technology...

... amazes me.

it's not like i'm incompetant with it... in fact i get along fairly well with most technology and am a decent computer programmer as needs be, but still.

i have several flights coming up, and logged into the airline website to check my itineraries... and one had changed slightly, and i was required to call the airline to confirm the new times were ok. anyone who knows me well knows i hate making phonecalls. i will call people i know periodically, but i do anything i can to find an alternative to calling businesses... personal quirk.

so i called the airline and in the past couple months (because i also confirmed a flight with the same airline via a real person on the phone in january) they've completely automated the process. and it's not just like the computer voice on the phone says "press 1,2,3, or 4" or accepts only a limited number of answers... it can parse quite a bit. in my whole phone conversation, it only made one mistake and it realized it was weird (for the date of the flight i was looking for i said april 11 without the year, and it asked if i really wanted a flight in 2011).

i shouldn't be so amazed at the capabilities of computers to process speech... i did, after all, take a course in speech and language processing 5 years ago as an undergraduate, so i have some vague idea of the process that goes into it. still, i find it awe-inspiring to see just how detailed of an interaction i can have with a computer over a phone these days...

that's all.