More Jobs for Alexa

Alexa is pretty cool.   If you have one (or more than one) then you might feel the same.   My children love Alexa and have her do more and more things it would seem every day.   They figure out things to ask her and she seems to like them a lot.    Alexa also does things for the adults too, thanks to some additions my husband.

Alexa manages our shopping list via ITTT (If This Then That).   That was the first thing my husband added beyond the general list of things Alexa can do on her own.   There is music and calling people and dropping in on the other areas of the house .  We now have five Amazon Echo products dispersed around the house in key places doing specific things.  Alexa is our alarm and sets a timer for the children to swish for a minute or for cooking or to let the children know they have ten minutes to finish getting ready for school.

Next my husband wanted to give Alexa control over some of the lights and the television in the basement.   Initially he did this for our Christmas tree and lights, but once the holidays were over he repurposed the smart plugs for all the lighting in the main area of the basement.   We can turn on specific lights or turn on the television and all of the lights with one command.

But the latest and possibly the feature that’s made my husband the most happy is Alexa now can play music on our in-house speakers.  When we built our house we selected areas we wanted to have speakers to play music both inside and outside the house.   My husband got good speakers and selected a product that would let us control multiple music sources from wall consoles.

But the speakers have fallen into disuse because it is so much easier to just ask Alexa to do something for you.   Recently he figured out he could integrate with the Niles system in our cabinet that was gathering electronic dust so that we could say, “Alexa, play Greyson’s playlist on the speakers”.    This starts my son’s playlist (that he’s built by telling Alexa what songs to add) from Amazon Prime Music.   And it plays the music all over the house.   And it sounds great.

My mother brought this cartoon to me the other week.   At the rate we’re going, adding functionality and appendages to Alexa, I think this could possibly us in the future:

The Big Boy Update:  I bribed my son today.   He came home from school and had to go to tumbling with his neighbor friends almost immediately.   He was resolutely not going.   He needed calories.   Nothing was working.   That is until I told him I’d make him some S’mores as a snack.   He got melted marshmallow all over his hands but he left for tumbling happy.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter hop jumps all the time now.   Remember the door frames she climbed seemingly all day long?   She’s move on.   Now she gets on something bouncy, like the bed or the ottoman, squats and then jumps up.   She claps her hands as fast as she can on every jump, seeing how much, “air time” she can get.   My father got the ottoman from an auction years ago and it’s likely from the 1990’s or earlier.   It’s a sturdy ottoman but it’s showing some wear and as such we’ve suspended all jumping, tumbling and parkour on it for now.   I went shopping this week and got a new ottoman that will be delivered next week.   When I informed my daughter I was getting, “a jumping ottoman” she cried out, “YAY!”