Category: Annoyances

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Oh goody! Google is at it again!

I knew it was coming. I just didn’t think they’d move this quickly.

According to an email today, and it was confirmed in the news Google is discontinuing support for Gen 1 and Gen 2 Nest Thermostats. 

At first thought, I was like no big deal, then I read further into the email and found that not only are they no longer updating the internal software, they’e also going to be killing remote access to the unit.

Basically, my smart machine is going to get just as dumb as a regular thermostat but will retain scheduling ability. 

This sucks!

No more ability to control the house temperature if I’m away. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s really nice in winter to have the house in the 50s when I’m away, then tell Siri to warm the house up to something comfortable before I actually get there.

If you’ve got a regular schedule that can be programmed. If you don’t have a regular schedule then you come home to a freezing house and crank the thermostat to warm it up quick.

With either the preprogrammed schedule, or the remote commands, the temp is increased in shorter bursts over a longer time. It’s a bit more balanced and efficient.

I knew Google was going to do this. To their credit they have discounted their newest version of the machine but I’m not interested. Yes It’s a nice machine, expensive, but given how Google is behaving and that they want me to have a full Google account instead of the old Nest account I’m not inclined to get deeper into Google.

What I want is an ecosystem that just talks to HomeKit and does so locally between devices inside the house. I don’t really like even low level stuff like house controls bouncing all over the internet. I was willing to put up with HomeKit, and Google so long as the Thermostat and the Protect smoke were providing what I believe to be a reasonable level of integrated protection.

The night of the fire, the A/C did kick on and distributed the smoke throughout the house. It also fanned the fire. 

But with Google’s recent moves,

I’ve been looking at alternatives.

Regardless of my remaining in this house or not, it’s a good point to disconnect from Google. My Thermostat will get dumb in October. I’ve got until then to make some kind of decision.

Trouble is, most of the smart thermostats want an account, and in some cases they want you to have a paid monthly or yearly subscription. 

That makes me rethink the whole smart thermostat idea. The Nest thermostat saved me money over the years, and while it was under Nest’s control didn’t cost anything beyond the cost of the unit and giving some of my information to Nest via their app.

This new situation may cancel the savings of any potential unit. It might also be a sign that for me, going forward simplicity is the best path.

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Always in the middle of the night!!!!

The second, of three, Nest Protect smoke alarms reached end of life.

I swear, I think smoke detectors in general are more of a pain in the ass than they’re worth. (I say that as someone who had a house burn down!)

I also have come to believe that the damn things are somehow built to sense sundown, then wait 6 hours before starting their bitching about low battery or malfunctions.

That’s only when they’re not going off because someone took a hot shower, or a bit of toast got overdone.

There’s nothing quite like being naked on a stepladder in the middle of the night trying to get one of these nuisance devices off the damn ceiling to shut it the hell up!

The modern machines all seem to have CO detectors in them and it’s the damn CO detector that goes out first. But rather than being able to tell the stupid machine, “Yes I get it, the CO detector is malfunctioning. There is another unit that is still functioning so stop chirping every 60 seconds and let us get some sleep…”

Nope! It’s gotta be taken care of right then. Like you’re going to be able to run out to the local hardware store at 2am and buy a replacement.

The Protects were literally the best of these nuisance machines. I’ve had these for 10 years and they have legitimately reached end of life. I’m not too annoyed, other than now I have to replace them with whatever bullshit machines are on the market today.

That’s thanks to Google’s masterful decision to keep fucking over Nest, (who they purchased a while back and have systematically destroyed.) Trust me, however much you hate Google, (and there are numerous reasons beside what they did to Nest,) it’s not enough.

I’ve hated smoke alarms since at least 1982. I had one in an apartment that pissed me off so much, (again at 3 am), that I leapt off the floor, snatched the damn thing from the ceiling and disemboweled it on the spot.

The Protect units were purchased after, at random, any one, of the three units installed in my house by the builder, started going off at random intervals for absolutely no reason. Always sometime between 1 and 3 am. (Not good if you’ve actually been in a house fire and are perhaps a little twitchy about fire!)

Those stupid machines were so bad we couldn’t use the stove in the kitchen without having the sliding doors and all the windows in the house open. Even then, it was 50/50 that they’d start that horrific screeching, reporting a fire that didn’t exist. This was only slightly more annoying than the smoke detectors in the previous house that burned, never raising a peep, even as they were consumed by fire.

