Monkinetic Weblog

@shawnfreebern @mathowie Great info, thanks!

RT @shawnfreebern: @steveivy @mathowie Compared to Eve & Wemo, the Lutron kit has been more reliable, responsive, faster. If you have excel…

@mathowie Why are the WiFi switches and dinners so much cheaper than the Lutron caseta devices? Is the Lutron way better or just overpriced I wonder...

So the ask that comes in is: "Automate putting this spreadsheet in this share for this person". Pushing for more info, the required spreadsheet goes to a batch process that used to be a form in some other system.

And that form - you might guess - used to be a paper form. That form existed so that auditors would have a (literal) paper trail to follow to establish that the organization was meeting regulatory requirements.

in an Oracle database beneath a vendor's 20-year old product.

And each person involved each layer of that process acted in good faith to meet the need presented to them at the time.

So I've learned to ask questions, but avoid judging. Large companies are large, man.

Year end, been thinking about my 5 years (and counting) working for a large enterprise, and am trying to put down some of the things I've learned into words.

Large companies, especially in regulated industries, have business requirements that can be hard to tease out, because they are hidden behind processes that were put in place many years ago to meet a regulatory requirement.

The actual requirement usually reads something like "track when an asset was purchased and how it was disposed of", but there is now a python client in front of a SOAP API in front of a batch process in front of a database table in front of a stored procedure...

Once more because I'm a dork, and in celebration of movies both old and new on Disney+ https://t.co/1Wg75MxYcf

@pixel Oh, I've also wished that a shortcut could do text-to-speech without "your shortcut says... 'thing'"

@pixel yeah, I've tried it with scripted timers which sort of works, but (inexplicably) there's no "send notification" script action.

@vvuksan out with friends at dinner

BEEP BEEP... BEEP BEEP

"Sorry, excuse me, my pager went off. Kids left the back door cracked again"

@vvuksan Great, now my #smarthome is going to have me on call 24-7 #opslife

Current most frustrating #smarthome problem: I've been testing a door sensor (Elgato Eve) and cannot find a solution to "notify me if this door left open for x seconds". HomeKit doesn't quite support the automation, and the sensors are too simple to track time-open themselves.

Got myself a couple of Wemo outlets as an early Christmas present; now looking for property to mortgage so I can replace every electrical item in the house #smarthomedumbowner

I forgot about "Pie for Breakfast Day", so instead I'm celebrating " Forgot I could eat it today so I ate it all yesterday and now I have a pie hangover" day https://t.co/4zx0HI6Vs0

RT @dillspitzen: @scalzi sweet potato pie is the far superior pumpkin pie. (and I don't just say that because eating anything pumpkin caus…