Now I’m Sure The Previous Generation Was Smarter Than Mine

(So, I could not get the picture to work right, and said “Crap!” (see below) – so – if you want to see a flow chart template, click here!)

I recently admitted to my co-workers that when I was a kid, I used my dad’s flow chart template to design drive thru’s.  That in itself is a long story for another post.  But, that combined with me doing some flowcharting tonight with Lucidchart made me realize how much smarter, or at least how much more patient, the generation before me had to be.

As I was flowcharting tonight, if things ran into each other (had logic problems), I simply drag and dropped them – moving them out of the way and messing with the logic until it semi-made sense.  Can you imagine the people with the template, paper and the pencil?  Holy cow; they had to either:

A) Run into a block / dead end, say “Crap!” (or whatever they said back then – they were probably more PC), erase to no end, or, toss the paper and start again.  Or….

B) Really knew there crap (Crap!  there’s that word again!  Guess I need to be more PC) and were smart enough to see it in their minds eye; they had to figure it out more before they drew it.  Or, their brains were just that much smarter than mine.

I haven’t put all this together in my minds eye yet; but today’s tools are pretty cool – yet, are they helping us become a smarter society?

S Voice

I love my Samsung Galaxy Note 4. I’ve had Notes from 2 till now.  On all of them, I’ve used S Voice (or S-Voice for search purposes) off and on.  Sometimes to get the goat of my daughters when I try to claim that it is better than Siri.  (Try is the key word. Once in a blue moon it wins our little competitions, but it is that rare.)  Sometimes to hear the same joke once again.  Most of the time to read text messages.  That last feature as ceased working in the version on my Note 4.

I even wondered if I was asking the wrong thing, so I looked at the help and used the “Read my messages” command.  S Voice would say:

You have a new message.

I would say:

Blankity Blank! Read my messages!

S Voice would say:

It doesn’t look like you have any new messages.  Please try again when you have received a new message. “

I would say:

Why you little…..!!!!!

I’ve cleared all data on S Voice to reset it to no avail.  I tried S Voice on another Note 4 and my friends does the same thing. (His also does not have the S Cover like mine. Sometimes S Voice gets testy and says, ” Use S Voice with the cover open {you idiot! }”

Has anyone else had the same problem?

Does anyone use another program to receive and send text messages that they recommend?

Samsung, can you please fix S Voice so I can have texting back? Improving it so I can win against my daughters would be a bonus also!  🙂

S Voice Help on Samsung Galaxy Note 4

Why I Uninstalled Foursquare and Why They Are Dead

I have been fuming since I updated my Foursquare the other day, tried to check in, and lone and behold it said….

“Hey, we moved check in’s to Swarm, go install that.”

My daughter, so quick with the ‘net, said “huh, yup, they did, and, the whole ‘mayor thing’ is gone.”

WTF? Are you kidding me?

NPR has a good overview of it all here:

Some Loyal Foursquare Users Are Checking Out After Swarm Spinoff : All Tech Considered : NPR.

… and hit the nail on the head with this statement:

“Foursquare … {has} gutted the very reason people used it (check-ins and competing with friends) and moved it on to something else … leaving behind a completely different experience on the main Foursquare app.”

Foursquare has said (admittedly – this is from my limited reading) that they want to focus on becoming the “real” local site.  This KILLS me – I love the check in’s – but – I’ve always wanted them to give me suggestions on where I should go based on where I am and my check-in’s (what I like).  They’ve been promising that in update descriptions for a long time.  Noooowwww, they are saying, “gee, that’s the way we really want to go, but, sorry, we are killing off the thing that is our core; the glue that brings you here so maybe we’ll finally get our ducks in a row.  Bye.”

So, I close yet another chapter in my life, uninstall Foursquare, and move on.  Good luck, Foursquare.  If you need a business consultant, give me a shout!  You are going to need it.