About a month or so ago, our basement fire/carbon monoxide alarm began chirping, signaling low battery.

And – of course – the chirping started in the middle of the night…

Seeing as how this would be the third set of batteries in that unit in about six weeks, I figured the unit was a goner; time for a new one.

I got to thinking about Nest’s – the thermostat maker – new product: The Nest Protect: A combo fire and carbon monoxide detector/alarm.

Long story short, I bought one. It’s considerably more expensive than other detectors – the Nest Protect was $129; the one it replaced was around $40-$50.

After purchase, installation and use of the product for more than a two weeks (installed ~ two weeks ago), here are some first impressions, in no particular order:

• It’s smaller than I expected. While pictures of it up on the ceiling/wall don’t give a real sense of scale, I pictured it larger (but am glad it’s not!). It’s about the size – WxLxH – of three regular plastic CDs cases stacked.
• Heavier than I expected. There grill appears be be metal (or some non-plastic). Good.
• Brilliant design from a looks point of view. It’s a sexy looking product. When have you ever thought that about a smoke alarm?
• Software is brilliant as well. From the different colors of the collar around the Nest logo to it’s alert design – smartphone message as well as just the audio alarm. Behavior-wise, there’s a lot to like about this little unit.
• Overall, this is the first non-Apple product that looks and acts like an Apple product – and that’s high praise. Apple sweats the little details (maybe too much, but that’s another entry), and in the case of the Nest Protect, it too reflects this holistic approach to design.
• Nest was founded by two former Apple employees, including one largely responsible for the iPod. So the Apple-ish of the Nest Procect is no surprise.
• The (replaceable) batteries are designed to last a “couple of years” – the documentation says they cannot yet make that claim officially, because it hasn’t been in testing that long. But if true, that’s a real selling point, as well – especially for those hard-to-reach detectors it could replace.
• Just an FYI – have to have a smartphone (to run the free app) as well as a WiFi connection for this to really work as advertised.
• One complaint – the notifications to the smartphone come to the Nest app – I’d prefer a text message. The Nest app might be buried down on screen four; text messages are always up front. The notification comes in, but if you don’t check right away, you might think it was something else. Nest – address this please.

Again, handful of weeks with the unit, and so far so good. The batteries could crap out tomorrow and then I might be less than thrilled, but – for now – very happy. Worth the extra cost for the extra features (especially the remote notification) at this point.

Also, the Nest Protect and the Nest thermostat are the first real “internet of things” items that are getting into average (non-geek) homes. Interesting to be seeing this from the ground floor.

* Picture from screenshot @ nest.com

Wow, cold and windy outside.

What did I do this weekend?

Shoveled snow.

Snow dropping off, but cold is getting colder.

Update Monday, Jan. 6 – Chicago broke an all-time low record today @ about 8am: -16°F. At the same time, it was only -11°F at the South Pole. ‘Nuff said…

All things told, 2013 wasn’t a bad year for us (Romy & I), but it was certainly nothing remarkable.

One the upside, we refinanced our house, had a better-than-expected trip to South Dakota and we’re both still employed – the latter no small feat in this sluggish economy.

On the downside, we lost some friends and family this year: Doris, Mary Rose and, of course, Action Jackson.

Weather overall was just … whatever. Never too long a spell of hot or cold, but not a good year for growing a garden.

All in all, 2013 kinda sucked. Not at all sorry to see it go.

Doris Newlin – my aunt
1918 – 2013

Actually, make that two Christmases, a wake and a funeral.

We did Romy’s parents’ Christmas on Dec. 24th and 25th down in Valparaiso, IN. These yearly sojourns are extremely secular, immediate-family affairs – more of an excuse to eat and drink than much else. Sushi, German cold cuts, herring salad, BBQ chickens, filet mignon, brats and more. And we brought home a fridgeful of leftovers.

I just got back from my Dad’s house, where we held the Geistlinger Xmas palooza. More of a traditional affair, with a tree and other decorations, lots and lots (and lots – basically, too many) gifts and good food (again, almost too much…).

