Getting a 21st Century Assistant
So I did it. Thanksgiving Day I did it.
I had been wanting a Google Home since they had come out I think almost two years ago. I've really liked the idea of voice assistants and have tried some over the years with my Android phones.
Before getting Google Assistant on my Note IV, and Assistant is only available if you have Android 6.0 or greater, I had tried other 'assistants' that did or didn't work as promised or expected with previous phones. Most recently I had been using "Dragon Naturally Speaking" primarily with it reading notifications, text messages and caller names occasionally like when driving and would rather not try looking at my phone or my watch display.
With buying a Google Home, I had been holding off for a couple of things, first the price to come down, and that happened over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which has become Cyber Week the last couple of years. But with fifty dollars off I felt that was a great time money wise to finally get one. But I expect this lower price, seventy-nine dollars, to either stay or be brought back for the Christmas season.
The second thing was the ability for the device to be used by multiple people. I didn't think it was a good purchase if it would be another thing in our house that was something "only you can use and I won't have any idea how it works" as I've been told with other gadgets and gizmos of the kind I like to get.
It has been a few months now but you can have up to six accounts (Gmail accounts) with the G-Home, I just need two.
While I have been keeping up with this voice assistant segment, after actually ordering one I was watching in earnest learning all I could about what I was getting into and hopeful it had a chance of working as I'd hoped it would.
I found a guy on YouTube, "Tech With Brett" who apparently lives in the greater Salt Lake City, area, of Utah, that has done a great job at creating a really good assortment of 'how to' videos with the G-Home as well as other tech gadgets. He has a twenty-nine video playlist named "How to Google Home" which I highly recommend taking a look at if you are also thinking of taking the plunge this holiday season and live in the United States or Canada.
The box arrived from Google on Wednesday the 29th. Set up went expectedly quick and even with our slow by most cities speeds of "up to" 3 megabits per second, it seems to work well.
I mainly wanted a Google Home for the question and answer aspect of an assistant as we don't have a 'connected home', no connected lights, connected thermostats, etc.
I really hope Stacy will find it useful too at some point. I didn't know, but daughter Sandy and family have had one for a few months now, Stacy told me this when on her recent trip there. Stacy had said Sandy didn't like it and it wasn't "working right" but when I talked with her, Sandy said it isn't that she doesn't like it, it's just that there's is set up primarily for her husband and Sandy said she uses Amazon Music mostly so she was getting an Echo Dot for her use.
Stacy did say that granddaughter Justing uses the G-Home quite often, which I liked hearing.
I have used it every morning though, asking, "Hey Google, what's my day like?" to get the various information you can select, weather, calendar, traffic, when setting up your Home followed by several news updates that lasts about fifteen minutes which is exactly the length I like so I can listen to updated news while I'm working in the kitchen.
So, so far so good! I'm glad I got it!
But I did make up for the cost cut of the Home, by also buying a Chromecast and a Google Home-Mini. Going Google all the way it seems.
Stacy's trip
This past Thanksgiving week was the first one Stacy and I had been apart for in the last few decades. About a month or so ago, Sandy had talked with Stacy about coming to California for Thanksgiving week so Sandy and Erik could take a short trip the few days of the week before Thanksgiving. Since Erik's parents would be out of town on their trip to Asia, Stacy would be the babysitter for the grandkids. Of course, Stacy said yes! Yes, she loves me, but she loves the two granddaughters too so I took her to the airport on the eighteenth and picked her up on the twenty-fifth.
Of course, I could have gone too, but I decided I wanted to keep my vacation time hours intact for our upcoming trip next summer when I'll be taking three weeks off.
At least with today's technology, while I wasn't there I was able to have Facetime video calls, numerous video clips and photos sent to me, so it was still nice for me also.
Sandy and Erik had a nice four day trip to Vegas, Stacy was the kid wrangler and they all had a nice Thanksgiving dinner.
On "Black Friday" no shopping was done this year by them but they did all go see a matinee performance of the Nutcracker Suite and that night Sandy took Stacy with a few of Sandy's friends for an evening of Kariokie.
When Stacy got back home, she did need a few days to recover from the go, go, go, of three and five year old girls but she'd had a great time!
Til next time, Tad
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