I just got an iPhone 4s today. My old iPhone 3GS started acting up so it was time to upgrade. Of course the first thing I did with it was play with Siri. I put Siri through its paces.
The first thing I tried to do was change the voice. I personally would prefer a sexier male voice over the somewhat grating voice available right now. Siri has no idea what I am talking about when I try to do this, and I cannot find any setting to do this either. Mark in the negative column.
The next thing I try is some fun questions. If you ask it what color is the sky it comes up with sky blue and even gives you other ways to represent the color such as hexadecimal which is how you indicate colors on the web. However, it does not seem to know the colors of anything else.
Next pace is to set up reminders. This works fairly well, but it is kind of annoying how long you have to wait before confirming that Siri got the reminder correct. Then you try setting up a meeting on your calendar. You have to be very explicit when asking Siri to set this up or it will try to set up a reminder instead. The other challenge with the calendar is it seems to only work with one calendar. So if you maintain a work calendar and a personal calendar you cannot tell Siri which one to put the meeting on. Finally, if Siri gets it wrong you have to cancel and start over.
Additionally, it also has problems with math when the math contains decimals. If you say three point eight two over twenty, three dot eight two over twenty, or three point eighty two over twenty it will return the result 2/20. If you say three dot eighty two over twenty it will actually get it right.
Finally in the two hours I played with it today there were at least four Siri outages. I know Apple states that Siri is in beta, but if they are touting Siri as the reason to buy the iPhone 4s then it should be significantly more reliable than this.
Siri is also very limited in what it can do. It cannot go directly to a URL but instead must search for it and you have to click the link in Google. Similarly Siri cannot open applications on your iPhone.
Overall I give Siri a B for effort and a C- for implementation. Very unexpected and disappointing for what is expected from Apple.
After the jump I dictated this post to Siri. See how poorly Siri did in dictation. I also had to dictate this in seven parts as Siri is very limited in how long it can handle.
Now that I have had a few days to reflect on coming out to my parents I think it is time for a more in depth reflection on coming out opposed to my initial snap posts written within hours of doing it.
Before coming out I believed that my parents already suspected. From what I can tell, my mom never suspected. My dad on the other hand suspected, but denied it by telling himself that I just like being alone.
Contrary to what I believed was going to happen the conversation with my dad went much easier than with my mom. My mom was quietly emotional and we sat there for thirty minutes before the phone rang and caused us to move on with the day. Thirty mostly silent minutes. My dad, who I suspected would not take the news well on the other hand, was very quick with seemingly no emotion.
I am happy I did it, and it is somewhat of a burden off of my shoulders, but the burden will not be completely lifted until they feel comfortable talking about it. After I came out to them we really did not have much in the way of conversations and they were all what is going of next week conversations. There were never conversations around how I or they were doing or anything emotional at all.
My dad who always says “Love You” whenever we talk on the phone and especially when dropping me off at the airport did not say anything when he dropped me off today. I think they are trying to act like nothing has changed, but everything has changed. It hopefully will improve our relationship as I no longer have to lie to them all the time. I no longer have to be careful to filter everything I say. I no longer have to resent being asked do you have a girlfriend. I can tell them I went to Pride instead of saying I went to a beerfest or something.
I still want to come out to my grandparents and probably will push the issue next year. But unlike my parents I only talk tommy grandparents 3-4 times a year, so it is not as hard not telling them.
I only got the chance to come out to one of my brothers this past week, but Iam not worried about that either.
I hope with time that my parents come to terms with it, and I am trying to be patient, but it is hard.
I came out to my dad tonight. Emotionally it was a lot easier, but I think that is because I am not as close to my dad as I am my mom, and the fact that my mom was sitting there when I did it. However I also am not happy with how it went.
It became painfully obvious that my dad believes being gay is a choice. I expected the “how do you know for sure?” question. But some of the other questions made me want to scream.
The question that really irritated me was when he said “I am assuming you have done your research and you know what this means for you.”. When he said it he said it in a way that was “are you sure you want to make this choice and not choose to be straight.”. Like it is as simple as flipping a switch.
I did appreciate that he gave me the option to tell my grandparents and anyone else whenever I want.
I also came out to one of my brothers today. This was the brother who I knew would have no problem with it. I told him, he said wow about a dozen times, and that was it. We have had conversations before about gay rights, and actually just on Monday he talked about how when he has kids he does not want to raise them to be afraid of gay people. I so wanted to say during that conversation that it will be easier than he thinks.
Well have a great Thanksgiving if I do not post between now and then!
Well I came out to my mom this afternoon. It went as well as I could hope. After I told her she was silent for two to three minutes and then said “Ok, thanks for telling me.”. There were not any major questions. The only one that surprised me was “Is anything else going on? Nothing with your health or anything.”
I was so nervous I was shaking the entire time. It took me twenty minutes to get up the nerve to just go sit in the same room as her and then another ten minutes of silence and idle chit chat before I got up the nerve to say it. Even then I almost stopped halfway through saying the two words “I’m gay.”
She really wanted me to tell my dad tonight, but for a variety of reasons both mine and hers we could not do that. I think I will probably come out to him tomorrow. That one really scares me.
The other thing that I really am not happy about is that she does not want me to ever tell my grandparents. I for the most part let that slide for now but did say that it may not be feasible because when I get into a serious relationship I am either going to bring him with me to the holidays or not come home at all. She said that we would cross that bridge when we come to it. I may give her a year, but next year regardless of my relationship status I may push the issue. I have not decided yet.
Well I guess it is time to go be a nervous wreck tonight and tomorrow and do it all over again tomorrow night.
For a whole bunch of reasons beyond my control I was not able to come out to my Mom on Thursday. For even more reasons I have not been able to post since Wednesday. Regardless of all of those reasons I will definitely be coming out to my Mom either Sunday or Monday.
Also beginning the week after Thanksgiving I will be doing a short series of very geeky posts. I will be looking into what I believe the Occupy movement needs to do in order to be successful and affect any real change. I also will be diving into what both the Occupy movement and our government could learn from looking at how Open Source software gets developed. Sorry in advance to all of those who are not computer geeks and do not want to read about geeky computer stuff.
I am planning to come out to my mom tomorrow. Hopefully things will work out and we will be able to get a few minutes of privacy.
It is a big step and I am nervous. I am pretty sure it will go ok, but you never know until you actually do it. I am prepared for the standard questions you expect. When did you first know? Are you sure? Did they do something wrong to cause this?
I do not know how I will react if things do not go well. But hopefully it does not come to that.
Anyway I will let you know how it goes? Sooner rather than later if things go well. If things do not go well then I do not know when I will feel up to it.