Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Friday, November 18, 2022

Product Review: Echo Dot (2nd Generation) - Smart speaker with Alexa - Black

 


This is one of the early generation Echo Dots. As a result, it does not look as fancy and the speakers are not quite as good as those in the newer Dots. For example, if you play music through it, it can be a bit tinny when compared to the larger Echo units. But, if you are listening to talk radio, news stations, or things like that, it sounds perfectly fine. This has all of the functionality of the other Echo devices (aside from the Echo Show), and Amazon continues to release updates that allow them to do more and more. I generally use them to set reminders, play music, or use the intercom functionality (the drop-in feature). For music, it works well. The drop-in feature can be spotty. Sometimes it works great and sometimes it can sound like the person on the other end is in a tunnel, and will sometimes not shut off unless you tell it to stop multiple times. It also has issues with understanding some commands. For example, if you ask what the temperature is outside it generally will give you what you want. But, if you ask it to tell you the five-day forecast (or whether forecast or weather for the next five days), it will often come back with the "hmm...I don't know that one" response. Then if you ask it slightly differently it will say "here is the weather for the next five days" and give you the forecast. And, it is still not great with recognizing a real person's voice versus responding to the TV, even if you train it to your own voice.

Obviously, you have to consider whether you want an electronic device constantly listening to you. You can turn the microphone off so it cannot listen all the time, and you can go into the app and delete the recorded interactions. More and more it gives you features that can aid you in getting help, which is good if you live alone or have an aging parent or parents that live alone. These are fairly easy to set up if you are at least fairly tech-savvy. You do have to download the Alexa app and use that to set the dot up, but once it is set up you do not have to do much reconfiguring. Basically, if you can set up a wireless printer you can set this up. One thing I have found is that, if it loses connection to the internet, it is much easier to just unplug it for a few seconds and plug it back in than it is to go through the app and go through that process to get it reconnected to Wi-Fi.

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