More Google Voice Transcriptions
@ Sept. 17, 2011, 1:09 a.m.
Filed under: Personal Comedy
The transcripts are getting better but still Google Voice drops words and gets confused. None of these are actually right but they are all real and made me laugh.
"What is your phone always that of mobile."
"Hi it's me and act like that. But you call me back bye."
"Hey it's me hate you. Bye."
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Adventures in Baking @ Sept. 14, 2011, 1:41 a.m.
Filed under: Personal
It's no secret that I like food. I fear sitting down and figuring out how much money I spend in a year on eating out! A big part of eating out is that I never really learned or took the time to really try to bake or cook. Sure, I'd sometimes make cookies from a tube around Christmas or help someone else mix stuff but I never would try it myself. Things like 'a dash of' or 'a pinch of' always frustrated me when reading recipes. I'm an engineer! I want to understand what that means!
Susannah Wesley, a really good friend of mine who not that long ago reconnected with me, recently decided it was time for me to start baking/cooking and started to send me recipes. My thought was that I'd try them out someday but didn't really know when that day would come. The thing is she gets what she wants and she wanted me to bake/cook ... in about a week I was in the kitchen happily making food!
The first thing we made was a fudge coffee pie. Susannah spent the entire time with me coaching me on how to make it. It's a good thing too because, being the first thing I ever really baked, I'm positive it would not have come together! The only issue that I encountered was a brief period of thinking my stove was trying to kill me. It's a gas stove and my emergency alarm went off for a few seconds warning of a gas leak. I really didn't want my obituary to say I was bested by an appliance!
But that isn't where we stopped! Next up was a quiche! Susannah told me what I should go buy and I went out to pick up some more ingredients. It didn't take long and I was back in the kitchen making something I'd be eating happily for days! I at first assumed that the result was not healthy at all, but she explained to me that we used ingredients that actually make it less bad for you.
After a few days it was time to start baking again. This time it was using mine and her favorite fruit: Strawberries. She told me how to make the pie in a similar fashion that she grew up having in Florida. Notice the strawberries pointing up! This one didn't take as long as the previous two but was just as tasty. I almost was able to sneak away with taking a piece but I got caught...
Today Susannah told me I should make some food for dinner and I brought up stir fry. I ran up to Whole Foods and picked up a bunch of veggies and cooking ingredients to give it a go. I wasn't totally sure what I needed but I gave it my best shot. While not the best thing I've made it still was good (and a lot of veggies).
Next up I think I'll be trying to make Susannah's father's famous chilli (though it might be to advanced for me at this point). So far I've had a blast learning, baking, cooking and talking with Susannah! I also enjoy the whole eating part.
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Today I Learned @ Sept. 13, 2011, 11:32 p.m.
Filed under: Personal
I also need to update my blog more often.
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The Sad State of American Brick and Mortar @ June 13, 2011, 7:25 p.m.
Filed under: Personal Tech Frustration
Over the last year I've been keeping a close eye on Android tablets. It hasn't been until this latest round of releases that I really got interested in making a purchase. It took Monk pointing me at the Asus eee Transformer to finally make a decision. After using Google to see if anyone in the area had stock and finding that no one had any listed I decided to wait for a little bit. After a short bit I was told that one of the local HH Greg's was getting a shipment in on a Monday.
"Great!", I thought, "I can run to the store this coming Monday and buy one!". But then something hit me, I should probably call and make sure that they will have a unit available. I gave the store a ring and to my surprise I was told they had two units in stock right then. One unit was the floor model, the other was a unopened unit. I rushed to my car and got over to the store as fast as I could during my lunch break. I went through the whole purchase process and was ready to get my tablet ... and that is where the disappointment began.
