Rants – Page 3 – Modern Anachronist

Adding smarts to an old house

This summer, as I invoked Siri to light up the dinner table on the patio, my father-in-law’s girlfriend said, “You have a smart house?”

I’ve never really thought about it, but I suppose I do. I’ve got lights that are tied to sunset & sunrise. I’ve got lights that turn on if the wife or I come home after dark. I can control the HVAC system from anywhere in the world.

It’s not something that I consciously set out to do, it just slowly happened over a course of several years. In this post I’ll describe some of the lessons about “smart homes” that I’ve learned the hard way over the years.

The toys that make noise*

*hat tip to Dennis Leary for the title.

With an eight-year -old and a six-year-old, I can’t believe how long it took me to figure this out. Anyone with children knows the pain of loud toys, especially early in the morning.

Belt & Suspenders & …

…..some other thing to hold up my pants.

This weekend I learned an important difference between my wife and I.

I take baby steps, she jumps in the deep end. Continue reading “Belt & Suspenders & …”

Fail to plan, plan to fail

So yeah, what exactly is the plan here?

Given the number of roles that Fessick has to fill, and my thin wallet, I need to be careful with how I go about the build. I don’t want to install something and learn later that I need to remove it because it interferes with another thing, or because I started cheap and later find I need a capability that I hadn’t prepared for.

Turning parts into ca$h

When I took the 35″ wheels & tires off, the wife asked me why I brought them home & what I was going to do with them.

I took some photos & listed them on Craigslist for sale. My asking price was high, but my understanding is that everything is negotiated on that site.

Project goals

Or What’s Fessick going to be when he grows up?

My wallet won’t support a vehicle that can’t do everything. And I mean everything.

Feature Creep

Let’s look at the airbags as an example of feature creep.

An air suspension is great for towing because it lets you have a soft luxury suspension when you’re traveling light, but add stiffness when needed for towing. You can add air at any fuel station, or even with a bicycle pump.

The world’s slowest build

I’m totally in awe of those builds that just happen. Guy buys truck. Guy disassembles truck. Guy throws a ton of hardware at it. Super truck done.

This is not going to be that build.

Rules for modifying my vehicle.

Once I put on the 16 inch wheels, I was bombarded with people telling me that I was wrong to take off the 20’s.
Better acceleration.
Better fuel economy.
According to many of my coworkers, these things should be sacrificed on the altar of lifted trucks.