Rants – Page 2 – Jeffrey W. Cox

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! 🙂

Why American Airlines is Bankrupt

A short while back, I flew American Airlines across the country. It was the first time I had flown them in years. Probably like 20? I fly and love Southwest, so, I wasn’t real excited to fly the “we hate our job” skies – which is the attitude I’m use to on any other airline besides Southwest. Yet, I was pleasantly surprised.

Recently, Southwest has reconfigured the interior of their planes with what they call EVOLVE. It was touted to be the best thing since sliced bread. However, it’s turned out to be like sitting on sliced bread as that is about how thick the seats are now. They also decreased the legroom. So, now, short of getting the one and only Emergency Exit Row seat that has room, I’m pretty cramped. American’s, on the other hand, were very roomy. I flew east on an older MD-80 and I was near the front (not First Class, sadly, but like row eight). I had great leg room; comfortable seat, and it was quiet (as the engines are way in the back on that plane). The employees were very friendly. I wrote a compliment to American on two of them.

Alas, I don’t think American will make it being it takes seven employees to load the baggage. Southwest does it with two. And, that’s too bad.

As for Southwest, I don’t want to bash them to hard above. They still LUV you; and I appreciate that. Just wish they would take a different course with the new interior.