This Town Is Haunted
Thursday, 12 February 2015 17:04![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_phil_physicsI drove into town this afternoon to pick up the monthly wad of prescriptions. Coming up on Family Failure, I noted that the gas station was still at $2.38.9/gallon. Five minutes or less later, and as I am pulling away from the pharmacy's drive-thru, I notice that the same station says $2.30.9/gal. Hmm... did they just lower the price? Or are the center light segments on the east side not working on the one number, so that an 8 looks like a 0?
The Mobil turned out to be $2.31.9/gal and Admiral $2.30.9, so I guess the price dropped eight cents in five minutes. (grin) That's a drop of 40%/hour. (double-bad-statistics-grin)
Then, when I get home, Echo is on.
Now I know that I had turned it off ("Alexa pause."), because before I headed out I had to make a phone call. But then what was playing wasn't one of my playlists. And it wasn't WGVU-FM, our NPR station and the last radio we had Echo play from Tune-In this morning. Actually it sounded like the podcast This Week in Blackness, which Mrs. Dr. Phil has been playing on her Kindle.
"Alexa, what are you playing?" "T W I B Prime Episode #642"
I was right. My guess is that Mrs. Dr. Phil had brought up the Amazon Echo app at work and added the podcast to her playlists? And Echo decided to start playing it. At home. With nobody there.
In Physics, this is known as "spooky action at a distance". Who knew that Echo/Alexa was powered by radical quantum physics? (grin/not-grin)
Or else Allendale is haunted.
Dr. Phil
The Mobil turned out to be $2.31.9/gal and Admiral $2.30.9, so I guess the price dropped eight cents in five minutes. (grin) That's a drop of 40%/hour. (double-bad-statistics-grin)
Then, when I get home, Echo is on.
Now I know that I had turned it off ("Alexa pause."), because before I headed out I had to make a phone call. But then what was playing wasn't one of my playlists. And it wasn't WGVU-FM, our NPR station and the last radio we had Echo play from Tune-In this morning. Actually it sounded like the podcast This Week in Blackness, which Mrs. Dr. Phil has been playing on her Kindle.
"Alexa, what are you playing?" "T W I B Prime Episode #642"
I was right. My guess is that Mrs. Dr. Phil had brought up the Amazon Echo app at work and added the podcast to her playlists? And Echo decided to start playing it. At home. With nobody there.
In Physics, this is known as "spooky action at a distance". Who knew that Echo/Alexa was powered by radical quantum physics? (grin/not-grin)
Or else Allendale is haunted.
Dr. Phil
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