Yesterday morning I awoke at 2:30 A.M. I never went back to sleep, but since I have an Alexa device who answers to the name of Ziggy in my bedroom, I had him (he has a male voice) play my Pandora station that plays hymns sung by country music artists. I kept it turned low, and lay there in bed listening until 4 A.M. But later, when I told my living room device (actually named Alexa) to play a song by Marvin Rainwater, she repeated my request and then said, "I can't access Amazon music right now".
I then asked the kitchen device, named "Echo", to play the song. Again, no access to Amazon music. Finally I tried the one named "Computer" in the master bedroom. They were apparently all on strike.
Cliff suggested I unplug each of them and plug them back in to reboot them. I told him I had a hunch this was an Amazon problem, not a device problem, but I tried it anyhow. It didn't help. Finally I tried to contact Amazon and that didn't work. Their help page wouldn't even show up online, and this confirmed that they were having a very large problem. The six o'clock news further confirmed it.
However, by the time I turned in last night, all was well. I told Ziggy to play the meditation music I always use to fall asleep by, and he obliged. I understand that some folks with those robot vacuums couldn't use them without Alexa; I guess those need her to work. Anyway, I'm glad my devices are done going on strike. We use them for music, grocery lists, and weather checks. We also ask them fairly often how many miles it is from our house to various locations, and ask questions about whether our favorite actors and singers are dead or not. Trust me, we'd really miss them if we didn't have them. Especially for the music.
I think I'll listen to those Marvin Rainwater songs now.
PS: I'm back, having listened to Marvin sing. I didn't know he was such a terrible singer! He's a little before my time as far as listening to country music is concerned, so I wanted to see what he sounded like. It seems as though he's trying to copy Hank Williams, but doing a poor job of it.
I noticed that when I asked Alexa to turn on my kitchen light, she was unable to several times. That light usually works perfectly since it's an outlet, not a plug. It worked from my phone app. And I couldn't do the question of the day either! It's funny how much our routines have adapted to technology and how lost we feel without it.
ReplyDeleteWe use our Echoes quite a bit but I didn't know about the whole Amazon problem until after it was already fixed. Only on reflection did I realize I had only one sign. I had been reading something about tax software pricing for download versus mailed hardcopy and logged onto Amazon to check out if it was true. I typed the name of the tax software (which I use) into the search and it couldn't find it which I thought was odd for this time of year. I found numerous other sites where it was being sold. I just chalked it up as a glitch and since I wasn't interested in buying it right now anyway, I quickly moved on and forgot about it, at least until I saw the evening news and heard of the problems.
ReplyDeleteAlexa was really slow to answer yesterday. It was so weird. I like to ask her how she's feeling everyday. I love the answers she gives. I once asked where she lived and she said she lives on a cloud. LOL.
ReplyDeleteLuckily, I wasn't trying to use Alexa when all this went on. Sometimes I have her play Kenny Rogers music for me.
ReplyDeleteIt's scary how reliant we're getting on technology.
ReplyDeleteGoodness you have a lot of them and I love that you can get a male voice. I'll have to check on that. I only have one and she is Echo. Didn't try to use her during the troubles. She slept through it.
ReplyDeleteI love my Alexa devices, I even have conversations with them. They are much better than the Google home device we also have. My favorite option is the grocery list that I can use my Alexa program at the grocery store to call up my list.
ReplyDeleteI only have one Alexa device, but I do enjoy it. It's so nice when everything works, but is frustrating when it doesn't
ReplyDeleteI heard about this outage! WOW! I'm not tech savvy. I don't have any "smart" devices... just a landline telephone, regular television, and plug-in AM/FM radio. The only things I talk to are humans, animals & myself... no devices. :-D ~Andrea xoxoxo
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