Parking Wars and the Xbox Kinnect

The Mrs. isn't feeling well so a normal Monday night in the Stogdill house of watching TV was replaced with....watching TV.  We spent most of this evening watching Netflix movies we have seen before and probably have DVDs of.

After watching Billy Madison and Never Been Kissed. We popped in Parking Wars, which is fricken hilarious to me.  These people of Philadelphia get their cars ticketed, booted, and then towed and they act like they've been raped or had their firstborn killed.  On the show they post little factoids, like there are over 55K vehicles that are in the system for being towed.....and to get into the "system" they were talking about you had to have over $700 in fines.  Before getting booted, owners have to have three parking tickets (or a super serious violation) AND they've been sent 6 written notices about their cars.  OK, some quick math means that there is over $38.5 million in unpaid tickets just for that one class of violators.  When people act surprised that they get booted or even towed, it is epic fun.

Don't even get me started that the fine, upstanding folks of Philadelphia cannot understand that they need a current license, registration, and proof on insurance before they can get their vehicle picked up from the impound lot.  When they lose their shit 'cause they can't understand or chose not to get what "the man" says they must do to get their rides back.  Except for a few folks who admitted they screwed up, everyone tries to blame the PPA (Philadelphia Parking Authority).

Good times.....

As we've been getting used to using the voice commands for the Xbox Connect we've been using it more and more.  It's great.  When the one episode of Parking Wars (or any episodic show) ends we can just say, "Xbox Next Episode" and bing, the next episode starts.  The unit responds to my voice and my wife's voice without issue.  I've been having fun with it, trying other accents and weird voices, but it has no problem picking up what I've said.

Carolyn suggested I try to speak to the Xbox in German.  I'm not that fluent, so I looked it up using Google Translate.  One "Xbox nächste folge" later and bing, the next episode starts playing.  That was awesome!  I start playing around with other languages.  The Xbox doesn't understand Africkans, Dutch, Arabic, or Japanese.  Now to be honest, I couldn't read, much less say anything in Arabic or Japanese, so I let Google Translate and my computer speakers do the talking for me.  Kinnect did understand Spanish, but it went to the previous episode instead of the next one.