Man, I got stuff to do. Lol.

I mean…

Steam? Maybe? I dunno, I don’t game but the Steam kids seem to prefer Arch. I’m sure they have their reasons.

Practically? Probably nothing terribly significant.

As someone on semaglutide therapy, I can share that a large calorie deficit hits you in the wills to live. At some point even just eating feels like a stop at the gas station to fuel up, and it hardly matters whether it’s 87 or 95 octane. Hell, rancid fry oil would even work. At some point, you stop caring whether you eat because it feels like another chore.

Eventually your metabolism syncs up again with your energy demand and you start getting interested in food, except you’re way more selective about how you’re spending those calories. I almost can’t abide by junk food, fast food, or breaded fried crap anymore. But neither do I want salad or vegetables because they’re “fluffy.” Too much volume, not enough calories.

Anyway that’s a digest of my diary for the last 22 months. Do with the info as you will.

You, uh… You do a newsletter?

Are you looking for a system that is strictly motion sensors, or do you have a smart assistant that supports other wireless protocols than Wifi?

My strategy as a home assistant user has been to lean on smart switches and dumb bulbs to the extent that I can, so that I can locally control fixtures without having to rely on the assistant being awake and healthy. I do have a few instances where I have dumb switches and smart bulbs, but only where I also want to control the light colors and where the bulb is controlled right at the fixture.

That said, there does appear to be a tasmota 3-pole switch by Martin Jerry on Amazon. You’d probably just replace one of your 3-pole switches with the Tasmota and leave the other switch alone. You could pick up one of the Everything Smarthome presence kits and use that for your motion sensor.

Hope any of this helps!

For me it depends in whether the publisher has a .deb file available or not. If there’s a downloadable deb file, I just install that through apt/dpkg.

I try not to use custom repos anymore because they rarely keep up with the named releases and can introduce library conflicts.

If I can only get a tarball of the precompiled binary then I’ll unpack it in /opt and drop a soft link to the main binary in /usr/local/bin. This is how I handle Firefox and Thunderbird at least.

Otherwise, there’s containers (Unif controller, for example) and flatpacks as a last resort.

I personally hate building and installing from source, but I’ll do that if I absolutely have to.

Thanks! I hate this. 🖤

Seconded! My 5T was the best phone I’ve ever carried. I carry the OP11 5G these days and I’ve been really happy with it, but overall I prefer the size and weight of the 5T.

I have an ecobee thermostat that I manage locally over WiFi using the HomeKit integration, but I’d stop short of recommending it to new users.

1. Ecobee used to support developer access to their cloud API for controlling the thermostat and collecting efficiency data, but stopped issuing new API access tokens in the last couple of years. They have no plans currently to reopen developer access. If you have a token then the ecobee integration works fine, but if you don’t you’re stuck with HomeKit.
2. The thermostat requires 24V from the furnace to run the display and wifi stack. They provide an adapter you can install if you have available free leads at bother ends of the thermostat control cable. I had to splice a new wire onto the 24V transformer in my furnace since it didn’t have a 24V common terminal on the control block. It wasn’t hard to do in the end, but it was a lot of research.
3. Some advanced thermostat features require the app. I am not sure whether the app uses cloud or local control when on the same WiFi.
4. Not all features are available through the HomeKit integration. I can change the thermostat mode among Auto/Heat/Cool/Off, manage the blower fan mode and manage the heat/cool set points.
5. Data logging. The damned thing does log activity back home, and the data is only available in the app or on thr web portal.

Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the show? I haven’t been unhappy with the ecobee. The HomeKit integration works fine, and I get enough data from the native HA history to track and manage my energy demand. I shied away from Honeywell because my last Honeywell thermostat-- the one I used just before the thermostat I replaced with the ecobee-- tended to cycle my furnace too fast during cold snaps, and it would put the system into thermal protect mode. There was no way to widen the hysteresis (or modify the duty cycle) except by manually setting the temp high, run the house up to that temp, and then lower the setpoint and let the house take longer to cool.

