Reliable, computerized Voice Recognition technology has been available since the 1980’s, with vast strides in multilingual and dialectical capabilities becoming mainstream in the mid-1990’s. Leave it to Google’s cutting-edge software development team to re-invent the wheel — as a box.
I could make a regular series of “Weird Shit I’ve Heard Tonight.” But only because this night isn’t any different than any other night … well, except those nights I stay home playing the Xbox 360… Which I do a lot of. By choice.
Tonight … ?
“Computers are smarter than me, so if I use them, I can learn something,” she said.
“A computer is a tool,” I said as I pulled a screwdriver from my coat pocket. “It’s only as smart as the shit people put in it. Can you learn anything from this?”
“But I already know how to screw,” she said, looking at the screwdriver I was taking back from her hand.
*cough*
Believe me, I’ll carry a wrench in my coat pocket from now on…
I don’t care that it’s 3AM. I don’t care that you are “half-here”. Just get it done!
Well, it didn’t go like that, but it was pretty close. I’ve had to rely on Mark for last minute shit for what, 4 or 5 years now? Have I ever gotten shit on for it? Well one time I saw a semi-vague, yet polite, blog post about it, but otherwise, NO.
What’s my point. Let me see. This is my point.
Mark has saved my ass a number of times and there is no way to express gratitude, saving cash/check/credit card, from 2500 miles away. So for this I say: FUCK YOU! Your the best! And I am not GAY!
Fucker
Over the last year, I’ve made quite a bit of new business working on Laptops, thanks in no small part to Les Jones blogging about it. It’s easy, really, and most people just can’t be bothered fixing Laptop hardware problems.
But something’s been really irking me about it.
The availability of parts is putting a real kink in the works. Every part I try and order lately is actually out of stock, despite the vendors saying they have upwards of twenty-five. I’ll make an order, only to be replied, some four to five days later, that they’re out of stock. Thanks, asshats!
I had one laptop for a month waiting on a motherboard. I returned it, busted, last week to Cumberland Gap.
I’ve had one for two weeks now waiting on a cooling fan that never seems to show up.
These vendors are really pissing me off …
And who gets left trying to play clean up?
Yours truly…
It’s no big secret — err, well, maybe it is — that I’ve been doing IT work since 1986. Not your average IT guy, mind you, but the type who gets a Monday morning call, gets on a plane, and goes and fixes something at a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Malaysia, then gets back in time to have a beer with the Pirate Chicks™ on Wednesday night.
In and out, real fast, get paid. That’s the way I like it.
No, I didn’t mean like that, although, I have had my days…
Last year, I hooked up with the owner of a business of the Adult variety. She marketed my skills pretty well (no, seriously, not like that!), and I ended up working on a few websites and servers which I probably never would have had they not been so professional. I mean, these are business people, first and foremost, and if you can keep your head around nudity and porn and do your job, then you’re going to be highly regarded.
And so it was today that I ended up working on two servers for one such customer, and learning a hosting control panel that I’d never seen before, all the while brushing up on the foreign language it was written in.
A good day. A busy day. And paid in full for my services already, which is almost unheard of these days.
Today I had time to sit down and catch up on what used to be my regular blog reads. One of them pointed me towards a “new” blogger, Gina at Life’s Short, where I found something that had me laughing my ass off for a solid half hour.
I expect great things from this one. 😉
