My house is so dumb.

It never has any idea what my wife or I need.

Take now. It’s Friday afternoon. I’m at my desk at work. With the springtime extremes in the weather, I’m wondering whether the heat is on at home and it’s too warm, or the air-conditioning is on and it’s too cold.

But I can’t find out from here. No amount of banging on this computer keyboard will wake up my house and get it to tell me.

Dumb house.

Later, I’ll pull into the neighborhood and — nothing. The porch light will not come on.

I’ll pull into the driveway, get out of my pickup and step onto the porch and — nothing. The front door will not unlock itself, and the foyer light will not come on.

My dogs will bark. They always bark when they hear the truck pull up. My dogs are smart. Not my house.

I will walk in the door and — nothing. No lights will come on in the hallway, the living area or the kitchen. Nada. Zip.

"Smart houses” know this kind of stuff.

Jeff Click has a "smart house.” He’s a builder who builds houses as smart as buyers want them, with things like electronic or biometric entry systems (think electronic keys and touch pads); motion or proximity sensor-driven lighting control; and event-based lighting control.

That’s just the start of smart.

New houses can have outdoor sprinkler systems that know when to come in out of the rain; media servers where all music, movies, photos and other content is centrally stored for all computers and other devices to access; and zoned audio and closed-circuit video.

Click has made his house smarter than average. His house knows to brighten the lights and turn on the vent fan when someone closes the bathroom door. It knows to turn on the bathroom lights slightly at night, to be easy on sleepy eyes, and brightly during the day.

Click’s house is so smart it does some stuff even before it’s asked. It’ll send him a text message or e-mail when, say, a housecleaner disarms the alarm when arriving and sets it upon leaving, or any time the alarm is tripped.

Now that’s a smart house.

My house?

Sometimes when it storms, one of our ceiling fans comes on by itself. One of the doors to the sunroom always sticks when I’m coming in loaded with plates of food from the grill. Our garage mocks me: "Ha ha! Just try to get a car in here!” It’s always something.

No, my house is not smart. My house is a smart aleck.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Some houses are smarter than others — not mine