I mowed my lawns three days ago. It was a beautiful sunny Sunday, with temperatures in the 70s and a wonderful little breeze keeping everything nice. Monday, it rained. Tuesday, it rained and began to get a bit chilly. Today had no rain, but it’s back in the low 40s with 20+ MPH winds, and it’s freaking cold! This winter is never going to end.
Before I continue, I must wish Dad and his bride a happy 7th (?) anniversary. I wasn’t sure if this was the right day or not, but I had a picture from their wedding show up on my Facebook feed this morning and then saw another one posted by Dianne, so I guess it is! Sorry, Dad. You know I’m not really big on remember dates.
The GBB is plugging along, getting ready for the championships in a few weeks. Hard to believe that we’re already up against it. I’m not overly excited about the contest this year. I don’t think we’re all that great, don’t particularly like the music, and don’t have the vacation time that I used to have. Burning two days off to drive up to Fort Wayne and back doesn’t fill me with excitement, considering that I’ll probably want those two days back in the fall when I’ll – hopefully – take a decent break from work. I’m planning on spending a week or 10 days in Canada in July, which is nice. Truth be told, though, I’m really looking forward to what has become a tradition of heading to Michigan sometime in October. Hoping I’ll have enough vacation time built up to spend a week or two there.
I broke down and bought two Amazon Echo Dots a couple of weeks ago. They were on sale for $30 each, and I figured it’d be nice to be able to turn my lights on and off with my voice rather than diddling around with my phone while I lie in bed. I was right. It’s very nice. It’s also nice to be able to ask “Alexa” to play a podcast (or a list of them), or to play any of a number of calming noises (ocean, mountain brook, wind in the trees, etc.) or to just roll a little hypnosis at me to help me sleep. I’ve also gotten into the habit of asking the thing for weather updates or a morning news brief, or to play the occasional game of Jeopardy.
The Dots came on the heels of me finally getting around to hooking up the Ring spotlights that I got for Christmas from the X-Company. This is also a fun li’l toy for me. It’s a motion detector with spotlights and a camera over my garage, which alerts me with indoor chimes (also on my phone) whenever it detects anything large in my driveway. The large thing, as it turns out, is usually me – either leaving for work or coming home from work – and the cats have quickly figured out that, when the chimes sound in the evening, they’re about to get some food. Other than being woken up by cats, there isn’t much better in life than coming into my driveway and seeing a little feline face (or two) peeking through the front windows at me. I’m impressed enough with the spotlight that I may actually spring for a Ring doorbell to go with it. I’ve got to admit that it’s nice to be able to keep an eye on my place when I’m not here. There is the sporadic annoyance – like during a very windy day a week or two ago when I kept getting alerts because trees were throwing moving shadows across the driveway. And I’ve been startled a couple of times on rainy nights when the glare of headlights going past on the street set off the motion alert; but through tweaking and modifying the motion zones, I’ve got it down to basically only letting me know when there’s an actual person (or car) in my driveway.
Also good for knowing when packages are delivered.
I have not yet figured out how to network the Echo Dots with the Ring. For instance, if motion is detected after dark, turn on the lights downstairs. But I assume that I will eventually. For now, I’m just exploring the new gadgets and having some fun.
Speaking of fun, I’ve taken advantage of my new position at work to start doing a little bit of coding on the side again. Nothing major, and I’m pretty much restricting myself to powershell scripts, but at least I can spend an hour trying to automate things without having to worry about my ticket closing numbers dropping. In the end, the scripts that I write will end up helping my team to take care of things in a few seconds that might take other teams a few minutes. Or maybe I’ll share the scripts with other teams and show what a great guy I am.
Nah. I want my team to shine.
By the look on Joshua’s little face right now, I can gather that it’s time for bed. So I guess I’ve written enough for now. A warm bed sounds pretty good.