Geek

At the beginning of next month Earl and I will have lived here in Chicago for two years. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long as it feels like it was only yesterday when we moved here.

As an “all things connected geek”, I had an old school clock system wired through the old house back in Upstate New York. When we moved we decided not to do the same here in our condo; the old clocks were loud when they advanced each minute and as we aged we didn’t find as much whimsy in the experience of having these antique timepieces on the wall. I donated several of the clocks to the historical society in my hometown, I gave others to friends and family. I thought about converting the remaining clocks to quartz mechanisms, but I’d rather have clocks that are perfectly in sync with the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) because I’m precise like that.

Enter our atomic clocks.

I’m on the search for clocks that have a “retro” look to them, and the first of the clocks was installed last night. Made by La Crosse Technology, the clock synchronized itself while we were sleeping last night. It’s keeping perfect time and it shows accurate time to the second.

I am a happy geek.

This is 21st century technology in an American automobile that has built in cell connectivity. These steps follow three activation prompts and 45 minutes of upload time from a dongle.

45 minutes of sitting in a vehicle with the battery discharging but the car is not allowed to be started during that time.

This Voyager era captain has an older Shore Leave uniform.

J.P. out.

I am delighted to see items marked in an old school way. These young whippersnappers though think they need to use the “FOR” mark, which would actually be used in a 2 FOR 99 scenario.

I’d probably do the same thing, though. It’s geeky cool.

The switch from Amazon’s Alexa to Apple’s HomeKit to handle our household technology needs is going mostly well. HomeKit hasn’t lost any devices or scenes and routines I’ve set up, but accessing them can be tricky. Apple has a “gap” in the device department; there’s nothing equivalent to the Echo Dot or Google Home Mini. I don’t want to buy a HomePod for the bathroom, but we like to listen to music and podcasts during our morning routine.

Another gap in the HomeKit device arena is an equivalent to the Google Home Hub. We tried having an iPad fill that role, but it’s just not the same. Google has knocked it out of the park in this area; Earl can ask the Home Hub for a recipe for something spectacular and a combination of audio commands and visual cues can take him through the recipe at his own pace. An iPad requires physical input, which is not convenient when your hands are covered in cooking oil or whatever. I haven’t found an iOS app that replaces the functionality of the Google Home Hub, so it’s back on the kitchen counter again. I’m thinking of installing a couple of freebie Google Home Minis in strategic locations in the house as well.

This takes us away from an all HomeKit setup but it helps keep costs down.

The other kicker of this conversion is that some of our home automation outlets are either HomeKit or something other than HomeKit, none of the controlled outlets we purchased will interface with both systems. I purchased a couple on Amazon that should be here tomorrow; hopefully they will work with both systems simultaneously. This way we can talk to Siri or the Google Home products when we need to.

My husband just asked that we don’t continue to use Alexa, because that seemed like it took the longest for anything to happen and we found Alexa to be the least reliable when responding to voice commands.

I’ll probably have a part three to this saga in the next week or so, but I’m learning that Home Automation is still well entrenched in the “early adopters” stream. I could never see my grandparents setting up something like this.

Who knew there would come a day when updating software in our car would become a thing? I’m surprised the car doesn’t update itself, but it’s a fun little exercise.

A live version of the “Charlie’s Angels” theme song. One of the best television theme songs of all time.

There better be a nod to the original theme song in this movie coming out at the end of the year.