That was my Dad, and now in this next clip, is my Brother.
I ran into a problem. Little did I know before I went to sleep, there were two scheduled events only an hour apart. One was to get my wife to the Sacramento Airport, and the other was to hitch-up the trailer and take it to be repaired of a broken spring.
Both requiring huge travel time or prep time. No way! I about had a heart attack. So, how was I going to fix this?
I needed a review of upcoming events for the next day.
Before I went to sleep each day, I needed to know how many events, and what they were, for the next day.
Also, nothing gets within 3 hrs of another event. I want that flagged too.
Anyway, the problem was that I need peace of mind. I am not going to forget this experience. Due to my age, I can not afford to.
Also, I changed the time that I take my blood pressure medicine. When this problem happened, it was in the early morning. Statistically, more men die in the morning. A lot before they wake up. Well guess what. I had been taking the pill AFTER this time, about 10:00. That is the time that you are already dead. So,with urgings from Internet doctors, I changed it to before going to bed, which is usually 02:00 AM.
Going to bed this late, and not getting good sleep is a whole another topic. And it can kill you too.
So, this is where my brother Ben comes in. He will handle the one case of NO events the next day.
I am decreasing my odds of a stroke or heart attack.
Other cases, of Events, or conflicts of Events will be handled by one of the girls.
And they will trigger an Alarm. I will have to attend to it.
In either case, I will have better peace of mind. Ben will not trigger anything. If I hear him, I hear him.
Email
??from??CAPennock??
Ya, you be right. He IS too smiley. But WHAT Ben says makes me feel more at ease. And that is what we are trying to do here.
He is not going to come on very often; it seems I, or Linda, always have something happening for the The-Next-Day-Events.
And, if he does, he only comes on once at 9:00 in the evening with a report for the next day.
Well that is not true. He only comes on with "Good news" , and when there are NO events tomorrow.
Which, like I said, does not happen very often. Maybe the weekends. Ben does not say much, but when he does, its big.
But the main workhorse is the part of the program for the Present day. Now we have activity.
Secretaries start talking about an upcoming event 3 hours away.
They casually tell me about it every 15 minutes or so. They tell me what it is, and how many minutes I have left.
But at this point, its casual and informative; There are no alarms yet. Linda and I can lounge, or maybe get some cereal.
I feel we are being watched over, and somebody has got us covered.
Then one hour from the event, the secretaries trigger an alarm that repeats every minute, and does not stop.
I have to cancel the alarm. I have to do something. One of the secretaries says "Alan, do something!"
And repeats it every minute.
I have to hit a key on the keyboard, and she thanks me for acknowledging,
and that I am confirming that I know about the event. There will be no more alarms, clear up to the event.
But I will still will be casually informed many times, clear up to 15 minutes before the event.
And she assumes, if she can not find an address, that travel time is for Chico.
She gives me 15 minutes Travel Time for Chico.
At 15 minutes from the event, she also informs me that she will not talk to me anymore about this,
because she is assuming that I am on my way, and that I am not in the house anymore.
At 0 minutes, they close-out this event, and continue looking for others.
So, this is not a trivial program. And yes, Ben is silly in this.
Email
??from??CAPennock??
Becky;
That, my dear, is a very observant question.
As you guessed; With Dad's voice, I cloned it. Cloning is where you gather as many voice samples as you can, and you submit them to a Voice Cloning AI Company. I used ElevenLabs because it was free, and also nearly free at $5/mo.
After you do that, the Cloned voice that you created is yours. You can name it anything you want, in this case, "Dad". If I would have had more voice samples, then I could have paid ElevenLabs to do a "professional" voice cloning, and theoretically in principle, could not tell the difference from the real person. But I did not have the samples, although the $5 bucks upgrade was not a problem. In my case it was "just for fun".
You can even clone your own voice if you want. I am not particularly proud of mine, so what is the point.
In Ben's case, and sense we are genetically related, I decided to try something new.
I have another free program. It is called Audacity; at least I think it is still free.
With this program, you can change audio and voice characteristics.
So I took my voice, and manipulated it slightly, until I got something like Ben's.
No one has done this "relative thing", and it seems to work.
Recently, I wanted Mom's voice. And, I had some excellent samples of Dolly's voice. They are related. They are sisters.
I tried, but their voices are too different.
So, it is a neat concept, but does not always work.
As you know, Mom and Dolly are exactly the same in laughing and giggling and enthusiasm and intonation.
But, unfortunately, not the same in a "sound" quality.
Mom's voice was "too" unique. My heart says that is a good thing, making Mom very special.
OK, Becky
You have seen "Birthdays". Now "Scheduled Appointments, and Scheduled Events" look like this:
A clock in the center, which is the background, and an image or video in the upper left corner.
In the case of a Doctor or Hospital or Medical, the generic is a Nurse. But it can be a specific picture or video too.
In this case it is a doctors appointment.
That is not the correct spelling for Dr. Shing. But the "Dr." has to be there for the AI girl to put a Nurse in the corner.
My program is capable of finding addresses too. But lately I have not insisted on it.
Alan
Email
??from??CAPennock??
Becky, thanks for the picture of Mark. That is the picture that I choose to represent Mark: It is both good and current.
Every few minutes, as I am getting ready, an AI secretary lets me know how many more minutes to an event.
My Event program got down to the One Hour and 15 Min spot, from a doctors appointment. And I got this stupid thing...
Smartass AI
And!
If that wasn't bad enough, that appointment was cancelled.
To cancel I just put an "x" in the time. Instead of 11:40, I put 11x40.
That should have told the secretary that it had been cancelled.
But no. That did not stop her. She even said the appointment time as "eleven x forty". Now WHAT kind of time is that?.
You would think that it is my fault. Sloppy programing! At least in years past, it has been bad programming.
But now I am not so sure. Things look magical, and with AI I am impressed with what I can do.