The manager couldn't find a new unit. He said that a shipment was coming Monday if I could wait they would give me a call when it came in. I figured that wasn't a bad wait. I had already paid for it and it was better than calling every hour Monday to try to get one of the units before other geeks did. The guy who did the sale was very apologetic about the mix up saying that he really should have checked the back first. I understood how it happened, but it was still frustrating! The guy I spoke to on the phone said there were two and did not physically check. The guy who then helped me when I walked in talked to the first guy, was told there were two and took him at his word. In any case, that was Friday and I spent the weekend looking forward to getting my new tablet Monday.
Monday came and by noon I was getting antsy. I decided to give the store a call and check up. A guy picked up and said he would look up the purchase. I'm not sure if he thought he put me on hold or not but I then heard him say something similar to the following to another employee some distance away: "Hey! I don't know how to do this. What am I supposed to hit?" I kind of chuckled a bit at that being that one of HH Gregg's selling points as a company is that they have 'the best trained associates in the business'. He then told me the truck didn't come in yet and try again later. I thought "OK, I jumped the gun. I'll wait for their call."
By 8pm I was getting antsy again. The store closes at 9pm and here I was without the tablet I purchased. I decided to give a second call. This time a young lady said that the tablet did not show up on the truck. They were expecting the tablets but they did not come. She offered to transfer me to the manager but I instead asked when the next shipment was to arrive. She said that it would be Thursday. I decided to wait till then.
Thursday came and while I was at work I decided to give a call to HH Gregg. Surely they got the unit that I purchased in store almost a week prior in by now! I gave the store a call and was told it still didn't show up. It was time for me to call the main corporate customer service line.
I spoke with a lady who did truly try to help resolve the problem. She looked in the warehouses in the area and other stores and found none in stock. It also didn't help that she was having 'computer issues' which didn't let her see all of the information. At the end of the call the best she was able to say was that by Monday the store should have some units since the past two shipments none came.
It's Monday! At noon I gave a call to the local store and was given the same response I'd been accustomed to: 'Sorry, it didn't come in on this shipment'. I called up the main customer service line of HH Gregg again. After about 5 minutes on hold a friendly guy did his best to help. He also searched warehouses and nearby stores to see if shipment had come through. He was able to find one unit but there was two issues: First, the unit was an open box item. Second, the unit was roughly 30 minutes away. As I thought about it the guy said he would give me till Wednesday to decide if I wanted that unit or if I wanted to wait for a sealed unit. I really do appreciate what he did to help but while sitting at my desk I started to think about it.
"Right now, the best they can do is offer me an open box tablet at full price after I make a 30 minute drive to pick it up myself. That is like buying an openbox item online but then deciding to drive to a UPS depot to pick up a shipment. Heck, I could have gotten the unit already if I would have ordered it online!"
Monday evening I started to look online to see if any online or local stores had any tablets in stock. If I could find one nearby I would go get it ASAP and tell HH Gregg to refund my money. Google Shopper told me that 2 stores locally had stock! Excellent! The first was Toys R Us so I decided to give them a call to confirm.
I went through the silly automated system to get to a person so they could answer my question. I told the lady who picked up I wanted to check to see if they had a tablet in stock. She asked me to hold and I waited for about a minute and a half to two minutes. I was then transfered to guy who asked why I was calling. I explained that I wanted to check to see if they had a tablet in stock. He asked me to hold and I waited another minute and a half to two minutes. A different lady picked up and the same thing happened again. And then it happened one last time where the lady said she was trying to get 'electronics' to pick up. This time when she transfered me I made it to electronics. Mind you this was roughly 6-8 minutes into a call to check if they had one item in stock. The guy in electronics listened and said he didn't think they had it in stock but would go check. I spent three minutes or so on hold before I was accidentally hung up on. At this point I decided to not call back as I didn't want to give them my money. What if the product was defective? If they could not figure out how to use phones how can they handle a return? I decided to try the other store which Google shopper said had the product: Walmart.