But take too hot a shower… Then once again there you were, naked, throwing doors and windows open to make the damn things shut the hell up!

The Protects, solved most of those problems. I’m not looking forward to going back to the shitty overly sensitive machines.

Last night, at least, I knew what was going on. Even half asleep, I got the malfunctioning Protect off the ceiling. Unplugged it from the AC connection, pulled the backup batteries, and left the mess on the kitchen counter.

I don’t remember pulling the batteries, I was on auto pilot. I don’t even remember going back to bed.

From this you might infer that I’m very grumpy when my sleep is disturbed. That is true to a point.

If the source of the disturbance is the dog wanting out at some ungodly hour because he’s not feeling well. I’m totally fine with it. If it’s a child or even an adult that’s waking me for a legitimate reason, I’m not grumpy at all.

But a machine? (Including alarm clocks,) oh hell no! I loose my damn mind. This is especially true of a machine that’s decided to tell me about a low battery every 60 seconds at 4am.

Now my challenge is to strike a balance between price and minimal false alarms in my replacement smoke detectors. Truthfully, if the originally installed units weren’t wired into the house power, (and therefore there weren’t open holes in the ceiling where they were installed,) I’d be removing the mounting rings, spackling the screw holes over, and calling it a day.

What ever POS devices I choose, I take comfort in the high probability that I will not be living with the decision for long.

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The Hum

Living where I do is generally quiet. Unless they’re doing work in the wash. Then it’s a constant beeping and grinding as heavy equipment rumbles up and down the wash moving dirt around.

We’ll not talk about the dust and debris that blows in on the wind.

But when I first moved into this house after I’d been here for about a month, suddenly there was “The Hum”. At first it was only something I could hear in the Master Bedroom. What was strange is that due to an acoustic oddity, I could only hear it in one relatively confined area in the bedroom. (Of course it happened to be on my side of the bed.) It drove me wild and disrupted my sleep. My loving partner switched sides of the bed with me, so that I could actually sleep because he couldn’t hear it.

Over time, “The Hum” grew such that I could hear it everywhere in the house and outside too.

Slowly, it stopped being a constant thing. It became intermittent and finally after years, it was gone.

I don’t actually hear “The Hum”…

That’s not entirely true, but I hear it more like the sounds you hear when you’re underwater. That soft area just behind your jaw near your earlobes. That’s where it feels like I’m hearing the sound.

For many years, I haven’t heard “The Hum”.

This morning, well before dawn, I woke with my jaw clenched, grinding my teeth. I laid there for a few moments trying to figure out what woke me up. Then I heard it. “The Hum” was back.

Only now, instead of being constant, it’s cycling up & down, then being entirely silent, then starts again. It’s like an annoying gnat buzzing around your ears that you can’t quite seem to kill. Just when you think it’s gone, buzzes into your ear canal to remind you it’s there and piss you off.

“The Hum,” is like that but worse for me. It’s right on the threshold of my hearing, just loud enough that it bothers me, but most other people can’t hear it at all. So I’m the crazy person!

I suspect that it’s originating from a water pump that’s at some distance from the house. I can hear “The Hum” very clearly inside the house, but outside it’s not as prominent.

I think it’s resonance in the ground, and somehow the house it picking it up an amplifying the sound.

The water company claims that it’s not them, I couldn’t possibly hear the pump, and drops all subsequent inquiries in the “Crazy Person” bin.

In an effort to determine if “The Hum” is originating in the house, I shut the power off. My thinking was that any and all electro-mechanical devices would power down so if “The Hum” remained, it was external, not something I was doing to myself.

“The Hum” never missed a beat.

The dog hears it too. He’s a lot better at ignoring it than I am. I suppose since it doesn’t represent an immediate threat, or treat he just figures it’s the price of living in the human world.

I know he hears it because if “The Hum” stops for a minute or so, then starts again he wakes up from his nap looks around, then goes back to sleep.

I’ll try wearing my AirPods with noise cancellation on. I don’t think they’ll help because where I feel the sound isn’t the ear canal. Maybe a full ear set of headphones would help.

