Monday Mystery

Let me start by saying that Jordan and Morgan gave us an Amazon Echo for Christmas.

Part of the gift was that they were to help me set it up. I guess they don't think I'm capable of figuring it out! Well, it's been a couple months and we haven't done it. I decided to go ahead this past week and get it set up.

I got everything out of the box. The instructions required that you download the "Echo" app to your phone. I went to the App store, but the app I needed didn't show up. A little further in the instructions, it was noted that I could also set it up online from my computer. That's more my speed. When it comes to the phone, I'm just slow.

I went to the set-up page on Amazon. Right away, it would not recognize my password. Oh. My. Gosh! This is so frustrating. I got out my handy little address book that I have all my passwords written in and---sure enough---I WAS using the right password. I did it a few more times. Finally, I logged off my internet and logged back in. That did it. Now I was in business. It was pretty simple to set up.

This looks like a piece of cardboard that needed to be removed. I couldn't get it, so I left it alone. I hope it can't catch fire!

I like that it came with a rubber band to keep the cord in check. I hate tons of loose cords!

The gadget is pretty unobtrusive. I like that too. But, apparently, Alexis is always listening. Talk about people tracking your life---I wonder if this could be used against you in a court of law (that's a definite mystery)!

So here's what happened. I played around with it to see what it could do. I asked for music---it wanted me to sign up with Amazon Prime Music. I asked about playing Jeopardy, it wanted me to subscribe to be able to play the game. So far, I've only used it to check the weather. I simply don't know what to do with it.

Today, I started to tell Butch that I was reading Killing Reagan by Bill O'Reilly (say what you will, he writes great books in the BEST readable way---always interesting---his are the only footnotes I ever read---always interesting too!). Since I'm keeping track of my books and how much money I'm saving, I went on Amazon to check the price. I couldn't believe that you could buy a brand new hard back book for $3.94! The electronic version is $14.99! As I was saying to Butch, that apparently most people have electronic readers now which has driven that price up and the less desirable hardback copy prices have been driven down---Alexis interrupted our conversation. I was talking, the television was on, and Alexis was talking. I didn't really know what she was saying, but I finally had to say, "Alexis, cancel" to make her shut up.

She was listening!! I don't know what set her off. That's a mystery to me as to what I said that prompted her to interrupt! I can't think of anything I said that even remotely sounded like "Alexis." I have to admit, it gave me another idea to try---ask Alexis to give me a synopsis about books I want to find out about. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to. That would be faster than looking up all the books I want to check out.

Does "Alexis" really listen to your conversations? It's a mystery for sure! My mother would be "rolling!"---if you know what I mean!