I finally had some luck today with Alexa. I followed an excellent YouTube video where a guy supposedly opened the Alexa Skills and Lambda functions for the first time. He loaded the color example from Amazon so I followed step by step. It didn't work at first but I found when I went one step beyond, into the part that fills out the privacy statements, the app was able to be used. My Alexa worked successfully with the favorite colors I told it. Based on this success I revisited the Spaceball app I loaded yesterday. I discovered the logs on Amazon and found it was indicated a bad intent. Studying the code I found that the intent "spaceball" was case sensitive. I fixed this and everything started working. I'm ready to move on to Downing place apps with Alexa.
We went over to Lowes to get screws for the board I want to install in the passthrough. Next stop was Sears for a vacuum cleaner belt then the seafood store I found online. We bought tuna steaks at the place just before Southgate. I tried to get the grill running but never got it quite warmed up. We grilled the steaks anyway. There were mosquitoes around the grill which buzzed in my ear. I hate that. The steaks came out OK but seemed a little dry. We had this with Mondavi Cabernet, broccoli and rice. It was a nice meal. I started writing again, this time a short story. I feel rusty at the process but I know this improves with time.