I’d ignore “The Hum” if I could. Something about the sound disrupts my thought processes and keeps me right on the edge of being angry. The way it comes and goes makes my brain start looking for a pattern.

Sometimes, “The Hum” sounds like Morse code. With that kind of dot-dash-dot pattern, my brain thinks there’s something to decode and being on the threshold of hearing, drags my full attention to the sound even though I know it’s nothing.

I have the same problem with fluorescent lights. They all hum, and most of the time I hear them. If one is starting to go out I hear that too. One of the many reasons that school was so very difficult for me. I tried very hard to listen to the teacher, but the humming from the lights and their patterns always captured my attention more.

Incandescent light bulbs will start “ringing” about a day before they burn out. The first few years living my the other half, it drove him crazy that I’d walk in from work with light bulbs the very moment he’d turn on a light and it would flash and burn out. I think he thought I was doing something to the bulbs on purpose to freak him out.

Even LED bulbs “ring”, as do plug in transformers used to recharge devices. Braun trimmers and shavers are the loudest in this regard.

So now you know why I like to sit at the bottom of lakes, or pools, and why I like SCUBA even though that’s actually a bit noisy.

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Ahhh what they can’t have, they destroy.

The Transgenders are at it again. Well, they’re attempting to destroy gay male (real male) spaces again. Whether they’ll succeed is another question.

Grizzly Pines gay campground USA 1536x864.There’s a gay male clothing optional campground in Texas. (Who knew?). The place is called “Grizzly Pines” it’s a bit northwest of Houston.

On the website the campsite says very clearly this is a place that caters to Males. You’d think that would be enough, BUUUUUTTTT… It’s not. 

Why isn’t their description enough? Because the definition of Male and Female has been so muddied by Trans Activists. 

Now days a woman can wake up and think she’s a man, (She isn’t). Then she can decide to invade places that are by definition male spaces. Some establishments allow this sort of thing, (They’re wrong).

Even if a woman has undergone all the gender modification surgery and can pass. There’s one thing that will not change, her psyche.

Campit gay camping.It doesn’t matter what she thinks, if she was raised as a female, she still thinks like a female. Most women in a male only, and specifically, a gay male only situation just don’t get it.

Because they don’t get it, they immediately try to change the situation to suit their comfort level.

Men are by nature predatory. I’ve been in clothing optional situations where it was perfectly acceptable to simply engage in sex without a lot of preamble or discussion. 

Honestly, it’s freeing. It’s comfortable to revert to our male “caveman” nature. For a man to be able to shed the veneer of politeness, artificial civility, and 21st century “acceptable behavior” is one of the most relaxing things a man can experience.

Men are very different creatures when they don’t have to engage in bullshit. Men inherently know what we’re there for. I myself have walked up to another man who was a complete stranger and had my way with him. 

I saw someone that was attractive to me, I went for it and a good time was had by all. Likewise, I’ve been the object of desire for another man. No BS! Hell we didn’t even exchange names.

No dinner, drinks, or small talk. Just feeding our physical needs and then moving on. I’ve seen women freak out about it. They were lesbians who retreated to their rooms then complained to the hotel management.

In that instance, they were told simply, “You were warned that this weekend we hosted a group of men that were going to be engaging in an event when you booked. The responsibility for you being offended lies with you.“

The Lesbians checked out the next morning. To their credit they didn’t make a big scene about it, and because they didn’t make a big scene, the hotel charged them a discounted night’s stay and helped them find a more appropriate hotel a block away.

Trans activists don’t take it as well. In fact lately they seem to demand that men who are only into other men, have sex with them. Then when the men are predatory they complain about that too.

Get a group of men together in a situation as I’ve described, and I can tell you something changes. It may be the sounds, the smell of sweat, the pheromones wafting in the air, or whatever, but every man in the group responds to the situation emotionally and physically. 

We all get our freak on and there’s not a lot of talking. Picture it like men eating at Thanksgiving. When the food is on the table, we’re not chitchatting about the table decorations. We’re interested in eating.

In a sexual, clothing optional, orgy situation, our brains turn off and other parts are in control. There’s nothing quite like waking up to the sunrise tangled in a bit of a dog pile on the lawn or pool area after a night of revelry.

There’s no guilt, shame, or discussion. Maybe someone will ask if there’s coffee, or suggest sharing breakfast together after a quick shower.

