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Publisher’s Note
Publisher’s Note

What’s the Cure
for our Amazon Fire Cube?

Is it just the Felix’s or the first documented case
of robot-assisted aphasia?

Definition: Aphasia gets in the way of a person's ability to use or understand words (or in our case, our Amazon Fire Cube has
yet to understand us). Aphasia does not impair the “Cube’s” intelligence (but it does make one want to throw the cube through the
front of the television). Amazon Fire Cubes that have aphasia may have difficulty speaking and finding the "right" words to com-
plete their thoughts (however Amazon Customer Service prefers to describe it as a possible case of user error.)

But after 2 months of the Cube, I honestly think we both need a Babbel course to communicate! With few exceptions, no
matter what we say or how we say it we end up frustrated. It’s like a replay of the days when we all tried to solve another
cube – Rubik’s. In Carol’s case, the Cube doesn’t even acknowledge that she’s spoken and in my case, one day the Cube
wants me to “switch” to Netflix and the next day I have to “connect.”
I’m a pretty tech-savvy guy, but I have enough trouble reading Carol’s moods let alone trying to psy-
choanalyze my Fire Cube. But my absolute best mistranslation was asking for the Stephen Colbert
show and getting Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood … huh?
So after much googling and surfing, we’ve developed our own quickie dictionary of “go to”
instructions. Our five new most important words are: show, search, add, watch, and switch. In
desperation, Carol’s even made little cheat sheets.
So as Carol keeps telling me, we have yet another device designed to make our lives easier
and more efficient, which provokes yelling at the television not to mention each other!
But lest we forget the season we’re celebrating … have a great holiday, eat too much, love
a lot, and just Enjoy!!

Charles Felix

You can reach Charles Felix at
Charles@southfloridahospitalnews.com

2 December 2018 southfloridahospitalnews.com South Florida Hospital News