"Ring" The Video Doorbell

September 20, 2017

Within hours of my last blog being posted a friend, JH, in Florida, sent me information on a doorbell called “ring.”

I was amazed to find this was what my friend who talked from his hospital bed to me standing on his porch about 15 miles away was using. This technology will allow a homeowner traveling in, say, California to talk with and view someone (via his smartphone) on his porch back home in South Carolina. 

This is a great security weapon for homeowners and it comes with a battery pack so it need not be hard-wired at the point of use.  

As a retired security director, I would recommend this product as something to look at for your home or apartment security.

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From the hospital bed to the front porch

(Note: To protect my friend's name and home I am not using such personal data in this post.)

One night last week I went to a friend's house for a meeting of a group we belong to. It was a nice evening, the sun was moving into the West and I was looking forward to being with friends and exchanging stories about what we did while threatened by Hurricane Irma. I had gone north and visited my son and daughter in law in Virginia. 

When I arrived at my friend's house there were no lights on in the house and no other cars around. I thought this was strange because a couple of people always show up early and help set up the refreshment table. I went to the porch and tried the door. On meeting nights the door is unlocked and you enter, sit on a bench and remove your shoes. The door was locked. 

Hmmm. On the wall to the right of the door was a bell. Beneath the bell was the word "ring." A bit of overkill, I laughed: everybody knows what to do with a bell. I pushed the button and heard a bit of a chime. In a few seconds, my friend said, "Hello."

"Hi, friend. This is Archie and I am outside on the porch and here for the meeting." I assumed my friend was inside and talking to me through a speaker. 

"The meeting was canceled a couple of days ago."

"I've been gone and missed the message."

"I am in the hospital, had a heart attack and am going to be here for a few more days."

"IN THE HOSPITAL, right now? Where?"

"In downtown Charleston."

"You are in a hospital in downtown Charleston, and I am on your porch 15 miles away and we are talking like you are inside the house?"

"Yes."

Did I mention my friend is an electrical engineer?

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First aggravation of 2016

It was slightly after noon on January 2 when the first aggravation of the New Year reared its ugly head. I went off earlier in the morning to get a leaking tire fixed. (It had a nail in it.) This was a carryover from 2015 so it did not qualify as the first aggravation of 2016. That still lurked in the shadows like a burglar casing a neighborhood. 

On the way home I stopped at Best Buy where “Jose” helped me select a cable modem for $69 plus tax that would replace the modem furnished by my internet provider, Hargray Communications, which was failing fast. Every modem box on the shelf, and there were many, said: Stop renting a modem. Own your own. 

I took it home, dis-enaged the old one which was to be returned to Hargray and end the monthly rental fee of around $7.00. I struggled to get the new one out of the box and finally succeeded. Electronic devices are packaged to minimize sholifting and theft. It would take Houdini to open a box and shoplift one of these things in a Best Buy aisle.

I hooked it up, attached the router, plugged everything in and telephoned Hargray to have them recognize the new piece of equipment on their end. And here is where the aggravation was born. It is Hargray’s position and practice, according to the faceless tech rep on the end of the line, that a customer cannot own his own modem on their system. WHAT?

The Hargray tech rep and I argued over this practice for a couple of minutes. My warning that I would protest to the FCC fell on deaf ears. I thought about throwing Alan Dershowitz and a lawsuit into the mix, but decided against that on two counts: The tech rep probably didn’t know or care about Dershowitz, and, two, no one files a lawsuit hoping to save $7 a month in rental fees. Anyone whose retirement depends on saving $7 a month needs to continue working.  

I had to disconnect the new modem and put it back in the box for return to Best Buy. If getting it out of the box was a pain in the ass, what do you think putting it back in was?

There was one saving grace to this first agravation of 2016. The tech rep advanced Hargray’s planned service call from “next Wednesday” to “this afternoon.” A four-day advance.

The service man came, took out the old and put in a new modem. After going outside and making a phone call to some Hargray site ( I don’t understand why he went out. I wasn’t going to appropriate the secret code or whatever.) everything clicked and service was restored. 

At Best Buy, the RETURNS clerk told me she knew about Hargray’s position and it prevailed all around Bluffton and Hilton Head Island. She did not know why the sales clerks didn’t know all this and dissuade Hargray customers from buying modems in the first place. 

So ends the saga of the first aggravation of the New Year, 2016. 

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Network signal ---- re-visited

I thought I had my Internet router strength/distance problem worked out. (Ref. This blog, "Five bars of strength, Thursday, October 16.)  Apparently not as well as I believed. We have a new all-in-one computer in a room at the other end of the house and could not sustain adequate strength to our network access point. I found some loose change in the cushions of the sofa and bought a Linksys Wi-Fi range extender N300. The setup was simple, took only a few minutes and voila everything fell into place. The signal for the network on the new computer is five by five.

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Posting on Facebook while driving

I am a reasonably competent PC user and sometimes encounter difficulty posting on my Facebook  or Twitter page. It takes my full attention to do it properly and to type without misspellings or getting the wrong picture into the post. (The last sentence had three typos which I had to correct.) I also use a dictation program and  experience proves there are always multiple errors to correct at the end of the dictation. The proposal some auto makers are putting forth to allow drivers to post on the Internet (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) while driving borders on insanity, or foolishness multiplied.

It doesn't make any difference, typing or dictating. Defensive driving requires full attention. Can you imagine the outcome when a driver becomes more concerned with how his Internet post will look or be received than whether he is driving properly and safely? Accidents happen in an instant. Bad ideas abound.

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Lost a friend - Ed Holcomb

A single red rose in a vase in the lobby of the main building at Franke at Seaside yesterday told us another resident had died. This was Ed Holcomb, who was somewhere in his 90s.

 

A couple of weeks ago over dinner in the dining room at Franke, the residential community where we both live,  Ed asked me to help him set up a wireless system in his apartment so he could use his Nook to download books he wanted to read. In a phone call a day or so later I recommended he buy a wireless router and we would hook it up. We talked again last week and he said he was ready to do the job. I went to his apartment where we chatted as he showed me the office he had created in a second bedroom. It held his books and desk and computer. It was a comfortable room and he said it gave him a lot of pleasure. We looked at the cable connection sitting on the floor and the wire running around the baseboard of two walls and speculated how it might be raised up and moved even closer to the computer. After a few minutes I asked him for the router and  he seemed surprised. Then he realized he was to have purchased one. He went to a day-planner and found the note to himself and said he had completely skipped over it.

We laughed a bit and talked a little more. He apologized for his mistake and I told him to forget it. I said it was a pleasure seeing his place and talking. We made plans to get together again in a couple of days.

Ed told me about his weekly calls via Skype with a son who is working in New Zealand. He was proud of this accomplishment using some of the latest free technology. Details of Ed's death and arrangements have not been publicized. I am sure contact is being made with the son to include his wishes.

The community has lost a good member. We will remember him fondly.