For my side of the family, this holiday was a bit more somber. My 95-year-old aunt, Doris, died on Dec. 21st after a year of health difficulties. Had she hung on for another month, she would have hit 96. We had the wake for her the day after Christmas and the funeral the following day (yesterday/Friday).

While always a blow to lose a family member – especially close to an event in which the member was to participate (our Xmas) – Doris lived a long life, outliving two husbands and basically doing more in a day than I do in a week, pretty much up until the last year of her life. By all means mourn the loss, but don’t forget to celebrate the life!

She’ll be missed, as will her cookies – she was a great baker. You know how when you’re in college and you get a “care package” from home? Food, money, socks and so on? Well, my Aunt Doris would send tins and tins of awesomeness. When a package from her arrived, well, I was everybody’s best friend.

Fortunately, I still have a few days off before I go back to work, so perhaps – perhaps – I can get some (one?) of the projects I had hoped to at least make a stab at before it’s back to the regular routine.

All in all, both a very normal Xmas and not-so-normal Xmas season for me this year. And right around the corner is 2014.

What ya got in store for us 2014?

Really, why argue against?

The refusal of Republican states to accept Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion surely ranks as one of the most sordid acts in recent American history. The cost to the states is tiny, and the help it would bring to the poor is immense. It’s paid for by taxes that residents of these states are going to pay regardless of whether they receive any of the benefits. And yet, merely because it has Obama’s name attached to it, they’ve decided that immiserating millions of poor people is worth it. It’s hard to imagine a decision more depraved.

Conservatives hate it when you accuse them of simply not caring about the poor. Sometimes they have a point. This is not one of those times.

Kevin Drum

I signed up for Dropbox over the weekend. Here are some first impressions, fresh off the install/uploads:

• I bought the Pro plan (100G; $99/year [prepaid]), so if you’re using a different plan, your mileage may vary, but I doubt it.
• Install a breeze (Windoze 7).
• I have good backups at home, but I wanted an off-site backup for my digital pics. Dropbox seemed to be the best solution for me.
• It took over 30 hours for the initial upload (~65G of images), but the process was smooth, indicators on the local box and web site kept me informed of what was going on.
• Very, very seamless. It’s like having a folder called “dropbox” on your machine (actually, that’s exactly how it appears on your PC) – except it goes to the cloud, so copy work there. (I haven’t had to pull anything out of history yet; that’ll be another story.)
• Dislike No. 1: I uploaded two folders; one with just loose pics, the other with multiple directories. I expected – at both high level and in drill down – a way on the Dropbox.com site to see the number of files in given directory, perhaps the size total etc. (like a PC). Nope. Kinda disappointing.
• Dislike No. 2: I kind of expected the local Dropbox folder to act like rsynch (which, behind the scenes, it probably uses), where you put 10 files in the folder – nine old and one new – and it would examine all 10, and just upload the new one (or another file if it had been modified). But it acts like a PC file system, saying this file already exists etc. Probably good for most users, but not what I was expecting.
• The slideshow feature (on the web) is remarkable. I think I like Flickr’s better (link is Cornell’s Birdshare Flickr account), but this does a tremendous job. As mentioned above, I just uploaded pictures, and … nicely done, Dropbox!

That’s all I have right now – overall, a very positive experience (and if I was doing the free service, it would be really awesome!).

Update 11/28/2013 – After I put my photos in the cloud, I decided to move my iTunes there, as well. Another 17G+. I upped my account to 200 Gigs; worth it? For peace of mind, yeah. Cheapest offering? Nah, but I’m looking for hit-by-a-bus backup. I like Dropbox – and for those of you out there who need just 5G or less, by all means use their free offering. Slick.

Lost in all the Sturm und Drang about the new healthcare law – AKA Obamacare (Affordable Care Act, ACA) – is an interesting dynamic that I’ve not seen commented on: The stated equivalence of the heathcare.gov website (portal for ACA sign-ups and information) and the law itself by both opponents and proponents of the new healthcare law.

Failure to get healthcare.gov up and running well is the same as saying the new healthcare law is a failure.

