It is Sunday and a relaxing day. Today is my one full day to hang out with dad back home. First thing this morning we hung out for a little while AJ was still asleep. We got a few hours to catch up and relax this morning.
Dad was showing AJ and me how he and some people from the church had been working on getting Ella an Internet radio system so that she can listen to a radio station that she really liked out of Syracuse. She lives in Warsaw now where there is no radio or television signals because of the mountains surrounding the village. To get things to work for her they had, to make a long story short, gotten two expensive Internet radios, had them outfitted with special tactile stickers on their buttons to make it easy-ish for Ella to find the buttons that she needs and had them set up so that one could be used and if she felt that it was not working that the other one could be swapped in.
Challenges that they faced include people bringing in other radios that are not all set up for her and, because she is blind, she may not find the right radio or know which one is supposed to work. Or if there are Internet problems there is no feedback. And even when working correctly the Internet radios can take over a minute to buffer the radio station with no feedback so it is pretty much impossible to know if the correct buttons have been pressed, if it is plugged in, if it is working, etc. Quite frustrating if you cannot look at the front LCD on it and know what is going on from there.
So dad was showing AJ and I all of this setup and how they were using the multiple units and all the effort that was going in to making this system work for Ella and once he was done showing it all to us I looked at him and then said, “Alexa, play WBER” (or whatever the call letters were for the radio station in question) and almost instantly the Echo told us that it understood the request and started right into playing the live stream. Worked perfectly, for much less money, far more easily. The look on dad’s face was priceless. I have a feeling that they will be getting her one of these now.
We all went over to the Omega Grill in Geneseo for a very late breakfast. From there AJ left to drive back home and dad and I went back to the house.
Dad and I spent the afternoon just visiting on the farm. It’s been a long time since we had time to catch up just us. There are normally the girls running all over the house needing constant attention and making conversations difficult. We had a really good time. And it was nice to have downtime too. Nowhere to be. Nothing that need my attention.
This evening dad and I went back to Geneseo and got ourselves dinner from Taco Bell.
I will be heading back to Frankfort with the Chevy Spark tomorrow.