MARLO
So anyway, they got in this conversation about television and my mom was complaining about. how expensive it is to have cable, and my daughter-
STEVE
We all do that. Yes.
MARLO
Yeah. My daughter Kayla goes, well, I don’t pay for cable. My mom was like, well, how does that work? And she starts talking about streaming and the next thing you know, I’m putting the internet out at my mom and stepdad’s place.
STEVE
Wow.
MARLO
Not for computer usage, but so that she can have Netflix and Hulu! So I thought, well-
STEVE
Why don’t you just get her a Roku stick or-?
MARLO
Well, I decided on a TV that’s connected. You know, smart TV. So at the same time, I got her a little Chromebook. And she started finding out about Facebook and she loved that part of it. And my stepdad was very ill at the time. I put in a couple of Amazon Alexas and under the guise that you guys can just talk to this. And my stepdad fell in love with it immediately because he’s an old Western movies guy, loves the old music from that era of the fifties and the sixties, the Cowboys and whatever and he could just say, play Gene Autry and this thing would actually play Gene Autry. He was just like, you know-
STEVE
Now, now, now, you got me thinking. It’s like, huh. Christmas gift for my father-in-law this year.
MARLO
Yes. Well, so this gets to that. But my hidden agenda here was that they would have a way to communicate. My mom’s a little stubborn. Like I said, my stepdad was ill. He passed away a couple years ago and when I was setting this up, I set it up to their phone system as well. There was an adapter that you could get, that you could adapt a landline phone. Because she actually still has a rotary phone.The rotary phone that I grew up with, Uh, well it broke down a couple years ago. They came out and replaced it with a rotary phone.
STEVE
Nice.
MARLO
She pays a lease on this thing and they actually, they must laugh about this. $8. It’s still on her wall. It’s so great. And anyway, so I bought this device, it was like a hundred bucks to attach it to her Alexa. I get this weird phone call at seven o’clock in the morning and I’m like, I’m looking at this and I don’t answer because I think it’s a spam call then there’s a message that was left and it, and my phone transcribed it and it said, my name – Marlo. And then call 9 1 1. And I’m like, what in the world? What kind of message is this? And I start thinking about it and I’m like, did my mom fall or something? And then just at the same time, the phone rings again and I pick it up this time and it is my mother and she has fallen and-
STEVE
Okay, now you think of the life alerts? Alexa, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.
MARLO
Yes. But she doesn’t have a life alert again. She’s got Alexa. She, she’s a little stubborn this way. But I put these Alexas in her house for this reason, just in case something were to ever happen-
STEVE
You are a good son
MARLO
-and she actually used it and it worked.
So, but it gets better than this. So I talked to her, of course she’s she’s able to talk, you know, just like she would, you and I are talking right now. And then on top of it, I got off the phone with her real quick. I called 9 1 1, got the ambulance in the route. I got ahold of one of her neighbors and she lives in a rural area outside of Minot and friends on the way. And then Alexa has this drop in feature that you can have set up within your circle. So I went into my phone, I see mom’s Echo. I tap on that and just like that, I’m now talking to her again.
STEVE
Wow.
MARLO
So I didn’t have to, I didn’t have to call a phone that she had to answer. I could actually talk to her and comfort her and tell her that I have an ambulance on the way. I have her friend coming over, but there was still gonna be a, like a 15 minute gap before somebody could even get there, because again, she lives in a rural area. So I was able to visit with her, and I could just tell that in, in a minute or two that even though she was unable to move
STEVE
Soothing.
MARLO
Oh, I, I can’t imagine the fact that she was able to communicate somebody
STEVE
Lowering stress level.
MARLO
Exactly. You know, and, and then find out later on. Um, you know, and I got there just as the ambulance was getting to the hospital or whatever. She ends up, she had fractured both hips. Wow. I mean, there’s no way she’s moving. Right. She couldn’t crawl anywhere. She couldn’t get anywhere at all.
STEVE
Well, okay, so in a case like this too, because your hips are very vascular, large, flat bones, and you have some serious possibilities of bleeding
MARLO
Yes.
STEVE
So time is critical in a situation like this. So without that technology-
MARLO
Well, I just, I just wonder how long now, this was the day before Thanksgiving, so of course we’re all gonna be, as her kids gonna be checking in with her, right? but if it was any other time, you know, it could have probably been days before somebody would possibly would’ve checked in on her because, you know, so this a ability for her to just, as long as she could utter Alexa and call Marlo or call my sister, or whatever, you know, she had that ability to actually talk to somebody.
STEVE
Wow.
MARLO
I think it’s just amazing and it’s, and, and no monthly fee with this or any of this other stuff. So
STEVE
How long before it’s “Alexa, have Marlo send his drone to take me to the hospital”?
MARLO
Yeah, that’s a good question. Seriously, yeah, I, I, I’m. You know, whether or not, and, and I, I get into this privacy concern a little bit cuz we all talk about it and we laugh about, you know,
STEVE
Well there’s the other big, big brothers watching and Alexa eavesdropping.
MARLO
If I say that I love Doritos, you know, within an hour I’m gonna see a commercial for Doritos on my phone or a drone, just drop ’em off at your phone or whatever. Right. And we’ve, you and I have had this conversation and it’s true. It happens.
STEVE
They’re, well and it’s like the connectivity with the Ring doorbells that people had concerns about that was legitimate, but there’s security layers to that. Yeah. But, but you know, part of it comes down to, okay, you have an elderly parent that was in a life-threatening situation and technology mitigated that.
MARLO
Yeah, yeah. Added comfort to this whole situation.
STEVE
There’s a balance to this.
MARLO
Yeah. So I, I just, you know, if you’re thinking about getting your parents something for Christmas and they don’t have an Alexa or a Google Home appliance or any of these, Speakers. First of all, they’re gonna love you for it because they can just pull up Gene Autry or Yeah.
