Category: Modern problems

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I’m really starting to question the Smart house…

Way back when Nest produced their first thermostats I bought one. Our contractor installed thermostat was the cheapest piece of shit they could install, and honestly it didn’t fucking work.

We’d set the temp, the Thermostat was say it heated the house but a normal thermometer told us that the house was colder than when we’d started.

In the winter this presented a problem for the instruments (Harps, Guitars,) anything with strings. The people weren’t exactly happy either!

So at some point I got pissed and plunked down $300 for a Nest learning thermostat. In the beginning it was great and I highly recommended a unit to anyone and everyone. Then fucking Google bought Nest.

At first there didn’t seem to be too much of a problem. My programming of the thermostat held true and the unit adjusted to our changing schedules. It did what it was supposed to do and for a good 10 years the house was warm when we got home. I know the system was working the way I’d intended because if I was home sick with a cold or whatever, I’d have to override the thermostat during the day. I also saw the difference in the Gas bill in Winter and the A/C bill in summer.

Google got ever more invasive. Google wants to deprecate the Nest application login and force you to make a Google account. I’ve moved as far away from Google as possible and don’t even have gmail accounts anymore. That means I’m resisting.

Every time I log into the Nest Application or the Nest Website. Google has a shit fit! “Don’t you want to create a Google log in? Don’t you want to enable 90 factor log in security? “ On and on and on…

NO! I don’t want any of your shit Google! Just let me get to the actual control part of the damn application!

Lately, my thermostat is being reprogrammed without my consent.

62°F at night is too damn cold! Even with blankets and flannel sheets, I’m not sleeping well. I do sleep soundly if I’m in my sleeping bag that’s rated to 0°F. I shouldn’t have to sleep in a sleeping bag… IN MY OWN FUCKING HOUSE!

During the day if I’m home the temp is set to 66°F in the winter. That’s still a bit too cold but I’m willing to put up with it because I live in terror of the damn natural gas bill. Southern California Gas royally fucked everyone last year. Of course their executives still got their bonuses for incompetence. That’s another story!

I have specifically told the Nest Thermostat that I don’t want it learning. I don’t want it making adjustments, I want it to maintain my set temps within the schedule I’ve created and I want it to go to the lower temps when it figures out I’m not home.

Dirt Fucking Simple!

But… Somewhere, deep in the bowels of Google, some little Indian programmer fuck is deciding via programming that I don’t know what I’m doing and they know better what I need.

Every time they send a software update my schedule gets “Fine Tuned”. It used to be that having your temps set to 68° F or lower was considered worthy of a little environment leaf. Now the leaf doesn’t show up until you dial the temp down to 65°F. Nighttime temps of 63°F used to be “efficient” and worthy of the leaf. Now it’s 62°F.  The Nest “Fine Tuning” routine “adjusts” whatever your schedule is, to having the leaf indicator on.

If you scheduled 68°F during the evening… “Well you’re a moron! Let Google set your temp for you. There 65°F aren’t you happy? Gee sorry about that asthmatic child developing pneumonia. We’re about saving the environment, a little collateral damage is acceptable.“

I don’t care about the leafs, I care about not having my hands turn blue, or shivering in my bed all night.

Were I not thinking about selling this house and moving, I’d be shopping for a new thermostat. I have reprogrammed my schedule according to my needs 4 times in the past 3 months. If you see a little yellow/gold gear with a leaf at the bottom of your Nest thermostat display, guess what? You’ve been fine tuned! 

“We hope you like being cold living above the snowline. You’re welcome! Sincerely Google.“

My problem is this. I bought the fucking machine, I installed the fucking machine, I expect the fucking machine to obey my wishes, not the wishes of some asshole I’ve never met who doesn’t live my life, who has decided that they’re my better!

I may start shopping for a new thermostat anyway. I’d go for one of the really old units with a mercury switch and piece of coiled metal that reacted to temperature. Unfortunately, you can’t get mercury switches anymore. 

Mercury is bad dontchaknow even if it’s sealed in a glass ampule that never, or only rarely sees the light of day.

There are some old school thermostats like that in houses in this little town. Those scary dangerous mercury ampules have been in service for 70 years firing up heaters and haven’t hurt anyone yet.

This bullshit with the thermostat has made me seriously start rethinking the smart house concept entirely.

So long as the devices in my home are controlled only by me we got no problem and I like the convenience. But when they start disobeying, or someone remotely overrides my settings we got a serious problem.

