Hope you're enjoying those lazy, hazy days of Summer, because an all-new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Munneh! But, yes. By all means. Let’s invest our money in coal. Soon-to-be-obsolete coal that nobody is going to want when there are going to be far cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient ways to get our energy...
I mean, we could bring this technology to former coal towns and train the workers there for jobs that will actually matter. But, no. Because coal. Uh huh...
The sheer idiocy involved in killing off the American worker by our politicians is just astounding. We're not going to be competitive in the global job market, and we did it to ourselves by electing assholes who are more interested in fleecing taxpayers for the benefit of coal executives than creating jobs for ex coal miners.
• Kens! And so This happened: Mattel released 15 new variations of Ken Dolls... aka Mr. Barbie...
And no, your eyes are not deceiving you... there are Ken dolls with a man-bun now. I can't fathom the parent that would buy their daughter (or son, for that matter) a doll with a fucking man-bun on it, but since society is hell-bound anyway, here you go. As if that weren't enough, the Kens are available in three body types: Original, Slim, and Broad. Because heaven only knows we don't want to cause body identity issues in our children. Their dolls have hipster man-buns now, and that's enough fucking trauma for childhood.
• MMMMMMEAT! Clearly God wants everybody to be vegetarian, and this is His solution... OH, LOVELY: THE TICK THAT GIVES PEOPLE MEAT ALLERGIES IS SPREADING. From the tick's perspective, I'm guessing that people taste like chicken.
• White! "Being white in this country, I should just shoot myself." — Somebody please hand her a gun. Because this racist fucking waste of space shouldn't be raising kids... let alone be allowed to join society...
No matter how many times I see bigoted shit like this, I remain amazed. Not that assholes such as her exist... but that they feel so confident in their racist bullshit to act this way in public.
• Hope That Helps! Ben Palmer released video from one of his shows and it is everything you'd hope it to be...
Watching him troll on Facebooks is one of the reasons I am happy that Facebook exists.
• HomeShit! You know, I understand that companies can't release a winner every time. There are going to be some duds, even for the most inovative of them. I get that. Honestly I do. But Apple's HomeKit is such a festering pile of shit that I cannot fathom why in the hell they don't scrap it and start over or fix their stupid crap so it will actually function reliably. Thank heavens the only thing I was stupid enough to trust to Apple's failed system is my door locks. I wanted them on a completely separate system from the rest of my home automation for security reasons and, hey, it's Apple... right? What could go wrong?
I never dreamed the answer to that question would be everything. Apple should just do everybody a favor and kill off HomeKit instead of continuing to pretend that they give a flying fuck about home automation.
Dis be da end, everybuddy.
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I was a girl with a Barbie and a knife. First thing to go was Barbies stupid high heel molded feet. Next thing was her hair. Man bun amen is just waiting for his bun to get sawed off. I suppose he’ll have just a plastic bald spot then.
Some significant percentage of the time that Siri tells me about a problem with a HomeKit device (usually the lock), it worked anyway. I’m fairly sure that most of the time that there is a problem it’s because my iPhone can’t manage to tell that the WiFi signal isn’t really strong enough yet, but tries to use it anyway rather than sticking with cellular until it is stronger.
I switched added a HomeKit location trigger for the lock, which preempts the need for the BT connection, but necessitates confirming that I want to run. Luckily, that’s pretty easy with the active watch notification. The benefit of this is that it almost always triggers before I’m close enough to home for the WiFi to get in the way, so it has a much higher success rate.
I recently discovered that if I use Siri on the AppleTV to control HomeKit devices, the response is much faster — just about immediate. I suppose this isn’t completely a surprise given that the AppleTV is the HomeKit hub, but, well, I was still surprised.
At this point, my HomeKit devices seem to work more reliably than the Nest’s location awareness crap. Well, except for a Koogeek wall switch that goes offline and has to be reinstalled. At this point, I’ve just given up on it.
I am using AppleTV… and it has a straight signal-shot to both doors, AND is well within range. Makes no difference. Even when accessing the back door… which is five feet from the hub… I still have problems. Odd your problems with Nest location services. I have not had any problems with it knowing when I am home/away. It’s one of my favorite features of the NestCams because I have the interior cameras turn off when I’m home!
I think the Nest location issues are with other family members who either never enabled the location feature on their phone, disabled it, or just constantly kill the app. However, the actual proximity features from the thermostat itself and from the Nest Protects really should handle the situation. And yet, it still decides that no one is home on some days when my wife and kids are home (and moving around).
Maybe the fact that I have the location feature running on my phone and I’m not home overrides the proximity features? Doesn’t seem like it, as it sometimes works.
Regarding the AppleTV, I didn’t mean to imply a connection issue between that and the locks. I think my issues are attributable to either connectivity issues with my phone, or my Internet, which seems to go AWOL for short periods for some devices. I’d blame the router, but I’ve switched routers (from Airport Extreme to Eero) and the only difference seems to be that the new one(s) recover better.
Honestly, though, the failure rate is probably less than 10% for me; even lower for in-home use.
Ah. I have an Ecobee3 thermostat, not a Nest thermostat. It also has the ability to sense motion… and a “follow me” feature that can sense where you are via the remote sensors to have the “ideal temperature” follow you around the house, but I’ve never used that. I’ve only used the home/away geofencing with my phone.
I have no clue how my issues are happening with HomeKit. Could be internet. Could be connectivity. Could be my iPhone. No clue. All I know is that I have -zero- issues with any devices NOT on HomeKit and problems all the time with those that are.
I’m very tempted to switch to an Ecobee3, but I can’t quite justify it yet.
I haunted HVAC professional forums for weeks because I wanted to know about any problems with the Nest thermostat. The pros are almost universally against it because it doesn’t have some wire you are supposed to have, and some systems (including the brand I have) do not work reliably with it. The only unit that had any kind of praise was Ecobee. And the new Ecobee4 has Alexa built-in which is pretty cool. I’ve been *very* happy with mine. Supports HomeKit, but also Alexa and its own app, which is excellent.