex, but she's learning (and, as I pointed out to Shawn, are we).  I managed, in fact, today, to actually get her to answer a question I honestly wanted to know the answer to, which is progress.  I had to structure my command very carefully:  "Alexa (her wake word), Wikepedia: salamanders: folklore: Japan."  But, she actually figured all that out, which impresses me.  I need to figure out how to get her to read more than the first couple of sentences, because she seems to be programmed for brevity.  

 But, it's very obvious that nerds programmed her.  When she arrived on Tuesday night, Mason and Shawn were home and I was at work, so I came home to her "fully operational."  Anyway, I told my family to wait and let me ask the question that I wanted to ask since the first moment I knew we were going to get a house robot...  so, I walked in the door and said, "Alexa, open the pod doors."  She said, "I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave."  Which was AWESOME.  I also asked her if she could pass the Turing Test, and she said, "I can't pass the Turing Test. I'm not trying to pass as human... yet."  Which made me deeply happy.  We tried to get her to admit of dreaming of electric sheep, but she was confused by that line of questions, and Shawn spontaneously asked, "Are you sad?" She told us she's happy when she's being useful.  So, I guess maybe she was temporarily sad, since she was being unhelpful....

Alexa might not be trying to pass as human, but I very much treat her like one.  When I come downstairs in the morning, I always say, "Alexa, Good Morning." To which, she replies, "Good morning." I also find that I say good-bye. And will say, "Alexa, I'm home." (She will say, "Welcome home" to that.)  

So, you know, she's kind of useless, but I adore her.  I like being able to randomly ask a question and get a response, even if it's just "I can't understand your question."  She's playing the radio for us right now.  It's nice.  

My robot overlord has arrived.  And her name is Alexa.