There are many benefits to technology.
Most of us have various bits of tech in our homes, it may be just our computer, or our phones. Some of us have a bit more technology in our homes, and there be gremlins hiding there.
Most of the time the gremlins are dormant and only awaken when we do something causing us to trip over them. For example, we move something around, or try to add a new device. Usually these instances result in a minor irritation but are easily resolved.
I’ve been chasing gremlins for the past week and a half, and I have a lot of devices to chase the little devils through.
About a week or two ago, Edison was having a problem. In the course of 4 hours they flipped the power on & off at least 6 times. I’d just get the clocks reset and bang! The power was off again. Sometimes the power would stutter on for a moment then go off again.
Technology really doesn’t like that!
All the gremlins awoke and have been running through system after system, creating odd and completely random effects. Devices appearing and disappearing from the network, devices working fine one moment and then refusing to execute a command they’d just completed. Or suddenly executing a command that they’d received an hour ago because they suddenly remembered it (Kinda like Joe Biden…)
Fortunately, unlike in the case of Joe, (switching off humans is generally a bad idea,) I can switch devices off and if necessary reinitialize them.
Over the past two days, I’ve begun to feel like The Exorcist. Get thee back Demon!!
Or like a poor bastard that pissed off a Techno-Madge in Babylon 5.
Then I remembered I AM a Techno-Madge and these gremlins will be purged!
There are 30 devices online at my home at any given moment. I’ve purged 25 of these devices thus far. the remaining 5 are sitting in techno-limbo as I type. They’re being reset to factory default and one by one I’ll add them to the network as they wake up mindless from their reset.
After that, the gremlins should be at least flushed from my systems for the time being.
Gremlins will always make a reappearance. Sometimes they’re artifacts of small little bugs that are no consequence in a particular device. The problem is that they can be cumulative. When you have enough devices added to the same network, these little insignificant bugs combine and mutate, (no, we’re not to Maximum Overdrive or SkyNet yet,) the mutation is more of an interaction between devices.
Mr Scott said it best, “The more you complicate the plumbing, the easier to stop up the works.”
We’re living it. All of our devices are “smart” each of them has memory, when they’re network connected the router and some switches remember the state of each of the devices.
Sometimes, just turning the device off and restarting it isn’t enough. That’s because the router will often reconnect the device(s) in the same way when you turn them back on again and then you’re right back where you started.
The systems are trying to be helpful but they’re actually just more frustrating.
I had to completely reinitialize the Nest Thermostat and the Nest Protect smoke alarms. That was fun, “Gee thanks Google, I knew no good would come of you purchasing Nest, you jackasses could complicate a wet dream.”
Did you know that if you plug a HomePod mini into your computer it will flash Orange? How about that the HomePod mini has around 2.6 gigabytes of software running inside it?
Did you know that your printer is a smart little bugger and it tries to remember it’s setup so hard that it actually fights you when you’re trying to send it back to factory default?
Don’t even ask about network attached storage devices. They can be really contrary. It’s with good reason, they’re trying to protect your data so many of them will require signs, countersigns, along with various incantations and sigils.
The most frustrating part of this particular adventure has been certain smart lightbulbs (I’m looking at you office lamp,) several of these machines have told me they’ve reset, but lied. The office light was the worst offender 5 times straight, “Yep, I’ve reset,” but then, “No, you can’t configure me because I’m already set up.”
“Uh huh, and how did that go for you little light bulb?” (Lightbulb contritely dims)
Don’t get me wrong, I like having a “Smart House”, privacy issues notwithstanding. Yeah, all these smart devices can and do phone their creators regularly. God only knows what information they’re sending.
I thought, and this is demonstrating perhaps white racist language, when I purchased a machine I was that machine’s master.
Yeah, what of it? Am I going to hear from the robot-rights association?
Alright the last devices appear to have returned to their pristine factory reset zombie state…
I’m off to give them a purpose again.
(Wanders off)
“Come on my little slaves, let’s put you back to work.“