STEVE
Especially if they like Westerns
MARLO
Yeah. Or whatever kind of music they like.
STEVE
My mother-in-law, pulling up Hallmark.
MARLO
There you go. And you could connect these to your television too, and talk to them. And, and they do, of course. All kinds of things. They, I, I would hear, uh, the questions, they would ask it all the time if they were, you know, my, my mom and stepdad did argue a little bit and they would always use Alexa to, you know, find out which one was right. I don’t know, , I dunno how good that was. But, uh, because I think there’s always something about if he can’t prove who’s right or wrong, then the fight just kind of sizzles down, you know.
STEVE
I think they’re insurance commercials. Replay for the NFL game. Probably better that you can’t see it, you know?
MARLO
But anyway, I, I really, you know, for the cost of these things, I mean, you can get an Amazon Alexa, those little disks. You know, for $29
STEVE
Little puck things.
MARLO
Oh my goodness. Put three of those in your house. Now, do you have to have an Amazon subscription for those or not? So you have to just have an Amazon account and Google’s the same way. You have to have a Google account for that. But this is all free stuff. It’s not like you have to pay a monthly fee or anything for these. It’s just, you’d have to have that account to set it up..
STEVE
So it’s just like, I’ve got an Android, so I’ve got a Google account because of my Android. Same thing.
MARLO
And I would highly recommend the, so this is, this is the weird part of this probably, but because I set up my, my, because we never get weird.
STEVE
We’ll never get weird here.
MARLO
We never get weird.
So there’s that drop in feature, right? So I could drop in any time. So you have to make sure that you’re trusting enough of the person that’s putting maybe these devices into that person’s home or whatever, you know, or that, because I could drop in and just eavesdrop anytime I wanted to, you know, there, it’s like a baby monitor type of situation.But in this instance, I was so thankful that I had that feature. You know, my mom didn’t even know that this was a feature there. I never
STEVE
Well, she does now.
MARLO
Well, she does now. So it was, it was a pretty cool thing that I was able to use this technology to, you know, help my mom out that morning.
STEVE
And she’s doing better now. And she’s in rehab. I mean, of course road to recovery.
MARLO
Of course, of course. It’s a long haul and I’m not sure what the outcome is gonna be yet because it all depends on how well she recovers. But, but, uh, um, but I was glad, glad to have the technology there that morning.
STEVE
Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. A little personal story with your mom.
MARLO
Go, but uh, go get this stuff. Yeah. Put it in your parents’ homes. Oh my goodness. Great example of things you may not think of. Right. From a safety perspective, uh, that smart technology can provide.
MARLO
There’s a couple things that I think are really interesting for this year. Boes, what do you think of when I say Bose?
STEVE
Speakers.
MARLO
All right.
STEVE
Or headphones.
MARLO
Yeah. Or anything that produces sound, right? So Bose now has sunglasses.
STEVE
Really?
MARLO
With builtin speakers, with builtin little speakers aimed at your ears. So instead of wearing headphones, these things sync to your phone. And you have these little speakers that are both speakers playing these things, I think.
STEVE
Oh, they don’t go in your ear. Are they noise canceling?
MARLO
Mm. I would say probably not. You know, so that’s the, that’s the thing. I mean, I have, I love my noise canceling set. I mean, I just,
STEVE
When on the airplane it’s, you’re on a plane flying.
MARLO
What, you know what I love about it more than anything else. You know? So if you don’t get somebody, a set of noise canceling headphones, if you, if they travel a lot or if they have a problem hearing in crowded areas, right?
STEVE
Me.
MARLO
Because you can put the noise canceling on and then start having a conversation with somebody and it’s like they’re sitting next to you, without having, having all that crazy stuff. I actually was listening to a conversation from somebody that was three rows behind me two days ago. But it was so easy to hear them because the jet noise was gone. And the microphone still picked up on the conversation going on, so Yeah.
STEVE
You don’t, what they haven’t done yet, the entertainment system on the back of chairs is Bluetooth. That’s because you get on a plane and if it’s an older plane or newer plane, some planes are different. the plug-ins are a little bit different depending on how you connect. I was on a newer plane and they didn’t have the little TV screen. They just had you put your phone on here and that was the connection, that was the screen for the connectivity to entertainment on the plane, which I hated because my phone – I, I don’t wanna have to wear my glasses to watch a movie on a plane.
MARLO
So I have wifi lights. I still think this is a great thing to get. So, lights that are connected to wifi, you know, like the lights you have on outside of your house Or whatever. Um, they’ve really come down in price. And there’s strip lights now that are wifi connected, all this stuff.
And you’re probably asking, why do I want wifi connected lights? It’s a good question because you can just put a light bulb in and, and, but the cool thing is, is that especially this time of year, especially if you have color changing light bulbs, is that you can just go on your phone, and all of a sudden you can connect them to red, red, and green across the front of your house
STEVE
Or program them so they can sync with music
MARLO
Or whatever you wanna do, right?
STEVE
I looked at those, I saw that, and I’m like, wait a minute. , my wife never has to nag at me about putting up and taking down Christmas lights again. You just put ’em up. And they’re off. They’re on, they’re off.
MARLO
And then when you want ’em to be white again, you just turn ’em back to white or whatever.
STEVE
Yeah. You need to illuminate the yard for company coming over, or, oh, let, summer, we better do the yellow bug light color,
MARLO
And it gets even more interesting than that. So I use “if this then that”.Or if the International Space Station flies overhead, the lights on my building go crazy.
STEVE
Hopefully they can see you. I’m hopeful for that, but they never have. Hopefully you’ll be able to see your building when you’re flying there.
