We are constantly being told that big tech can hear what we are talking about through our smart phone, even if they are turned off. They can even see us through the camera. I have mostly poo-poo’d all that.

But how many times have we been talking about something or a product, then it will pop up on our FB feed or in an email. It’s freaky, but I have been laying it off to being pure coincidence.

We dropped Satellite TV, Direct TV to be specific a few months ago in favor streaming. In which I’ve been very pleased with, save the learning curve of just figuring it all out.

Now don’t become leery with me getting into the method to the madness to accomplish all this. We had Apple TV boxes hooked up to the TV back when we had Direct TV to do streaming and to easily look at stuff on our iPhones and iPads through the television sets.

But for some reason, oh yes, it was our sons recommendation that Amazon’s Fire Cube would be much better for our purposes, so out with Apple TV and in with the Fire Cubes.

For those that don’t know, you can talk to the lady in the little cube and her name is Alexa. Many of us are familiar with Hey Google or Siri and Alexa. It’s as seamless as saying “Alexa” and then tell her what we want to watch or all kinds of different commands. Alexa can be your friend.

It’s no secret that I watch TV throughout the night, therefore my wife, who is never going to watch TV in bed, suggested I sleep in the other room which is across the hallway. It’s not that the flame is out of our marriage or anything like that but for most of my life I’ve had very poor sleeping habits. Okay enough of this.

Now here’s that freaky thing I’ve detected. When I am laying in bed watching TV, mostly political shows and true crime cop / detective stuff that I record on the DVR, so when I go off to sleep and wake up an hour or two later I will find the DVR stalls out where I drifted off to sleep. Within minutes of where I was last conscious. So I rewind slightly and takeoff again. It’s all very convenient, but now I have to figure out if my bed companion, Alexa, is sensing that I’ve drifted off and her wanting to please me, stalls out the TV.

But what I did tonight was I tried to fool her, and pretended that I was closing my eyes and making that nice little purring sound to see if the TV would pause and go into sleep mode. It kept playing. It was driving me a bit daffy because she knew I was faking it, I guess. After doing that a couple of times I actually fell off into deep slumber. Low in behold, I woke up a little later to my TV being paused and dimmed. As I restarted it, it was right where I had left off.

How does she really know when I’m faking and when it’s real? I guess I need to not worry too much about it and enjoy having a partner that lets me watch TV, but turns it off when she knows I’m sleeping. I think Alexa just wants the best for me. That’s true love in 2022.