That’s why after the house burned, we didn’t sign up for Edisons Power Savings thing again. The A/C Compressor of the old house, Edison could kill remotely.  We were going to drop out of that program. The house burning down simply spared us the annoyance.

That previous summer, Edison shut down the A/C while we were at work several days in a row. The interior temps of the house exceeded 100° F and caused $50-$60 worth of harp strings to snap each day. It also caused a meltdown on a RAID array that contained all our data. The RAID array did a thermal shutdown but the damage was already done. (It was a shitty manufacturer and while it was supposed to shut down prior to damage, it didn’t.)

At the time I remember wondering how it could be better for the grid, to have all the home A/C compressors in Southern California running at the same time for 2 or 3 hours.  That’s what it took to bring the temps in everyone’s homes down to something livable again after work. It wasn’t good for the grid. But it was great for the Electric company executives who were making more money than ever, and bitching about the strain on the electrical grid to justify rate increases to the PUC.

When / If I move. I’m going to be considering very carefully how smart I make things. 

While I like having the lights come on when I get home, I could do that with a motion detector. I like having lights come on at a particular time, but I could do that with a timer. I like being able to turn the lights off at night with a word, but I could do that with The Clapper .

Do I really need the maintenance headache of smart lightbulbs, ceiling fans, thermostats, and security cameras?

Thinking about it, I had most of this back in the ‘80s. 

It was done with the BSR X-10 system. And I had one!

Nobody could screw with the BSR unit via the internet. (The internet existed but wasn’t offered to the Public yet.) If someone was messing around with your lights and things it was an accident. They’d set their box to the same base code as yours and it was easily handled.

I suppose it’s another case of the old way is the best way.

Just how smart does my house need to be to make me happy?

The answer to that question may be, “My house needs a lobotomy.”

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Hmm, is this real or not…

I can’t imagine what kind of device Manuel might be.

I would have ignored this entirely except that it showed up in an email from LinkedIn. It was just too emblematic of the job search market to pass up.

I thought LinkedIn was supposed to be vetting their job listings. It looks like USTech is a real company, but I can’t locate this position on their web site.

So either it’s another SPAM job listing (All too common on LinkedIn) or it’s an old position that’s been filled so LinkedIn is just presenting it to waste the job seeker’s time.

I think it’s time to ask this simple question.

Is it time to abandon LinkedIn?

What does it really provide as far as service? The site has degraded to nothing more than a FaceBook clone.

Honestly, I can’t read more than a few of the posts before getting really bored. 

The years I was completely off of LinkedIn I got a lot less SPAM. Less than a week after rejoining LinkedIn, my SPAM levels tripled.

I only rejoined LinkedIn because a completely useless HR consultant told an entire class of people it was absolutely necessary to have social media and LinkedIn. This consultant supposedly walked everyone through the self marketing process. Social media presence, LinkedIn profiles, resumes, etc. Except they didn’t.

I can say, for me sitting in those classes was absolutely useless. I can’t say for certain that anyone benefitted, and the consulting firm doesn’t appear to be in business today. 

Our jobs, indeed most of our department was being offshored and the company had to wave its hands for the government, to make it look like they were doing something to assist those of us being laid off.

The majority of us who’d been through the layoff process before, knew within 5 minutes that these HR Consulting folks were bogus. These folks had the fundamentals of the layoff process incorrect and didn’t know that when a company lays off quantities of people above a certain threshold there’s government involvement and reporting.

They were getting paid likely an obscene amount of money but their curriculum was obviously a hack job and not one of them had ever taught a class or gotten up to speak  in front of a group of people. Yes, it was that obvious. Especially since I had stood up teaching classes to technical folks earlier in my career.

I’ve wondered what it would take for me to be one of the presenters for a corporation that does the “Employment Transitions and Assistance Classes” By the way, I claim that name, and the abbreviation ETAC as my own.

I’m sure I could put together a class that dealt with Social media (What to delete!) LinkedIn and resume writing. I’m also sure that I could put together something useful to the employees facing the end of their jobs. God knows I’ve been through the layoff process enough to have gained some useful experience.

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WOW! Apple does it again! Not in a good way!

Apple one icons logo 100857611 largeThe other half and I decided to go with the Apple One subscription back when they first started it. 

Both of us were paying for Apple Music and individual iCloud Storage. We’d purchased Apple TVs for the living and bedrooms, but Apple’s original programming wasn’t anything we were interested in at the time. 

I knew that I was going to be interested in Foundation when Apple released the first season.

