This morning there was a small thunderstorm in my area. No big deal, it happens all the time in Iowa. Lightning strikes were close, and we lost power for less than five minutes. Seemingly not a problem, however, that was just enough time to mess up my electronically controlled house.
I love technology, and always have. Most of the time it works great. I love that I can control the lights in my house with an app or by telling my Echo dot to turn something off or on. It fits my nature, I like to be in charge. I’m a Capricorn, it’s in the stars. Granted it is only electronic gadgets I oversee, but power is power after all.
The downside of technology is when your electricity goes out, even for five minutes. Philips Hue lights are built with an emergency setting so that if you lose power, when the power is restored all your Hue lights will turn on. Apparently, this is for my own good, so I can see in case of an emergency.
I wish they would allow you to set up a time limit on the power outage. For instance, if my power is out less than ten minutes, do NOT turn on all the lights when power is restored. This would save me a lot of bright blinding lights waking me up when our power briefly goes out due to a summer thunderstorm at 2:00 a.m. Perhaps I need to bring this to their attention.
The second thing that happened this morning is that the brief lightning strike, also fried my internet hub. I did all the normal things, unplug stuff for thirty seconds, plug it back in. Nothing. I called it in and sure enough, we were not on their “grid”. You never, ever want to hear you are “not on the grid” technology-wise.
I am now trying to figure out how to turn off all my Hue lights without internet service. I know what you are thinking, but that’s so un-technological.
So far, the information I could pull up on my phone, which thank goodness I can still connect to the outside world without the internet working in my home, says that I can. Nothing has worked so far.
The tech can’t come here until Monday between 12:30 and 4:30, so it will probably be around 5:00 p.m. when they arrive. I guess I am stuck doing it the old-fashioned way, the on/off switch on each light. It feels so antiquated.
When the lights went out I was also just beginning to watch Thor: Ragnarok on Netflix using my Roku. Yes, it was just after 7:00 am, but what else is there to do, I’d already loaded the dishwasher, so my conscious was clear. Another 21st C problem, no internet, no Roku. No Roku, no Netflix. No Netflix, no Thor. (big sighs)
So how did we get here to all these wonderful technological problems after all? Let’s go back a few years (cough cough) and reminisce about how some of this began. I have no internet after all so I’m not going anywhere else cyber-wise.
I’m part of the Baby Boom Generation. “Boomers” were born roughly between 1943-1960 (there are differing opinions on those years) when the world felt safe again after world wars and people had jobs and started having babies, apparently a lot of us. We are now over fifty (in my case over sixty) and we have seen a lot of changes over the decades.
Warning: Younger adults may have to Google many of the following references.
Two big things happened in 1955, the year I was born. Disneyland and McDonalds. I’ve never been to Disneyland, but sadly, I have been to McDonalds too many times! I have learned from my mistakes.
I know what you’re thinking and yes, there were many other things happening that year also like the Salk’s Polio vaccine was approved, and birth control pills. The Micky Mouse Club debuted, and Elvis Presley was a big hit along with Rock & Roll. Rosa Parks made her famous stand and the Vietnam war began and would end the year we graduated high school in 1973.
Actor James Dean died that year, so did physicist and Nobel winner Albert Einstein, you may have heard of him. Some people born that year were Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, coincidence?
Speaking of computers, the computer would be going from the size of a room to us literally wearing one on our wrist today like the old Dick Tracy* comic of yesteryear. Isn’t modern technology awesome! (*Google alert for you young ones)
We started out with a newer thing called television and were thrilled to be able to watch shows in black and white. Then came color! Wow, did that open a whole new horizon. I remember on Sunday nights my family used to drive over to my aunt and uncles house for supper and then we’d all sit and watch Bonanza on their new color TV.
We still had black and white at home and Bonanza just wasn’t the same once you’d seen it in color. (Michael Landon was even dreamer in color!) Later, as an young adult I owned a portable TV which I could watch my favorite shows (on all four channels) while sitting outside. Imagine that, I felt so empowered! Now it’s on my cell phone, all 250 channels.
Gadgets have always been my favorite things, like that newfangled spellcheck and dictionary from long, long ago. Then came more little information gadgets and soon you were able to buy a computer for your home!