So it’s with these experiences in mind that I find the whole idea of a Transgender “whatever” trying to interact in these male spaces laughable. I suspect it would go one of a few ways. 

1) The Trans would be completely intimidated, if not terrified.

2) The Trans would attempt to out male the actual males in the crowd. The men would react to that falsehood as men normally react. They’d isolate or shun the liar.

3) The female brain would kick in and the Trans would start telling all the men in the space how they should behave. 

No matter how it worked out, the Trans would be a discordant note in the gestalt of the group. Meaning, no-one would have a good time. Oh, and observing someone’s overly complex pronoun requirement is probably not on the table.

For goodness sake, the Trans folks can’t handle normal males trash talking each other. Where they’ve invaded mens locker rooms they demand men wear towels in the sauna. (I can go either way on that one, but prefer to be comfortable and be able to “Manspread” as the heat loosens my naughty bits.)

Oh and by the way. Men who think they’re women and haven’t had surgeries have no business in Women’s spaces either!

They’re still men. Their brains were wired by the way they were raised and there’s no doubt in my mind that the hormones males and females produce have something to do with the way our brains are wired right from the womb.

I applaud Grizzly Pines for taking a stand and preserving male only spaces. I’m concerned that they’ll lose when the activists take it to court, and we all know they will.

If that happens, the activists will have destroyed yet another business, and they’ll have dictated what someone may or may not do on their own property,  which is fundamentally wrong.

Originally I wasn’t going to write a piece on this. But I’ve seen several articles about it over the past few weeks and it looks like the fight is growing instead of dying down.

The latest article is here

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The LGB community (what’s left of it), must separate itself from the trans community.

Female and Male only spaces deserve to be preserved. In that, the LGB folks have natural allies in the straight community and perhaps therein is the key to all of us being able to enjoy freedom from increasing Transgender tyranny.

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There’s an old saying, “If you find yourself in a hole,”

STOP DIGGING!

Newsom 1536x864.Apparently Governor Newsom hasn’t heard that one. In truth a lot of politicians have never heard that one, or met any expensive project they didn’t want to pull out Our wallets to fund.

After asking for 3.44 billion last week to provide state services for illegal aliens, he’s asking for 2.8 billion this week to fund Medi-Cal so that the state can provide medical coverage for illegal aliens.

This is classic Sacramento, and really stupid!

The simplest solution is the obvious one. Send the illegal aliens packing. Get on the horn to President Trump and request Tom Homan clear California ASAP.

That would mean admitting that sanctuary policies are wrong-headed even if they’re based in charity and kindness. In truth, I don’t believe there’s anything charitable or kind about California’s sanctuary policies. 

I believe it’s about something else, probably to do with money, graft, and corruption. I’d love to see a DOGE like agency rip through the California government.

Newsom will never admit the policies are wrong, or that they’re driving the state further into debt. Or that the quality of life is degrading in California. Or that none of these expenditures are helping the homeless California American Citizens. 

Most of all, Newsom will never admit that perhaps Trump was right in that allowing unlimited illegal aliens is unsustainable.

Nope, he’ll just keep asking for money. The California legislature will keep adding taxes, then they’ll add hidden taxes (they call fees). Then local taxes with their attendant fees go up, and all the while, a segment of the population gets handouts that citizens don’t get, and aren’t qualified to get no matter their need.

I recently noticed that my auto registration is over 1/2 fees. The registration part of the bill, (you know, the actual sticker) is $150. The remainder of the almost $400 bill is a bunch of stuff that goes directly to Sacramento waste and has nothing to do with the registration. Oh, and just for reference none of those fees are tax deductible. The registration portion of the bill ($150) is deductible, but nothing else is.

I probably wouldn’t be so annoyed except that there are roads here so rough and debris covered that you need a kidney belt and the evasive driving skills of a professional race car driver to navigate.

Honestly. I understand people wanting to come to America for better lives. I applaud and welcome those folks that come here and work so hard to become citizens.

But Newsom asking for over 6 billion dollars to support people whose arrival started with a crime. Then continue to require ever increasing funding, while degrading the quality of life for people who are actual citizens, is a hole that can never be filled, and one which we should stop digging deeper.

Newsom needs to put the damn shovel down.