Archive for the ‘humor’ Category.

Fun with voice control

It was my brother’s birthday a few days ago.  The family got together and we took him out to dinner at a restaurant nearby.  I’d just gotten a new car a few weeks back, and he hadn’t seen it yet, so I told him to hop in and I’d drive him over.

The car’s a new model and it has a bunch of cool electronics, and they’re all controllable by a touchscreen on the dash, or by voice control.  There’s a little toggle on the steering wheel, and when you hit it, it makes a tone and a voice says  “please say a command,” and then it listens for something it recognizes.  It works about as well as you’d expect from modern voice control systems, and there’s a lot of room for improvement, but it’s still pretty cool.

Anyway, when I turned it on, the radio was running.  My taste in music and his differ pretty significantly, and I decided to prank him a little.  It was dark already, and I surreptitiously hit the toggle button, while at the same time saying “Computer!” in a very clear, slightly raised voice.

*ding* “Please say a command!”

“Radio off.”

*ding* The radio turned off.

My brother looked at me and he’s all, “Woah.  It’s like on Star Trek!”

“Yeah, I know. Isn’t it cool?”

I never did tell him about the toggle switch.  He’ll find out eventually…

A hypothetical conversation

“Hi, Frank.”

“Hi, John.”

“Umm… I don’t mean to pry, but what exactly are you doing up on that ladder with that chainsaw?”

Continue reading ‘A hypothetical conversation’ »

Terminology confusion

I ran into an old friend of mine on Messenger today, who I haven’t seen in several years.  We were great friends in high school and ended up going to the same college, but then sorta drifted apart.  So we spent a while catching up and talking about how things were going in each other’s lives.

He’d always been a pretty serious computer geek, so I asked him if he knew about StackOverflow.  The part I didn’t remember, at least right away, was that he was not only into programming, but also computer security and “ethical hacking” type of stuff.  So his response kinda caught me off guard.

“Yeah, of course.  It’s a great way to gain root!”

*facepalm*  Not quite what I meant… 😛