The early version of internet meant waiting forever while your computer dialed it up through your land line telephone and there were a lot of pings and buzzes involved. It opened a whole new horizon; the world was literally now at your fingertips.
I used to go on the internet just to look up photos of other parts of the world, places I’d never be able to travel to. Being able to instantly access information was so fascinating to me and still is. My grand-kids think nothing of being able to type in a few words and pull up information in the blink of an eye, but back in the beginning it seemed so futuristic.
With all this wonderful technology that we enjoy today there are also some problems that go with it, or as the kids like to refer to it as, 21st century problems. Unlike the old land line phones that only went out when either a telephone pole was down due to a storm, or you neglected to pay "Ma Bell" your phone bill, (remember long distance bills?) cell phones come with their own problems. Today, cell phones can go down for many reasons, solar flashes, no tower service, tower site down, battery died, the unpaid bill is still one of them unfortunately, and my personal favorite, dropped calls.
Ah, 21st Century problems, that brings me back to this mornings thunderstorm.
I love all the new devices that can turn your ordinary house into a “smart home”. My oldest son Jason got me hooked on the Hue lights as he has them throughout his home. I love the way you can control your lighting from your phone or your voice if you add another invention, that being some type of voice-controlled speaker, think Dot or Google or Siri. My son had an extra Hue light hub, so he sent one home with me and I quickly went out and purchased some smart light bulbs.
These bulbs are not cheap, just for “ordinary” white light it is around $15 a bulb. But, they can be dimmed and controlled, without touching your lamp, which most ordinary light bulbs cannot. My strong will for wanting to stay as stationary as possible makes these devices even more appealing to me. I was so awed by their performance I saved up and purchased a color bulb. I say saved up because those run about $50 a bulb.
The range of colors and things you can do with these bulbs is worth the money in my humble opinion. My goal is to eventually replace all my white light smart bulbs with the colored ones in my living room for that true color experience. You can make it look like a sunset or a desert savanna (I’m trusting them on this one) for example. Who doesn’t want that? I wonder if I can set up a “donation” account to help me buy more colored bulbs?
The small voice-controlled speakers of today are also part of my home and something I love. I have three of the Dot’s in my house and use them frequently. One is in my bedroom, one in the living room and one in the kitchen. The one in the kitchen gets the most use. While I’m cooking I can use it to set timers and add items to my shopping list, then pull up that list on my smartphone later when at the store.
No more forgotten or lost lists, no more trying to remember what it was I was out of. No more forgetting to write it down on my list only to forget to take my list along with me later. I love the immediacy of the whole system. My brain can relax too. My brain thanks me.
As I mentioned in the beginning, there is a downside to this technology. If you ever lose electricity for even a second or two, when it comes back on, FLASH, so does every single Hue bulb in your house including the bedroom ceiling lights.
After being blinded into wakefulness you reach over for your iPad or cell phone and manually turn off each room of lights, or you tell Alexa or Google to do it for you, at least that’s how it normally goes. Not this morning. As I mentioned it also killed my internet hub. No Internet, no controlled devices. Rats, my Capricornian power control foiled again.
I am glad I have been a part of this technical revolution and have seen all the advances since the mid-fifties. For the most part I love technology and the great things it can do for us. There are definitely some problems with it and some things that need to be tweaked and overhauled. I wonder what the next big thing to come out will be?
My smartwatch is telling me I need to get more steps in for the day and that I have ten unread emails. The weather map on the front is showing me rain has cleared out of my area for now with temperatures up into the eighties. Looks like another day inside with the air conditioning on for me, which is another of my all-time favorite inventions.
“Alexa add laundry soap to my shopping list”. Oh right, no internet. Now where did I put a pen?
Until next time…Toni
From 1955: (Just for fun)
Average Cost of new house – $10.950.00 Average Monthly Rent – $87.00 Average Yearly Wages – $4.130.00 Minimum Hourly Rate – $1.00 Average Cost of a new car – $1,900.00 Cost of a gallon of Gas – .23 cents Black and White TV – $99.95
Update:
I managed to make it through the next few days and over the weekend before our technical support could come fix our internet on “Monday between noon and four.” I had to manually turn on and off my lights and my fan until then. How 20th century!
