Notices by Technology Connections (techconnectify@mas.to)

@ernie I'm biased because, having looked through there my thoughts seem nearly perfectly aligned with the OP, but tbh there's a lot of people living the "this is fine" meme over here, and at this point being blunt might be necessary.

@ernie I'm not sure I'm seeing what you're seeing. Could be that ol' Fedi goodness but other than a few back-and-forth arguments, I'm not picking up on surprise.

At this point, I know I can't be critical of this place without taking shit which is why I've stopped. But that's kind of the whole problem, as I see it.

I'd like to tell a quick story about successful troubleshooting.

A few months ago I rented a scissor lift to install lighting at my new office. When it arrived, the delivery person gave me a quick demo and off he went.

Well, when I went to actually use it - the lift went up by about a foot then stopped and screamed beeps of terror. It was broken!

But the display on the control read "18"

Rather than call the rental company, I searched "sinoboom fault code 18" to see what that meant.

Troubleshooting is a skill. I don't know how exactly it can be taught, but we should absolutely be teaching it.

I have never used a scissor lift in my life prior to this point but I know enough about machines now to realize something is wrong. And with an error code, the machine will tell you what's wrong.

It's up to you to connect these things together - and that's honestly a guiding light in my work.

I found a document that explained this meant there was a fault in the pothole protection board.

Not knowing what that was, I then searched for "pothole board sinoboom" and found that there are limit switches which detect that these little side-plates which swing out as the lift goes up have actually deployed. The board wasn't seeing that switch input.

So, I figured out where that switch was and discovered it was sticking. I exercised it a bit and the lift was fixed.

@foone I submit a Scantron form is a punchcard-RW

As we do our silly Chicago tradition of dyeing the river a violent shade of green, I think it's a good time to remind people that our ancestors *reversed the flow of the river* to provide safe drinking water from Lake Michigan and earlier, in the 1860's, *lifted the entire city* to improve drainage and public health.

Remember that any time someone says heat pumps and renewable energy are hard.

I've got a new video out today, and making it it was truly a blast!

https://youtu.be/AEm-2giH_zw

@10leej Ehhh this is the Fediverse. It's worse than the internet.

The replies on that post just keep on happening without an OUNCE of self-awareness as they're made.

It would be funny if it weren't so serious a problem.

Preface: please don't tell us why we shouldn't use a smart thermostat.

I'll probably need to go on a video rant about this, but smart thermostats are rapidly getting dumber.

My folks got a new heat pump system in the spring. It needed a new two-stage thermostat and the company offered an Ecobee.

"Great!" I thought. People kept telling me Ecobee is better than Nest, and I've had major frustrations with the new Nest thermostat.

Folks. It's just bad in different but equally maddening ways.

Meanwhile, Nest no longer (at least with the basic ones) lets you set different schedules for heating and cooling modes.

Call me crazy, but I actually like my HVAC system to run different schedules in the heating vs. cooling season (and I NEVER let it run on "auto" mode).

You used to be able to do this! The old Nest app supported it and it made perfect sense. The Google Home app doesn't, and the new cheap Nests don't talk to the old app and IT'S ALL SO STUPID

The ONE THING Ecobee did better was holding. Y'know, the feature every programmable thermostat has had forever.

Well, in November I went on a trip with them and needed to figure out how to get the thermostat to be dumb for their house/dogsitter.

Where did the hold feature go? It appeared to be gone.

Oh? Now you have to go into the settings and tell it *how long* you want it to hold a temporary change, and one of the options is "indefinitely"

WHO THOUGHT THAT MADE ANY SENSE

Literally all anybody is asking for is a thermostat which can do scheduling, can be remotely controlled/monitored, and change setpoints based on occupancy.

It needs to be an easier-to-program thermostat with a few smarts on top and THAT'S IT.

Right now, they're all sliding backwards in the name of "comfort presets" or some BS and the experience of using them is much worse than a simple programmable unit.

I cannot fathom who is making these design decisions and why. It's just awful.

@lain @feld@bikeshed.party I jumped through the hoops necessary to see this original post (I think?) and in case this makes it through, I don't want to go back to Twitter. I've all but abandoned that account.

I do think it's a mistake to assume all parts of it were bad, though. I genuinely want to maintain a public presence so folks can interact with me. And I like the spirit behind the fediverse, so much so that I'd like to cheer it on.

But it's very difficult right now.

All right folks, let me just put this out there:

Part of my persona is Cranky Old Man™

Sometimes I go a little too far with this, and I try to be conscious of that. But it seems that this is entirely incompatible with being here on Mastodon.

I don't know if there's a way that I can preface my spicy posts so y'all know I'm mostly speaking in jest, or if it's just a lost cause.

It remains utterly fascinating to me how many of you lot look at a 2700K light source and describe it as "not white"

Y'all gotta stop staring at screens all day

@feditips @RufusJCooter @moira Heh. Trying to get anybody to agree on what the fediverse is "supposed to be" is definitionally impossible.

Why do you think there are so many forks/clients/instances/etc.?

If you don't want us here just fucking say it.

@feditips @interpipes I think it's a fair summary, but I'm not sure you're empathizing with it.

@feditips @interpipes I'm afraid you will never understand this.

There is too much for me to report, and much of what I experience that is irritating isn't likely to be deemed abuse anyway.

People are just rude, or mean, or pedantic, or arrogant, or snarky, or insulting. I wouldn't report them for that anyway, but I still don't want to have to see it.

Everyone here is allergic to automated anything but guess what? I think it's needed.