Sunday's Activities Include: track, applebee's horse!, Black Panther

I took T. to track. I walked a few laps with B., which was nice. Her son B. is feeling much better than he has in a while, which I was happy to hear. She recommended a couple restaurants to me -- Life Alive and Blaze -- for having really tasty vegetarian / vegan options. She also really enjoyed _Born on a Blue Day_.

We stopped at home so T. could change, then dropped some books at the library. We went to Applebee's for lunch. Then we went to the horse! Once there (early), I ordered T. new paddock boots because his are size 8! OMG! He hasn't been to the horse in so long his feet grew a ton; we bought those a year and a half ago. I got to see M. for the first time in ages. Her son A. has grown so much! T. too of course, but I'm used to that.

We went to Black Panther in Littleton at Oneil. I got a manhattan. Their house manhattan uses Four Roses and Orange Bitters. It is tasty. They serve it up in a small plastic cup with a lid, on top of a larger cup with ice in it, so you get to decide whether you want it up or on the rocks, and you have the rocks keeping it cold in the meantime. Clever!

Black Panther was _awesome_. I mean, I knew it was going to be, but still. The hair, so beautiful! The clothes, so gorgeous! The envisioning of high-tech versions of old-skool things, really incredible! I particularly loved the warriors' cloths that worked as shields. But everything was So So So! Words fail. As many have already said, it opens one's heart to the possibilities to see so many powerful women, working together -- and even when they disagree, they do not scorch the earth with their disagreement. It is an extremely masculine movie, despite all that, with all the worst toxicity of masculinity (why is this peaceful, hidden, high tech nation so willing to throw down in a civil war when someone no one knows shows up and doesn't even fully win a challenge? It's gotta be testosterone poisoning. Or a long standing disagreement about whether they should stay in the closet, technologically speaking). All of the pieces work together really well, tho. The music is great. The colors and the rhythms and the pacing make me yearn to travel to Wakanda, and not too many fictional places have that effect on me (Oz, obviously, but not so many others).

Looking forward already to seeing it again; if I don't catch it a second time in a movie theatre, I'll buy it online so I can rewind and stare at all the details until my eyeballs fall out.

Not So Smart Home

Some time before last holiday season, one of A.'s friends informed her of the existence of colored lighting that interacts with smart home hubs such as Google Home. Right away, A. wanted to get a Google Home device and the light bulbs and Make Her Room Even More Pink. Because, Pink World. I was like, okay, we do not actually need to get the Google Home device because Alexa will work with that. We will put it on your holiday wish list and if no one gets it for you we will get it for you and set up your Super Pink Lighting. Which we did.

I then followed that up with a wemo switch, actually, a set of three wemo switches. I thought, wouldn't it be cool to say something to Alexa, and have the lights set up for morning (or night, as the case may be) and have the noise machine also adjust off (or on, as the case may be). I was able to set up the switches, and they appeared on the alexa app in the smart home device selector menu. But NOT on the routine programming smart home device selector. Because ... ?

Actually, I oversimplify. There were a few stages to get the switches to show up at all, and some of those involved just waiting overnight, so I let some time go by hoping that they would Magically appear on the Routine page. Then, more recently, I bought more wemo switches, set one up and it did the same thing. Bummer. I put it on a living room pole lamp, because that seemed useful. I saved the last one for R. to set up, because he set the one up in my office and it always worked correctly. He put that on the downstairs hall lamp. Because that seemed useful.

I discovered that while R. could not see the routines I had set up, he _could_ see the switches (and by "switch" I mean a switched outlet) on his Routine programming smart home device selector menu. Mystery!

In a fit of pique, I said, Self, maybe the problem is You. So I deleted the alexa app from my phone, redownloaded it and re-logged in. And lo! Problem solved! Noise machines added to routines! Yay!

There is clearly a table not being refreshed somewhere. Here's hoping this never happens again, and I never do learn what just went wrong there. R. is convinced that we are about to run out of subnet space on the router. This seems unlikely to me. But you know, IoT has been growing at a furious rate, so, maybe.

ETA: I now have two routines set up for the downstairs. "I'm going downstairs" turns on the kitchen lights (first wemo switch, not an outlet), the hall lamp and the living room lamp (both mentioned above) and "Make It Dark", which turns all of those off. Yes, I know I could have set up room awareness; I'm unconvinced that is appropriate in this case.

One of the rationales for getting Alexa was to solve the I Am Afraid I'm Going to Break My Neck Going Downstairs and Searching for a Light Switch problem. I may have overshot slightly.