ETA: the ecobee a decent thermostat and I’m happy enough with it overall. It has “spousal approval” accreditation as well. I wish it checked more boxes for me*, but it was essentially free through a power utility program. Its a worthy upgrade for me, but YMMV.

* namely, Z* protocol local control and continued cloud API access

N… No?
No.
No, I’m pretty sure I haven’t.

It’s Piers Morgan. Of course he’s not telling the truth.

Never going in with a Sicilian when death is on the line?

Termux (on F-droid) is a userland environment that runs on top of your Android device’s kernel. It has Debian/Ubuntu-like package management system that pulls from repos maintained by the termux team. If the package is available for aarch64, its probably available in the termux repos. Its not so much of an app as it is an alternate userland that runs on top of the same kernel, but can interact with Android a couple of different ways.

The main Termux app gets you a basic command line environment with the usual tools included in a headless Linux install. From there you can select your preferred repos, do package updates, installs, etc, just like on a desktop or laptop. You could even install a desktop environment and use RDP to access it.

Then there are some companion apps that are useful:

• Termux:boot is like a primitive rc.d feature that executes upon boot up any scripts found in the termux ~/.termux/boot directory. You could use the feature to launch an SSH server, or perhaps start your syncthing service when the phone starts up.
• Termux:Tasker is a Tasker plugin that allows Tasker to launch scripts in .termux/tasker based on whatever triggers or profiles you define in Tasker. For example, stop or start selected services when connected to your home WiFi
• Termux:API is a set of termux utilities to interact with the Android API, and do things like send messages, interact with the camera or battery, and manipulate system settings.

So you could install the syncthing package in Termux and (after setting up Termux access for your internal storage) configure it to sync folders from your phone to wherever syncthing syncs. You’d set up a start script under Termux:boot to launch it when your phone starts, or Tasker to start/stop the service on your home WiFi.

For the F-droid enabled users, it seems there’s a Syncthing app in the Termux repos:

~ $ apt show syncthing
Package: syncthing
Version: 1.28.0
Maintainer: @termux
Installed-Size: 26.4 MB
Homepage: https://syncthing.net/
Download-Size: 7857 kB
APT-Sources: https://packages.termux.dev/apt/termux-main stable/main aarch64 Packages
Description: Decentralized file synchronization

The Volt is a hybrid gas & electric. The gas engine is there in part to charge the battery, and in part to power the electric drivetrain.

Under normal drive conditions, the gas engine short-cycles and doesn’t really come up to operating temp, which gums up the EGR valve causing the valve to pull too much current and start blowing fuses that power other critical parts of the battery charge control circuit. Left us stranded on an interstate this past spring until I could limp it to an auto parts store off the next exit to buy a replacement fuse. It ate two more before we could get home.

The workarounds to disable or bypass the EGR (for now) can cause other potential issues with the engine in the long run. Simply disconnecting the EGR keeps it from blowing fuses, but then the car isn’t road legal in many states because it fails emissions. Also, the EGR is part of the combustion engine’s cooling system, so not recirculating hot crank case gases works the rest of the cooling system harder, and potentially damages the pistons & cylinders.

The whole situation is a mess. Thankfully we have a second vehicle that’s a regular gas engine, so we use that one for distance driving, and can just use this one for around-town driving while we figure out what to do next with it.

The OEM part is, as the service manager at the dealer put it, “on intergalactic back order.”

They don’t make the OEM part any more, and anyone who has new stock isn’t selling it to other dealers. You might be able to find a Chinese version, but if you have a warranty or service plan, you’re rolling the dice with it.

It’ll be a class action suit one day, I feel it in me bones. 🏴‍☠️

2016 Chevy Volt. Needs an EGR valve.

Chevy: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No.

Hello, third rail. i wasn’t expecting to tangle with you today.

Cooool!