Which is like saying that if Amazon.com suddenly experienced months of outages, no one would be able to buy a book or stream a movie.

In both cases, poppycock!

I get that from a political point of view, hammering the failure of healthcare.gov to deliver as promised is a handy cudgel against the law. It’s symbolic, easy to grasp, a very good sound bite. Even proponents of the law are buying into this ridiculous equivalence – that the law could be doomed if they can’t fix this web site.

Why is this equivalence ridiculous? Because of the following:

• The federal exchange – healthcare.gov – was set up as an ACA information and an exchange to purchase insurance for those in states that didn’t create their own (over half of the states). That’s a lot of data to compile, present to user, and pass to insurers in any given state. A lot could go wrong, and – by many estimates – almost everything has.
• Many states did elect to set up their own online exchanges, and this is a much simpler than a multi-state exchange (like healthcare.gov). States have their own regulations/rates and so on, so the exact same plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield may cost $x in Virginia, and $y in Maryland. If you only have to worry about one set of regulations/group of insurers etc., it makes your life much easier. Many states are doing very well with these exchanges, states such as California, Vermont and Kentucky (led by a Republican governor State congress/Democrat govenor).
• Other states have set up their own exchanges, and – like the federal exchange – are struggling. Most notably, Oregon – a heavily blue state that has embraced the ACA – is having such problems that it has yet to sign up a single user. Yet you don’t hear much about this (maybe in Oregon?); for ACA opponents, the federal exchange is the more appealing pinata. And that’s understandable. More buck for your bang.
• In most states, insurance companies have web sites that are working well – but we don’t hear anything about that, do we? Agreed, you can’t do comparisons (to other insurers) on these sites, but if you liked your old BCBS plan in the past and now need a new ACA-compliant plan, maybe hit the site and see what’s offered.
• The other pre-web methods of signing up for ACA insurance are all there: toll-free numbers; federally mandated workers (navigators) to help you on a walk-in basis in local areas; your local insurance agent; filing by snail mail.

Bottom line: Agree/disagree with the ACA, the abysmal launch of the healthcare.gov site is inexcusable. As a programmer, I’m not at all surprised, but this puts a black eye on what has become the public face of the ACA.

But I still think it’s amusing to equate the failure of a single instance of many web sites (state, insurance companies) with the demise of a sweeping law, but that’s what it’s come to.

And it’s fun to see these old white dudes on the news – the ones that can barely use Twitter – explain how to fix this web site (to salvage the law they have voted to repeal about four dozen times).

Just a thought.

Well, we lost Jack today – he was never really ours, but I hope that over the last year and a half, we made his life as cat-happy as possible.

A few weeks ago, he stopped eating, and vet visits showed nothing. He has barely drunk any water in the last five days – I’m surprised he was still able to get around. For mammals, dehydration usually leads to organ failure after a few days. And he was a 15-year-old cat.

He will be missed – when I’d get home and feed the birds, he’d pop out from wherever he was hiding (miscanthus, Joe Pye weed, by the goldenrod…) and trot over to me, flopping on the grass and demanding a belly rub.

It’s never fun to put an animal down, but when the quality of life has all but gone for the animal, it’s the oddly humane thing to do.

He’ll always be aka Action Jackson to us.

Sad but not unexpected event – Borders bookstore filed for bankruptcy about two/three years ago.

This freestanding Borders store close to my house- that I shopped at many times – stood empty since the bankruptcy.

Until this week.

The store is being torn down, a somewhat emphasis point on the decline of the bookstore and the rise of Amazon and eReaders.

Kinda sad, but not in any way unexpected.

Came home yesterday to discover our land line (you know, those ringee things you don’t carry around with you) was down. No dial tone – not a line physically down.

I was able to ascertain that it was not an inside line issue, but when I called the phone company (always a joy), I was told that – due to recent storms in the area – it might be until Monday before a tech could get out here.

What are you going to do? At least we didn’t have to sit around and wait for a tech, as the trouble was outside the house.

But – credit where credit’s due – AT&T had the line up and running by around noon today.

Sometimes it’s the little things.