The Column
Substantial enough change in the day-to-day of my life = new Column to write.
Living Life
We’ve arrived. Not to say there isn’t more work to do around the new house, but we’re in. The normal swing of things is fully swinging. We’re doing chores, cooking, exercising, playing games, and making memories in the new house and around the new neighborhood. After several months dedicated to the giant workload that is moving,1 we are there. This house is great. This neighborhood is great. The schools are great. Life is great.
Infinite Firm Reaffirmed
During all of the move and craziness of the past few months, my commitment to being infinitely firm wavered. I still did my best to work out and take care of myself, but the standards for what passed as acceptable had certainly started to slip.
10 days ago Melissa and I renewed our commitment to ourselves. In the subsequent 10 days we’ve been adhering to our toned-down 75-hard-ish goals:
| 75 Hard | What We’re Doing |
|---|---|
| Work out 45 minutes x2 per day | Work out for 45 minutes x1 |
| One of those workouts are outside | Just be outside for 30 minutes |
| Follow a diet | Track our macros |
| Abstain from alcohol | One drink/week |
| Read 10 pages of non-fiction with your eyes | Read 10 pages or minutes of non-fiction with your eyes |
| Drink a gallon of water | Drink a gallon of water |
| Take a progress picture every day | Use the Streaks app every day (to do all the above) |
Correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation, but there’s a strong correlation between doing those things and how happy and satisfied we feel with life on a day-to-day basis.
Minecraft
I get it now.
Smart Home
Background
For nearly a decade I have had some level of “smart home”, starting with a purchase of the original Google Home speaker (before they had screens). Since that time, up until about a month ago when we moved, our smart home system was a sprawl of mismatched devices across disparate ecosystems, requiring half a dozen apps to operate and numerous headaches.
Essentially, we crashed into our smart home without a plan, and because of that wound up in confusing state of complexity and mess. Some devices required Siri, others required Alexa, yet others were available on-phone only. Nothing made any sense. While it all “worked”, none of it can really be said to have worked together.
With Our Move, we were given a literal blank slate in terms of smart home devices. I refuse to crash into it again.
Principles
Taking an idea from one of my new favorite YouTubers, TheStockPot, I am setting out explicit principles I will abide by when making my new house “smart”. Being Principled is to consistently operate with principles that can be clearly explained. This helps keep things simple, and can prevent eyes-bigger-than-stomach syndrome.
See the Top 5 Principles I’m Employing in Smartening My Home.
Home Assistant
I went in on HomeAssistant. It’s only been a week ago as of this writing, but it’s looking promising. I’ve had a very good time with it thus far. I’ll write more about it when I’m further in and can find one negative thing to say about it.
Top 5: Principles I’m Employing in Smartening My Home
5. Move Slowly
I will get a new device only once I’m sure I know I have a use case worth executing and have identified the correct device for it. I’ve set a budget for devices that will keep the throttle reasonable.
4. Build for the Long Haul
Wherever possible, build the smart home device (& supporting cabling) into the home. The actual home should be smart. It shouldn’t be a dumb home with smart devices taped to walls. I want to build to a higher standard, like the thing will be here in a decade. Hardwired connections over wireless. Wall power over battery.
3. No Apps Proliferation
I cannot say I’ll never install another app, but if I do it should only be used rarely. If I can’t operate the thing through Home Assistant it won’t make the cut.
2. No Magic Words Required
I don’t like saying “Alexa”. I grew to despise “Okay Google”. I don’t want to use a smart speaker to do a thing. I want the thing to just happen. My phone can be a backup, but the primary way making things happen should be through sensors & automations.
1. Local First
Wherever possible I will not rely on cloud services to do things. Local is better for many reasons. I’m avoiding using wifi for my devices where I can. Zigbee has been great thus far.
Quote:
I wanna get money, because I only have two money, and I wanna get rich.
- My 4 year old
Footnotes
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and finishing a basement, fixing many other longstanding issues, while doing graduate school, and being a dad and husband, you know. ↩