I’m just this guy, you know?

  • 29 Posts
  • 702 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • 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 (edit: spending) acquiring 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. I want about 6 or 10 forks full of food, and then that’s it. And it’d best taste good, or I can’t be bothered. Restaurants easily stop looking like a good deal.

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




  • 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!


  • When you simmer or slow roast tomato sauce over several hours, the sugars in the tomato release and caramelize which helps to offset acidity. If you’re finding the cooked sauce is still acidic, you can try adding other sweet vegetables such as finely grated carrot, sweet onion, or half of a raw potato (which you’d remove before serving).

    That they pack your tomatoes with lemon might mean you need to actively neutralize the extra acids, which you can do with milk or cream, or just a little baking soda as you suggest. Probably not more than a pinch, though, or the sauce could lose its brightness.





  • 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