Portable jumper, Dogs in pursuit, on the Dot

So Cindy told me during the day that she couldn’t get the tractor started.  It sounded like she cranked it to the point where the battery was too weak to turn the motor.  When I got home I figured I had to drive the Tacoma around back to jump start the tractor which is a pain in the ass.  I then realized I had a much easier option.  I bought a portable power center for race timing.  It is battery powered but has an inverter in it that allows it to provide AC power.  It also can charge USB devices, has a light, AND has integrated jumper cables.  I pulled it out of the closet and carried it to the shed where the tractor was housed.  The motor fired right up and Cindy was off and mowing.  When I sell my race equipment I think I will probably keep the power center, it’s a good insurance policy.

So I took my Ninebot out on the road and again ventured on the far side of Immokalee Road where the streets are very sparsely populated.  I wound up on a long limestone road.  The rough surface added for some additional challenge.  However the biggest challenge was when I drove by a large house that had two VERY large, unrestrained dogs in the front yard.  As soon as they saw me they started charging and barking like mad.  I remained calm and accelerated the wheel without looking back, even though I could hear them in close pursuit.  Luckily they gave up pretty quickly.  They may have been totally fine if I would have stopped but I didn’t really want to find out.  Even if you live in a mostly deserted road, having dogs of that size loose is pretty irresponsible.  You can see them briefly in the video after I put some distance between them and me.

Yesterday we got the Amazon Echo Dot that we ordered close to a month ago.  The Dot is the much smaller cousin of the Amazon Echo.  The amazing thing is it has almost all of the functionality of the Echo at less than third of the price.  The biggest difference is the Dot does not have a high quality integrated speaker like the Echo does.  The small integrated speaker has much more basic sound quality but is fine.  It has a headphone jack that you can use to connect it to a higher quality speaker as well as the ability to pair to a bluetooth speaker.

To be honest the only other difference I noticed was that to change the volume by hand you use two buttons on top of the unit instead of the slick integrated volume ring the Echo has.  Other than those two things, it seems to have all of the abilities of the Echo in a hockey puck sized form factor.  You do not have to have an Echo first to use a Dot, it will stand alone as it’s own smart home hub.

Hooking it up took all of 5 minutes.  The Dot and the Echo actually are aware of each other and will defer to whichever device hears you better so if I issue a command in the bedroom only the Dot will respond and not the Echo, which is in the main living space.  Cindy and I liked having the Dot available to serve our needs in the bedroom without having to scream out to the great room.  We like it enough that I may get one more to put in the office, the other space in the house where we spend most of our time.

This will be my first sort of normal weekend in awhile.  The weather should be AWESOME as our first real cool front is supposed to blow through, knocking our night time lows into the low 60’s.  Sure I have work to get done but  I hope to have relaxing and fun much more heavily mixed into the equation.