I called up the Walmart which Google said had stock and was greeted right away by a friendly lady. I told her why I was calling and she transfered me to electronics. Which rang about 25 times and then transfered me back to her. I told her again why I was calling and she transfered me back to electronics where it rang another 25 times before transferring back. This time when the lady picked up again she said (with some frustration) please hold. I then spent 3 minutes with nothing but dead air. I hung up and called back and told her I had just called and we were disconnected. She seemed frustrated (not at me) and transfered me again to electronics. This time someone picked up and they said that they don't carry such a product.
At this point I gave up. I figure that any American brick and mortar shop will give me the same terrible service. In all honesty none of them are worthy of the sale. I figure I'll think a little bit more on the open box item and then decide as to if I will get a refund and order from an online dealer and know that I'll get a sealed product or go ahead and take the gamble from the retail store. Oh, and if you are traveling from another country in to the US it may be a safer bet to wait till you get home to make electronics purchases ... it would be even more frustrating to not only have to wait for the product you paid for in store but then need to pay international shipping!
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Google Voice Is Funny @ April 10, 2011, 9:28 p.m.
Filed under: Personal Comedy
Google Voice really tries to transcribe stuff, and it's so close! Here is some recent voice mail messages it had some trouble with. The first one is Jess from the vet:
Hi. This is Jeff calling from Channel care. Hope you're doing well, just calling to confirm in the week coming in for her Diddle cleaning tomorrow if you could just have her here between 730 and 9 for drop off and we'll meter fact that for tonight. Take up for food, about 830 waters okay to have though, that's fine. Throughout the night. And like I will see early in the morning. It's ***-****. If you've got any questions or need to reschedule, bye bye.
Here is another one, from my Mom
Phone here. It's it's your mom just want to tell you we got home the **** It's 7:45. And it supports about Florida 3 in the morning, hey time, so we're very tired. So I just want to tell you we got home and we'll get it So I look forward to sharing all my kitchen you some time. I'll let you know we are home okay. Talk to you later in all while bye bye, and.
digg it
seed it
del.icio.us
ma.gnolia
Comments: 0
Filed under: Personal Comedy
The transcripts are getting better but still Google Voice drops words and gets confused. None of these are actually right but they are all real and made me laugh.
"What is your phone always that of mobile."
"Hi it's me and act like that. But you call me back bye."
"Hey it's me hate you. Bye."
digg it
seed it
del.icio.us
ma.gnolia
Comments: 0
Adventures in Baking @ Sept. 14, 2011, 1:41 a.m.
Filed under: Personal
It's no secret that I like food. I fear sitting down and figuring out how much money I spend in a year on eating out! A big part of eating out is that I never really learned or took the time to really try to bake or cook. Sure, I'd sometimes make cookies from a tube around Christmas or help someone else mix stuff but I never would try it myself. Things like 'a dash of' or 'a pinch of' always frustrated me when reading recipes. I'm an engineer! I want to understand what that means!
Susannah Wesley, a really good friend of mine who not that long ago reconnected with me, recently decided it was time for me to start baking/cooking and started to send me recipes. My thought was that I'd try them out someday but didn't really know when that day would come. The thing is she gets what she wants and she wanted me to bake/cook ... in about a week I was in the kitchen happily making food!
The first thing we made was a fudge coffee pie. Susannah spent the entire time with me coaching me on how to make it. It's a good thing too because, being the first thing I ever really baked, I'm positive it would not have come together! The only issue that I encountered was a brief period of thinking my stove was trying to kill me. It's a gas stove and my emergency alarm went off for a few seconds warning of a gas leak. I really didn't want my obituary to say I was bested by an appliance!
But that isn't where we stopped! Next up was a quiche! Susannah told me what I should go buy and I went out to pick up some more ingredients. It didn't take long and I was back in the kitchen making something I'd be eating happily for days! I at first assumed that the result was not healthy at all, but she explained to me that we used ingredients that actually make it less bad for you.
After a few days it was time to start baking again. This time it was using mine and her favorite fruit: Strawberries. She told me how to make the pie in a similar fashion that she grew up having in Florida. Notice the strawberries pointing up! This one didn't take as long as the previous two but was just as tasty. I almost was able to sneak away with taking a piece but I got caught...
