Saturday: martial arts, no Vic’s, What Vs. How

I took T. to martial arts, but we skipped Vic’s because he was due at Drew Farms in Westford at 10 pm. I brought him home; R. brought him to Westford. T. also has a birthday party to attend for a friend, and A. will be having a playdate with a friend. Busy day!

Last night, the garage door was left open. T. planned to bicycle over to CVS after dark and R. talked him out of it, but the door was never subsequently closed. When I realized that, I thought about how to solve that problem generally, and I decided, why not just program that into Alexa, I mean, that shouldn’t be too bad, right?

Well, unfortunately, the garage door in question does not support Alexa natively, so I was looking at having to connect the app (which we have, and an account for, even) via IFTTT, which so far I’ve managed to completely avoid dealing with and would like to completely avoid dealing with. I downloaded the app only my iPad, found the shared credential in LastPass … and then I realized that you could schedule the door to close via the app without involving Alexa.

So, that was easy, and definitely is another example of What (close the garage door automatically every night ) vs. How (I thought Alexa, turned out there was a much easier solution within the app for the door).

Transponders

We each have EZ Pass transponders in our cars, and I have had a SunPass transponder that I take to Florida once or twice a year. I’ve accidentally left the SunPass transponder behind only once and had to replace it (2018). If I had been paying more attention, I might have signed up for EPass Extra instead. Oh well! Instead, three years later I read an article in the Orlando Sentinel comparing the various transponders, and I think I’m going to get the EPass Uni. We have not yet done a road trip far enough south to need anything other than the EZPass, but we might, and SunPass has been the source of all kinds of problems for us (mostly because I kept trying to get the app to work . . .), and a combined solution is appealing.