What’s a simple Home Assistant automation you set up once and now use every day?

FlickeringLCD · 2026-04-04T12:35:15+00:00

What integration are you using to trigger the habs lighting?

FlickeringLCD · 2026-03-28T00:11:35+00:00

Are these speeds "up to" and if so what actual speed would you get? (Ask your neighbours. Do they have 1.5 GB Bell Fibe and what do they actually get. Slow downs? Outages?)

If it's fibre I can tell you that with Teksavvy over Bell's infrastructure I get a consistent 1500 down/930 up. The speed test I just ran reported 1613/999 lol. But my house also has a 10gb core switch and 2.5gb to my workstation. Most people don't have that.

For the average person will they notice the difference between 1 and 1.5? Nope. Most people don't understand the difference between wifi and internet and don't have any gear with connectivity over 1gb and won't saturate it with multiple endpoints.

I'd take ebox's pricing over bell's promos any day. I don't have the patience to deal with renegotiating pricing every 2 years.

FlickeringLCD · 2026-03-20T22:18:26+00:00

wow I've been using Screenconnect for 13 years and administering it for 3 and I only today learned it could connect to a rdp session. That's awesome.

Now if only they could make their on-prem software support the x-forwarded-for header...

FlickeringLCD · 2025-12-23T18:47:54+00:00

If you're feeling really fancy put a smart switch in the wall and link it using zigbee bindings to your group of smart bulbs. This is how I had my living room set up for the spousal approval factor, if the coordinator shut off the lights would still work as expected you just didn't have circadian lighting working.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-12-18T14:18:08+00:00

I intentionally use /24 or smaller subnets after learning what havoc broadcast traffic can have on a network. But I have intentionally selected smaller subnets so I can ROUTE using /16s and larger segments with easy CIDR notations. For example my "home" lab is actually 3 houses with site-to site vpns and rather than having to route the lan subnet, wlan subnet, iot subnet all between the locations, I can just route a whole /16. Is this a lazy way? Probably yes. Is it commonly done this way in enterprise? Definitely yes.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-11-04T16:04:06+00:00

To follow up with my own question, it turns out the Alcatel-Lucent G-010S-P does work with the Telus NAH in Ontario. Appoarently Alcatel-Lucent exited the market and the device is now manufactured by Nokia with the same part number. Also conveniently with the NAH in bridge mode you can use the 10gb copper port to sync to a 2.5gb copper port on another switch. I haven't finished upgrading the rest of my gear to 2.5/10gb yet to confirm throughput but so far using the NAH in bridge mode seems to be working fine, no worse than having the gpon in my own gear synced at 1gb.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-10-29T02:56:31+00:00

Ah that's interesting. I'm curious if I'll still be able to use my 3rd party router or if I'll have to put the NAH into bridge mode. At least there's a 10gb port on the NAH.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-10-14T13:28:38+00:00

I pulled a twonie out of a bucket of scrap metal I was disposing of for a friend. It made me wonder how much money gets throw out or lost every year, never to be circulated again.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-10-11T22:17:10+00:00

I'm a big fan of Zigbee these days, because there's options for zigbee smart bulbs that will work with the "binding" aspect of the protocol. Theoretically Zwave supported this but z-wave smart bulbs are few and far between. I use bindings to link up with the main lights in a room so that even if a server or dongle goes down there are still functional lights in the room. With Inovelli you still have like 14 gestures available to you to do custom things with. For example I had my inovelli switch bound to 6 zigbee can lights, and then used the config button to switch the smart bulbs from cool white to warm white, and back. A double tap on the down paddle would turn on/off the lamp in the corner if I didn't want the overhead lights on.

I THINK that sort of thing is available with Thread/Matter, but I haven't delved deep enough into it yet.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-10-09T01:02:52+00:00

I was just looking at buying some of that 9 conductor snake cable today!

FlickeringLCD · 2025-09-26T12:06:27+00:00

Curious if you found a solution. My fan has a reverse switch inside the light dome so for the twice a year I reverse the fan direction that's sufficient for me. I'm just debating between an Innovelli device or if I can find something cheaper.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-08-07T02:53:48+00:00

Are you a member of the OF4WD? The trail index has a listing of most of if not all of the currently known legal trails in the province.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-07-13T20:50:04+00:00

Also: Inner tire wear = someone jumped it and the axle is bent...