When we did the math, we found we were already spending nearly the initially high 29.95 monthly fee for Apple One individually, since we could share the Apple One subscription we went for it.

Honestly we were only interested in the Music and iCloud storage. There was a high probability that Apple TV+ would become interesting to me. Although to date I’ve only watched Foundation and Invasion. There are some Apple produced movies that looked somewhat interesting but not enough to captivate my attention so that I sat down and spent 2 hours of my life watching them. 

I was interested in the Apple Fitness guided training. I’ve used it a few times just to get a feel for it. At first it only worked on the Apple TV so training had to take place in the Living Room or the Bedroom. Honestly, that didn’t really work. Since then Apple has expanded the functionality to iPhone and iPad so it’s a little more portable.

It’s understood that Apple is a “Woke” company. Okay, that’s fine, I’ve always known Apple was full of blue haired people with so many piercings they can’t get through a TSA metal detector. However, recently I thought I’d get more familiar with Apple Fitness and take advantage of regular workout routines during the Winter. 

Opening the Fitness+ tab on the Apple TV I was a little put off.  It wasn’t that DEI was front and center, it was.

It was that so many of the workouts appeared to be geared for way younger folks than I am. After some digging I was able to find some things geared toward older adults. I’ll try a sampling to see if Apple Fitness+ is for me.

The other half and I also liked being able to share our purchases and subscriptions to many applications.

Neither of us cared about Apple Arcade, we were adults, while I looked at some of the games, none were interesting to me and so that part of the Apple One subscription was never used.

Apple News+ is okay but neither of us were really interested in much of the magazine offerings and I literally locked out of my news feed, the extremist news organizations both left and right. The other half eventually got tired of News+ and stopped using it altogether. I know this because he needed help turning off all the News+ notifications. He generally preferred BBC and NPR until the age of COVID. Then he, like me, found  very few news organizations that passed the reliability test.

At this point I could take or leave Apple News+

All of this has come to mind because of a few things.

1) The other half is dead.
2) Apple One increased its prices from 29.95 which was already expensive to 32.95 back in spring. At the time, I wasn’t capable of making too many decisions and chose to let that go.
3) Apple sent a notice of another rate increase either Friday Night or Saturday morning, (which is kind of chicken shit,  because NONE of the executives will be in over the weekend so the folks answering the phones get to take the brunt of the complaints,) The new rate is 37.95 a month.

At this new rate, we’re starting to approach old Cable TV rates. (Yes I know the Cable TV people charge far more obscene rates these days. That’s why I don’t have Cable.) As a point of interest, that’s also why I’m looking at new places to live where I can receive local TV with a damn antenna. I don’t even care if it’s only one channel as long as it’s in English. (Where I live now, I can receive one channel but it’s in Korean? or Chinese neither of which I speak.)

I know I’m not getting $37.95 value out of the Apple One subscription. I no longer have a family. (I do have a family but they don’t live with me and have their own stuff going on. It’s a big pain in the ass or was, to merge this stuff or unmerge it, if necessary.) The merge / unmerge task is so daunting, my other half is still listed in family sharing on the account. Although in truth, I’m not ready to remove him. It seems so final and I’m not ready for that yet.

The problem is that when I look at what I”m actually using regularly, and try to break out only those items, I come up with a cost that’s about the same as Apple One. Obviously this pricing structure is to keep Apple One subscriptions. 

As an older person, I don’t want to spend any more money than I have to. Well, I never wanted to spend more money than I had to. The problem for me now is that since I”m not employed, and living on retirement, I am far less loose with my money.

I’m sure there are a lot of people in the same boat I am. We’re either retired or nearing retirement and being forced out of our jobs explicitly, or surreptitiously. (Ask one of my friends about his experiences after 25 years or more with the same company. Ageism is real. Oh, and by the way, there’s nothing you can do to fight it! The law may be on your side, but lawyers… You’re lucky to get one of them to return your call or email! Maybe the next time I reach out to an attorney, I’ll say Trump did something to me. Perhaps then I’ll be worth calling back!)

In any case, all of us in this position are re-evaluating where our money goes and trimming the fat. If only we could trim the fat of taxation that gets us very little of use in our daily lives but might just drop a nuke in our backyards…

I digress.

Apple One has become too damn expensive! So effectively older folks or poor people are completely priced out of the Apple One service. DEI my ass!

I’ll evaluate Apple One for the next month or two. Maybe it’s time to cut this shit down to only what I find useful. If we can’t come to an arrangement that works for me, then maybe it’s time for me to stop paying for Apples services entirely.