Smart House Blues

Last week I went on an eight-day ski trip in Colorado with a couple of guys that frequently come to visit me at Snowbird in Utah. I have listened to their stories of skiing endless powder at Wolf Creek and so I decided to join them this year. They picked me up at the Denver airport and we proceeded to drive for our first night of lodging. John drove while Jim sat in the front passenger seat and I hung out in the back.

John is owner of a high-tech company in the Chicago area and loves technologies. He brought no fewer than 2 tablets, 2 smartphones, and a laptop computer complete with all of the cables and wires one would need to connect everything together. I wasn't in the car for more than 30 minutes before John's wife called about a problem with the TV. He was driving and couldn't really help her and so the call was quick. There were several more calls before we got to our destination.

The next morning we were up early to do some skiing and there were more calls related to the TV not working. Jim kept telling John to log into one of the cameras he has in his office and watch what his wife was doing. That would have to wait until we were back at the condo. Fortunately John was able to figure out the problem and I thought we were done with "fix-it" calls from his wife. Nope, as soon as the TV was fixed, there was a beeping noise coming from behind the furnace. Jim thought it was because the smoke alarm battery needed to be replace. After a dozen phone calls from the chairlift throughout the day, we discovered it was actually a low battery in a moisture sensor.

John has a "smart house" that is digitally connected to numerous sensors and alleged time-saving devices. Each device has a purpose that has proved its worth. Unfortunately for us, John never trained his wife on any of it and we dealt with constant calls about problems, beeps, and alarms throughout our trip. It sort of made me glad that my house is incredibly simple and the only real home automation I have is a computer-controlled thermostat that my wife is more than capable of handling. I had a great trip and only got calls from my wife asking about the skiing.