Today Susannah told me I should make some food for dinner and I brought up stir fry. I ran up to Whole Foods and picked up a bunch of veggies and cooking ingredients to give it a go. I wasn't totally sure what I needed but I gave it my best shot. While not the best thing I've made it still was good (and a lot of veggies).
Next up I think I'll be trying to make Susannah's father's famous chilli (though it might be to advanced for me at this point). So far I've had a blast learning, baking, cooking and talking with Susannah! I also enjoy the whole eating part.
digg it
seed it
del.icio.us
ma.gnolia
Comments: 0
Today I Learned @ Sept. 13, 2011, 11:32 p.m.
Filed under: Personal
I also need to update my blog more often.
digg it
seed it
del.icio.us
ma.gnolia
Comments: 0
The Sad State of American Brick and Mortar @ June 13, 2011, 7:25 p.m.
Filed under: Personal Tech Frustration
Over the last year I've been keeping a close eye on Android tablets. It hasn't been until this latest round of releases that I really got interested in making a purchase. It took Monk pointing me at the Asus eee Transformer to finally make a decision. After using Google to see if anyone in the area had stock and finding that no one had any listed I decided to wait for a little bit. After a short bit I was told that one of the local HH Greg's was getting a shipment in on a Monday.
"Great!", I thought, "I can run to the store this coming Monday and buy one!". But then something hit me, I should probably call and make sure that they will have a unit available. I gave the store a ring and to my surprise I was told they had two units in stock right then. One unit was the floor model, the other was a unopened unit. I rushed to my car and got over to the store as fast as I could during my lunch break. I went through the whole purchase process and was ready to get my tablet ... and that is where the disappointment began.
The manager couldn't find a new unit. He said that a shipment was coming Monday if I could wait they would give me a call when it came in. I figured that wasn't a bad wait. I had already paid for it and it was better than calling every hour Monday to try to get one of the units before other geeks did. The guy who did the sale was very apologetic about the mix up saying that he really should have checked the back first. I understood how it happened, but it was still frustrating! The guy I spoke to on the phone said there were two and did not physically check. The guy who then helped me when I walked in talked to the first guy, was told there were two and took him at his word. In any case, that was Friday and I spent the weekend looking forward to getting my new tablet Monday.
Monday came and by noon I was getting antsy. I decided to give the store a call and check up. A guy picked up and said he would look up the purchase. I'm not sure if he thought he put me on hold or not but I then heard him say something similar to the following to another employee some distance away: "Hey! I don't know how to do this. What am I supposed to hit?" I kind of chuckled a bit at that being that one of HH Gregg's selling points as a company is that they have 'the best trained associates in the business'. He then told me the truck didn't come in yet and try again later. I thought "OK, I jumped the gun. I'll wait for their call."
By 8pm I was getting antsy again. The store closes at 9pm and here I was without the tablet I purchased. I decided to give a second call. This time a young lady said that the tablet did not show up on the truck. They were expecting the tablets but they did not come. She offered to transfer me to the manager but I instead asked when the next shipment was to arrive. She said that it would be Thursday. I decided to wait till then.
Thursday came and while I was at work I decided to give a call to HH Gregg. Surely they got the unit that I purchased in store almost a week prior in by now! I gave the store a call and was told it still didn't show up. It was time for me to call the main corporate customer service line.
I spoke with a lady who did truly try to help resolve the problem. She looked in the warehouses in the area and other stores and found none in stock. It also didn't help that she was having 'computer issues' which didn't let her see all of the information. At the end of the call the best she was able to say was that by Monday the store should have some units since the past two shipments none came.