I placed a call in to our internet provider Monday morning to make sure I was still on the list for a repair visit that afternoon, and was assured I was. I sat waiting all Monday afternoon for the tech person to arrive and when five-thirty rolled around and still no word, I called in to the company to find out what happened.
The overly cheerful young man in customer support was also perplexed as he noted I was indeed on the repair list for the day but then had been removed. This is another thing you don’t want to hear. He needed to put me on hold while he checked with his supervisor.
I never got a good answer other than the job prior to mine had taken longer and I would need to call back in the morning and reschedule another appointment. I politely told him I did not think this was a proper way to handle your customers and suggested that they may want to consider letting the customer know if another job is taking longer and then reschedule the customer that got bumped for the next morning.
I told him I didn’t feel like them not calling or showing up was my responsibility or that I should be required to call in to make another appointment. I felt that putting me back on the two-day waiting list was not a good way to handle things. He thanked me for my advice and we hung up.
About a half an hour later my phone rang, and it was an automated voice from my internet provider telling me that our repair tech would be arriving within the next hour. This was a shock to me. That would also put them at our house between six-thirty and seven, not the ideal time of day to have a repair tech in your house.
While we were finishing up supper I noticed a white van pull into our driveway and I went and put Kutter into the bedroom because most repair people don’t like having a pit bull staring at them while they work on your stuff. Kutter is a gentle soul and would only lick people, but his bark and stare can be intimidating.
I was waiting to answer the front door when my phone rang again. It was the tech guy out in his truck, in our driveway. He was asking me if he was at our house by describing my house to me and the vehicles parked in front of it. I wanted to walk outside and lead him by the hand up to my front door, but I resisted and told him yes, he was at my house.
I could tell immediately that he was in a very foul mood. I’m guessing some supervisor told him he had to get to our house tonight! I had never said that to the customer service guy earlier and had left it that I would reschedule my appointment for another day.
He was a young man, early twenties, scowl on his face, no polite chit chat at all. He went up on the roof to make sure the dish was still pointing toward the tower in Dike, then came in the house and got on our computer. Then he was out in his truck and back and forth a few times.
Each time he came in or out he left our front door open, so I’d have to get up and go around and shut it, as the air conditioning was on. Him not being able to shut doors would come into play later. Karma is real too, just like Capricorns.
After about a half an hour he managed to get it repaired and told us we had internet again. I thanked him as he walked out the door, again no word from him at all. I was going to tell him that I appreciated his coming so late but as I said he was in a crabby mood and just walked out the door.
A few minutes later I was surprised when he was back at our front door knocking on it again. Apparently, he is also unfamiliar with doorbells. He asked me if we had any fly spray because his truck had flies in it and a hornet. I didn’t correct him that more than likely it was a mud wasp.
He said he had left his truck door open the entire time he was here, see what I mean about leaving doors open? I did politely tell him that it was never a good idea to leave a door or window open when out on a farm location. It’s summer, there are flies.
I looked around the house and all I could find was a small can of mosquito spray which I said he could try and just keep the can. He didn’t return so I can only wonder at the outcome.
To thank us he left his pile of cigarette butts in my back yard, so my dog could eat them later. Luckily, I saw them first and cleaned up after the guy. How many could one guy smoke? Perhaps I should have told him about the downfalls of smoking too?
It was a delightful experience all around. If you are wondering if I’m going to call my internet provider this morning and let them know what a wonderful experience we had, oh most definitely yes I am.
I was happy later when I could tell Alexa to add sweet and sour sauce to my shopping list and I watched my living room lights slowly dim on their time schedule and then turn off.
The 21st C had been restored to my home and I could once again rest well knowing that technology was up and working for me once again. The joy of power was again surging through my veins.
Epilogue:
Since writing this blog, there was an EF3 tornado that hit Marshalltown, Iowa, among other towns. At first, other than my deep concern for the people who lived there and the businesses that were destroyed and my fear of Zeno’s pizza being gone, I did not feel it had affected me much personally. This proved to be a false statement as I quickly learned that my internet provider was heavily damaged in this same tornado and we would be a week without internet service.
Being without the internet is a very, very small thing compared to people who lost homes, jobs, businesses, and other belongings. My heart goes out to them all.