Category: Annoyances

Posted on

All I wanted was to listen to music…

Riiiiight!

I pulled a thread, and now none of the smart lights in the house are working. The security camera is also offline. I managed to kill the battery in my phone about 5 PM.

As Mr. Scott once said, “The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to clog up the works!”

This is what happens when you have a “smart house”

I have no clue exactly what the hell is going on. But I’ve done factory resets on my router, and all the smart light bulbs. I’ll be factory resetting the HomePod Minis, the Apple TVs and the Big HomePods.

I’ve been playing whack a mole. I’d get the lights working, then move on to the next thing that was broken, and boom the lights stopped working. Then I’d fix a light and something else would suddenly go offline.

It’s the darnedest thing.

For those of you wondering why I’m mistrustful of AI, here’s a perfect example why i don’t trust AI and think all AI systems should have a kill switch! That switch should be something totally mechanical that can’t be programmed around. Possibly augmented by a very large Axe.

None of the stuff at my house is particularly complex but something is running through the devices like a horseman of the apocalypse.

I’m thinking that I may have to power down then reset each and every device in the house to factory default then add them back one at a time.

I’m also thinking that I’ll need to delete the house from all the HomeKit enabled stuff.

By the time I’m done with this, chasing this problem around and around the house will have cost me 2 days. I started farting around with this Bullshit at 8am yesterday morning. I was listening to music, then suddenly there was no stereo. I asked the question, “Why?”

Before I knew it, I’d been consumed, as had my day. I actually had other things that I’d planned on doing yesterday none of which I got done except the laundry…

It’s also a good thing that I didn’t have any video I need to preserve. Because the security camera has been removed and re added to the home controls twice and will require the procedure again. Each time, any recorded video stored in the cloud is erased.

Totally brilliant bit of software engineering there. Another interesting feature is this, If the camera is offline in the Apple Home application then you can’t even look at video that’s recorded in your iCloud. So once the camera goes away and requires that you delete it and re-pair you’ve lost anything and everything stored for the last 30 days anyway.

I’ll be looking at a different paradigm for cameras in the future.

What’s the point of having the data recorded but completely inaccessible due to some silliness caused by a software update. Isn’t that the point of storing videos in the cloud???

Apparently, I’ve missed a memo somewhere.

Here’s the update. Flushing everything seems to have worked. I now have music throughout the house again and the smart lights are working. This was definitely the brute force method of solving the problem. I’m sure that it will reoccur at some point in the future.

That cynicism comes from experience with technology. Even if you’re not the one fiddling around with the devices, there’s always someone in development who’s tweaking a line of code here or there. Then someone else decides that a software update is necessary, or some scumbag hacker takes advantage of a security flaw and causes an update. One way or another, something is going to change and your nice stable system will be completely hosed.

I’d really like to be able to bill for the time lost to SPAM Email and all the software update related issues. The folks I’d like to bill are the little scumbag hackers, or their parents, or their countries of origin.

Well on with the rest of the day.

Have a great weekend

Posted on

This is either going to work really well or…

I’ve screwed myself!

The SPAM levels in my incoming email have gotten completely out of hand. I’m clocking sometimes as many as 35 items an hour.

This is insane and wasn’t a problem until the FTC gave PayPal my email address!

I got up this morning to 200 new junk emails sitting in my SPAM filters. I have a choice, I can ignore all the emails while they take up space and CPU cycles as each of them is checked for viruses, then put in the junk mail folder, OR I can tell my computer to delete anything that doesn’t look like real business!

I’ve hesitated enabling draconian deletion protocols because there are some folks and / or emails that are useful even if they’re sending unsolicited emails.

However at this point it’s become a serious annoyance.

Today, I told the computer, if something looks like junk mail, just delete it. Don’t put it in the trash, don’t put it in the junk mail folder, just wipe it from the datastream completely.

I know that I’m going to be missing some emails that might be useful and it’s possible that someone will complain that I didn’t respond to their email but those are the breaks.

Of course, there is the possibility that I stop getting emails altogether. Hmmm, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad…

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I really want to know…

It figures!

I decide that I need to retire because what’s the point of continuing to bang my head against the impenetrable wall of automated HR practices and hey, I can actually collect social security.

It  isn’t going to be enough for me to keep my house and pay my credit card bills but it will allow mw to have some time to deal with settling my other half’s affairs.

Turns out that I can still take a part time job (if I can get hired) and as long as I don’t make more than 17K It won’t affect my social security check.

All is well… or so I think!

I just got my first regular SS check. “Cool,” I think, “At least something is working.”

But then I start hearing about the debt ceiling. Yeah we’ve all heard about this before… The government is spending more money than they’re taking in and one party or the other party is bitching and whining about money being spent or money not being spent and the national debt.

I swear to God. I’d really LOVE seeing all those assholes in congress cut off from their wealth for a year. I’d love to see them have to actually live within a real budget, pay their bills like average Americans, and I’d like to see their income for that year be adjusted to the median income that the rest of America has to live within. Oh, and tank their credit ratings and reduce their credit limits.

I can tell you this, none of them would be living in their fancy Georgetown Apartments or Condos.

Suddenly, although I guess it’s not so sudden and certainly isn’t surprising given the way this administration has been spending,  there is the possibility that the government will default on their payments.

That also means they could decide to default on Social Security checks. I’m thinking if they do, then all bets are off!

I don’t feel that I have to pay taxes, I don’t feel that I have to answer to those assholes about anything. I’d bet that there’s a lot of other Americans who feel exactly the same way.  If we’ve learned anything over the past few years it’s that Feelings supplant actual reality and I wonder if the courts would come down on my side or the IRS. Okay I wondered for 1/2 of a second.

If I sell this house, I want to fucking REFUSE to pay capital gains. The IRS and the federal government can suck my dick!

You see if it comes to me eating, or paying taxes… I’ll  eat.

I thought Social Security was our government sponsored and secured retirement savings program. We’ve been forced to pay into it our whole damn working lives. So I think a legitimate question for our lawmakers will be…

WHERE IS MY MONEY?

Amplified by millions and millions of angry citizens.JoeBidenDuh

I suppose now we know why the Biden Administration wanted 87,000 armed IRS agents. They plan to rob us at gunpoint.

The other question I have to ask is this.

If the US can’t fucking pay their bills or pay the citizens they promised to pay via social security, then how the hell are they expecting to pay for all the folks preparing to cross the border when Title 42 ends?

It’s a legitimate question isn’t it?

Somebody is gonna foot the bill.

I’ll tell you what, if the folks swarming the border get food. clothing, medical, and all kinds of services while American retirees are going hungry or without their medications, then I think the government should be called to account.

If that means dragging Joe Biden’s raggedy ass in front of the Justice Department along with his staff that has led us to this particular disaster then so be it.

I highly doubt the Justice department will be involved because;

When Grandma loses her house and dies because she couldn’t afford cat food, her rent, and her medications. When welfare is cut off and folks dependent on those funds to feed their families go hungry… That’s the day when you’ll see a real insurrection, and this time it will be with guns, rocks, bricks, pitchforks, firebombs, and anything else people can get their hands on.

I strongly suspect that the police, and the military will do nothing to stop it. After all, at that point they’re not being paid either!

Simply put, on that day the abject failure of our leadership for decades will be laid bare and the American people will not be looking for excuses or platitudes they’re going to be looking for asses to hang on the wall.