A NEW SMART TOY: The Amazon Fire TV Stick

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. Should you go to church? Tomorrow I will look into the matter of how the Supreme Court has caused some serious COVID-19 clusters. Hawaii itself has had two incidents during the past few weeks.

The Major League Baseball season started on Thursday, and only one series (Baltimore-Boston) was cancelled because of COVID-19. In my posting that day, I mentioned that in the NCCA Women's Basketball Final Four oddsmakers gave Arizona a 4.76% chance of winning the championship. Well, they beat top-rated Connecticut, and now play Stanford, who got lucky at the end to edge South Carolina, tomorrow at 6PM EDT (noon Hawaii time) on ESPN from the Alamodome, San Antonio. This has to the first ever PAC-12 combination playing each other in the Big Dance final. Today, Houston vs Baylor and Gonzaga vs UCLA, who were given a 3.85% chance of winning it all. The men's finals will be played on Monday Night at 9PM EDT (3PM Hawaii) on CBS from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

In November of last year I wrote about smart speakers, then the next day on smarter displays. Then a couple of months ago I posted...ALEXA IS WONDERFUL. She is the voice of my $60 4th generation Echo Dot, and comes with a clock. 15 Craigside also gave me one with no clock, and this one goes by the name Echo. They're equivalent, and not. Not, because Alexa comes linked to Amazon Primes radio stations and music, while Echo does only i-Heart radio, which is embarrassingly limited. While taking a bath I can ask Alexa to play music from 1962, and she does. Echo, the other smart speaker, cannot.

So, well, anyway, I just purchased an Amazon Fire TV Stick. This is a portable streaming device that more directly accesses stations like Netflix. It costs around $40, except can go down to $20 on days like Black Friday. There is a slightly more expensive 4K version for 4K resolution for $10 more. There is also a Cube at $120 for faster Ethernet and more reliable internet access.

The system comes in two parts:

Plug in the fancy USB flash drive into one of your TV's (or receiver's) video input. This makes your TV smart.
There is a remote control with a built-in microphone for Alexa support. Thus, you can control your doorbell, lights, thermostat, etc., just like an Echo speaker.
Don't get confused here, for I have two Echo speakers, one responds to Alexa, and the other to the name Echo.

Setting the Fire TV stick is a three step process:

Plug the USB drive--this is the fire stick--into one of your HDMI inputs. Note that you need to connect this drive to a wall electrical outlet with a supplied attachment.
Using the remote control, enter the Wi-Fi password to log into your Amazon account. Add other streaming channels like Netflix.
Turn on your TV, using your TV remote to find the correct HDMI channel, or to a receiver at any HDMI input.
After installing batteries into the Fire Stick remote, click on any button.
Follow TV screen instructions to finish the pairing.

That sounds easy, but, oh boy, was this a challenge for me. I did it, but it was with considerable difficulty. If I were you, I'd get someone more knowledgeable to do this for you.

There is one problem. When you talk to your TV with the Fire Stick remote controller, the other Echo Alexa (left) also connects. The Fire Stick hates that and says you can't link to both. I haven't figured out a better to way to handle this cross-talk without turning off the Alexa smart speaker, also known as an Echo. This is a small joke.

In any case, what I can do with Alexa in the bathroom I now can also do in the bedroom, plus watch Netlix, Prime, and other video channels. While the apartment is getting smarter, I'm more and more reaching a state of bewilderment.

Alexa of course comes from a variety of Amazon devices. Here is a video of one in your future car:

Oh, be aware that if you have Alexa in your home, when you play this, you could well trigger her response, as you might have already experience from an Alexa TV commercial.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

Search This Blog