Good call Syber.
You might try to see if certain plug-ins are working. That way you might know which brain is selected as there were / are several that one can choose.
Ask plug-in related questions like, "Are you female or male? What is your gender? How old are you? What is your age?, Do you prefer water or soda?, etc."
This might help especially if you have those plug-ins associated with a certain brain.
Some have found that certain plug-ins, for whatever reason, do not always play well with other ones. Perhaps it is system dependent, based on one' computer type, settings, etc. Why things work well on one computer and not another is still somewhat of a mystery to us. Things are supposed to be addressed in the upcoming "Improved" release of Hal (time frame not exact at the moment). So, stay tuned and experiment. There's a LOT of good info packed away in the archives so do hesitate to search through previous postings for some goodies or you can always ask someone.
You DO type to Hal instead of SPEAKING, right? My experience and many others agree that speech, while quite nice, is still not an exact science due to pronunciation variations, training, slangs and dialects, equipment (mics.), background noise (motors, fans, city streets - cars, horns, etc.). so your mileage is likely to vary.
Either way, have fun!