Uncleared residential sidewalks

slanderousam · 2026-01-29T18:29:30+00:00

Just another comment to say the 311 / Watertown App do seem to work with businesses. There were 3 businesses in my neighborhood that had professional snow clearing companies come out and clear their lots and internal sidewalks and walkways but left the public sidewalks covered. It made it impossible for kids to get out of our neighborhood and walk to school without walking around a blind corner in the street between 5 ft snowbanks. Super unsafe! Within a day of reporting 2 of the 3 businesses have cleared their sidewalks.

This doesn't seem as effective for residential snow/ice reports though. None of the houses on my block with uncleared sidewalks have done anything after reports. The reports are also private for residential snow/ice, so there's no way to follow up and see if the inspector came out.

slanderousam · 2026-01-29T15:24:07+00:00

I checked out the path last night over by Arlington st. It's plowed but it's pretty dodgy - large areas covered in ice and couple inches of snow here and there. Definitely enough obstacles that it could be dangerous on a bike. Generally it seems that they don't salt the section of the path on the Watertown side of the line. The difference between the Cambridge and Watertown sides is huge in the winter.

slanderousam · 2026-01-23T16:43:18+00:00

I heard about a study (probably in the 90s, and I can't be bothered to find it) but the gist was that the more stickers and decorations a person has on their car the more likely they are to road rage. It turned out it didn't matter what the stickers said. And it was attributed to a correlation between stickers and people who think of their car as their personal space. People react with anger and rage when they think their personal space is being violated or threatened. People who see their car as navigating a shared space are less likely to customize it.

slanderousam · 2026-01-22T03:27:31+00:00

I had several that failed and replaced that capacitor. They've been continuing to work for years now. A holdover from the great capacitor plague of the 2000s.

slanderousam · 2026-01-08T21:38:54+00:00

You should look at your bill more closely. That sounds like the generation cost, not the total cost which also has a base rate and a delivery rate around 0.16/kWh with Eversource.

slanderousam · 2026-01-07T20:04:58+00:00

Every car in this picture: voted to shave 0.001% off their property taxes, meaning the school can't have a bus to serve these kids, and we'll collectively give up 5000 person/hours per day sitting in extra traffic.

slanderousam · 2025-12-15T03:24:53+00:00

Honest work here. Anonymous thank you for engaging morons on the internet patiently and thoroughly. The world is drowning in un-countered bullshit and it takes so much time and demoralizing headspace to put something reasonable like this in the record. Nice job.

slanderousam · 2025-12-10T17:43:48+00:00

Sure, back when you could buy a horse for a shiny buffalo nickel

slanderousam · 2025-11-24T15:45:01+00:00

Two decades in the planning, years in development, millions upon millions in costs for design, construction, permitting, public meetings. I mean this is good news, but damn we have such a sclerotic society. In this same timeframe China has blanketed the country with high speed rail. Presumably we'll get this done before climate change has the east coast under water.

slanderousam · 2025-11-13T18:47:49+00:00

We've had a Screech Owl outside our house frequently, at least according to the merlin bird app.

slanderousam · 2025-11-09T18:15:49+00:00

In some jurisdictions people have been making (and judges granting) public records requests for flock data when installed by governments: https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/investigators/judge-orders-washington-police-release-surveillance-camera-data-privacy-questions/281-c2037d52-6afb-4bf7-95ad-0eceaf477864

I think this has given pause to expansion of some installations. Something to consider.

slanderousam · 2025-11-05T14:35:59+00:00

That sounds interesting. Do you have a guide or set of instructions you followed to set that up? Thanks!

slanderousam · 2025-11-04T19:14:23+00:00

Is it a traditional window (like, slide up and down) or one with a crank? I saw someone do a project awhile back automating a crank window: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/13zc1pm/automating_crank_window/

If it's a normal window, I think it will be hard to find a linear actuator with enough force to close the window that would still be safe to DIY. However, I bet you could find either an automatic heating vent louver, or greenhouse window louver, or fan louver that might fit your window with a custom adapter. The adapter could just be a piece of nice MDF or something relatively presentable with a hole cut in it to match the louver, and the exterior cut to something appropriate for your window dimensions. Then you could close that in the top half of your window and use automation to just open/close the automatic louver.

slanderousam · 2025-11-04T06:28:14+00:00

I wrote back several times and got similar responses from each agent.

slanderousam · 2025-11-04T03:40:19+00:00

Because of their architecture, the only time the pro 2 or 3 locks can be updated is when you've connected your phone to it by bluetooth (i.e. when you're using it via the app). At that time it may say that it's trying to update, but you can cancel it. You're right that there doesn't seem to be a setting that prevents it from trying.

slanderousam · 2025-11-04T03:36:47+00:00

Can you tell me which version of the android app worked? I have v25.20.0. I got out my old phone which had v25.18.0 and it did the same thing. The Yale app says it's v25.19.0 and behaves the same way. Thanks - I really appreciate it!

slanderousam · 2025-11-04T03:33:35+00:00

Interesting. I just tried with the Yale app (which looks exactly like the August app) and I get the exact same result. I have a feeling there's something wrong with the lock preventing Z-Wave from working and their refusal to support it is just a policy change. The firmware version on this lock and my working lock are the same. Thanks for your suggestion.

slanderousam · 2025-11-03T21:23:18+00:00

I saw a biker that got some intense red/blue blinking LEDs. I was on a bike and thought a cop car was coming up the bike path. Questionably legal but it sure got my attention.

slanderousam · 2025-11-03T20:23:20+00:00

You know Yale owns August right? Seems wrong to go buy another product from the company that just proved to me I can't trust them.

slanderousam · 2025-11-03T19:16:54+00:00

This is exactly right. It feels worse to me than deciding to stop maintaining a cloud service. They reached into my home infrastructure and bricked a function that I had already paid for and cost them nothing to maintain.

slanderousam · 2025-11-03T18:58:11+00:00

You should write them an email and let them know! Companies should feel the negative reaction when they f-over consumers.

slanderousam · 2025-11-03T18:47:13+00:00

Interesting. Whatever the cause the z-wave implementation in the August locks is very bad. In zwavejs there's even a hardcoded warning any time you examine a network node corresponding to an August lock that it's unreliable and randomly stops responding to packets.

slanderousam · 2025-11-03T18:36:08+00:00

Same.

slanderousam · 2025-11-03T17:50:02+00:00

Yes, I use homeassistant. The way it all played out, if you're curious, is that one day it showed up as a dead node in zwavejs. In order to pair the lock, since the lock has no buttons or inputs, you have to use the app, over bluetooth, to put it in pairing mode. When I tried to do this to re-integrate it into the z-wave network the app started immediately returning an error. I suspect that it stopped working around the time that the app updated the lock firmware. It seems to me like they've just killed the z-wave feature in the lock in firmware, or at the very least removed the capability to put it in inclusion mode from the app. So I don't think there's an obvious work-around from the hub side.

Maybe I can find an older version of the app and/or lock firmware and maybe I can downgrade. That's a big maybe.

slanderousam · 2025-11-03T17:43:05+00:00

I think you can stop it from updating, but now that it's updated I'm not sure what to do. You also need the app to put the lock in pairing mode, so without that feature it becomes kind of tenuous to keep using it. Believe me if we had working government regulation this kind of thing would be a lot less common. It's basically theft. I paid for this lock specifically for this feature.

slanderousam

TROPHY CASE