It's Monday! At noon I gave a call to the local store and was given the same response I'd been accustomed to: 'Sorry, it didn't come in on this shipment'. I called up the main customer service line of HH Gregg again. After about 5 minutes on hold a friendly guy did his best to help. He also searched warehouses and nearby stores to see if shipment had come through. He was able to find one unit but there was two issues: First, the unit was an open box item. Second, the unit was roughly 30 minutes away. As I thought about it the guy said he would give me till Wednesday to decide if I wanted that unit or if I wanted to wait for a sealed unit. I really do appreciate what he did to help but while sitting at my desk I started to think about it.
"Right now, the best they can do is offer me an open box tablet at full price after I make a 30 minute drive to pick it up myself. That is like buying an openbox item online but then deciding to drive to a UPS depot to pick up a shipment. Heck, I could have gotten the unit already if I would have ordered it online!"
Monday evening I started to look online to see if any online or local stores had any tablets in stock. If I could find one nearby I would go get it ASAP and tell HH Gregg to refund my money. Google Shopper told me that 2 stores locally had stock! Excellent! The first was Toys R Us so I decided to give them a call to confirm.
I went through the silly automated system to get to a person so they could answer my question. I told the lady who picked up I wanted to check to see if they had a tablet in stock. She asked me to hold and I waited for about a minute and a half to two minutes. I was then transfered to guy who asked why I was calling. I explained that I wanted to check to see if they had a tablet in stock. He asked me to hold and I waited another minute and a half to two minutes. A different lady picked up and the same thing happened again. And then it happened one last time where the lady said she was trying to get 'electronics' to pick up. This time when she transfered me I made it to electronics. Mind you this was roughly 6-8 minutes into a call to check if they had one item in stock. The guy in electronics listened and said he didn't think they had it in stock but would go check. I spent three minutes or so on hold before I was accidentally hung up on. At this point I decided to not call back as I didn't want to give them my money. What if the product was defective? If they could not figure out how to use phones how can they handle a return? I decided to try the other store which Google shopper said had the product: Walmart.
I called up the Walmart which Google said had stock and was greeted right away by a friendly lady. I told her why I was calling and she transfered me to electronics. Which rang about 25 times and then transfered me back to her. I told her again why I was calling and she transfered me back to electronics where it rang another 25 times before transferring back. This time when the lady picked up again she said (with some frustration) please hold. I then spent 3 minutes with nothing but dead air. I hung up and called back and told her I had just called and we were disconnected. She seemed frustrated (not at me) and transfered me again to electronics. This time someone picked up and they said that they don't carry such a product.
At this point I gave up. I figure that any American brick and mortar shop will give me the same terrible service. In all honesty none of them are worthy of the sale. I figure I'll think a little bit more on the open box item and then decide as to if I will get a refund and order from an online dealer and know that I'll get a sealed product or go ahead and take the gamble from the retail store. Oh, and if you are traveling from another country in to the US it may be a safer bet to wait till you get home to make electronics purchases ... it would be even more frustrating to not only have to wait for the product you paid for in store but then need to pay international shipping!
digg it
seed it
del.icio.us
ma.gnolia
Comments: 0
Google Voice Is Funny @ April 10, 2011, 9:28 p.m.
Filed under: Personal Comedy
Google Voice really tries to transcribe stuff, and it's so close! Here is some recent voice mail messages it had some trouble with. The first one is Jess from the vet:
Hi. This is Jeff calling from Channel care. Hope you're doing well, just calling to confirm in the week coming in for her Diddle cleaning tomorrow if you could just have her here between 730 and 9 for drop off and we'll meter fact that for tonight. Take up for food, about 830 waters okay to have though, that's fine. Throughout the night. And like I will see early in the morning. It's ***-****. If you've got any questions or need to reschedule, bye bye.
Here is another one, from my Mom
Phone here. It's it's your mom just want to tell you we got home the **** It's 7:45. And it supports about Florida 3 in the morning, hey time, so we're very tired. So I just want to tell you we got home and we'll get it So I look forward to sharing all my kitchen you some time. I'll let you know we are home okay. Talk to you later in all while bye bye, and.
digg it
seed it
del.icio.us
ma.gnolia
Comments: 0