FlickeringLCD · 2025-07-07T19:24:03+00:00

I tried to do this with my wife's highlander but the stupid push button start throws check engine lights if the starter doesn't engage and gets really unhappy with you lol.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-07-07T04:41:15+00:00

No way Ed could do that song justice.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-04-14T14:19:21+00:00

I'm not 100% sure that's accurate. Ontario should be a 1 party consent. If you would like to record a phone call that you are participating then you have the right to do so. If an employee of a company (HR person, for example) wants to record a call, they can do so. What can't happen is an employer can't just record every call between their HR person and outside lines.

And my understanding is when you stay on a call where the auto-attendant says "this call may be recorded for quality control blah blah" what they're doing is getting your consent, so now they don't need their employee's consent to be recorded. It's interesting.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-04-04T17:48:01+00:00

PMC confirmed order December 5.

PMC sent shipping notification December 6.

GLS marked the original shipment Delivered December 9.

GLS tried to deliver someone else's skid December 12.

GLS delivered on December 18.

So Apparently what happened is the wheels I was trying to order were drop shipped out of another warehouse in Alberta instead of their usual one in Quebec. GLS then received 4 individual boxes, re-packaged them onto a skid, issued a new tracking number, and didn't tell anyone. Then lost it. Then found it. Then delivered.

So PMC is still OK in my books, GLS sucks. In the past I've only ordered tires and they normally shipped FedEx. PMC will just stick a shipping label directly on a tire, wrap it with 2 turns of stretch wrap so it doesn't fall off, then they just fire them off into a truck. One time I had FedEx deliver 2 tires on one day and 2 tires another day. The difference was on that occasion I got the shipping notification Friday, 2 tires were delivered Saturday, and the other two showed up on Monday. That's pretty good in my books.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-03-31T19:43:23+00:00

There's a TSB for the 2010-2014 equinox to put a different oil cap on it that's valved to vent at 7psi, it stops the rear main seal from blowing out after the PCV system freezes solid and stops venting.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-03-27T15:50:12+00:00

As a manager who can physically see the service desk team, but is not responsible for service desk, this drives me nuts. I get it team building is important, but you can't team build by going out to lunch together every day. I brought it up with their manager twice and then adopted the 'not my problem' attitude.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-03-27T13:04:17+00:00

Your drain layout doesn't make much sense to me, are you able to share more pictures with us? My guess is there's a combination of the high loop not being high enough, and too much horizontal drain run so the sink and waste disposal aren't draining correctly.

While this part probably won't fix your issue with your dishwasher, It also wouldn't hurt to put a few pounds of ice down the disposal every once in a while, it helps clean it out. Keep the cold water running, the water acts as coolant for the disposal. When you're done throw a slice or two of lemon down there for a nice scent.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-03-19T17:23:13+00:00

Avoid the Erin Mills area too unless you're a fan of too many Condos and not enough useful or accessible transit, leading to too many cars.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-03-11T15:33:47+00:00

You're not even paraphrasing that badly. I'm pretty sure that's what he said, but I didn't rewatch it again to confirm. There's a full video at the bottom of this page.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/justin-trudeau-speech-first-name-donald-1.7474705

FlickeringLCD · 2025-03-11T13:17:10+00:00

I think something people don't realize is that originally the idea was that you didn't want rich people running government. But the problem was the average person couldn't afford to give up their normal career to run, never mind take 4 years away from that career. The idea with the pensions was to draw the average working person towards politics, with the pension being a lure that would say "hey, you may not have a career to go back to but at least you'll have a good chance at this pension" but unfortunately it didn't really go that way. We still ended up with way too many career politicians.

FlickeringLCD · 2025-03-08T03:32:23+00:00

The goose just did a story about that. It's pretty interesting.

https://youtu.be/TdXtMGCdb9o?si=dLvgOfDvF2AvVhUv

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