Nancy Williams: Fancy thermostat wanted too much relationship control

I used to use the word “new-fangled” when kidding. Now, I’m not teasing. I use it in a squint-eyed, “I don’t trust it” way. I do not like most new-fangled gadgets and cutting-edge ways of doing things. Plus, “improvements” often don’t improve a thing.

Older Son outfitted my house with fancy smart thermostats. Voice-activated, remote-capable, so house temperature could be adjusted from my cellphone (or his) when I’m not home. It didn’t go well. The techy-tech thermostats are very highly rated by thousands of users. It must be me.

He installed an upstairs controller and one downstairs. My relationship — and resulting conflict — was primarily with the one downstairs in the dining room.

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The Thermostat was connected to Alexa or Siri or one of those chicks. So I could tell THE THERMOSTAT to play Wichita County Lineman and it would. Also, it would turn the lights off and on when I told it to. Usually.

One night I thought the power had gone out when everything in house went dark. After quite a while of chatting with and at the thermostat, I figured out the power wasn’t out, the internet was. Eventually, it fixed the internet signal, then rebooted itself. And turned the lights on. The Thermostat had glowy circles and dots and zones and numbers and ranges.

What I like is to be able to raise or lower the temperature in my house when I feel like it without negotiating with a moody controller. When The Thermostat was noncompliant, I tried yelling. And whispering. Another like of mine is that when I’m in a relationship with a thermostat, I’m the one in charge.

Besides having a complicated timer you set for particular settings for certain times of the day, The Thermostat monitored my coming and going patterns so it could reset my pre-set preferences. It knew when I usually came home and when I had arrived. I wondered if I hadn't arrived by the time I was “usually home,” if The Thermostat would phone the police department. “Hello, this is a thermostat calling to report a person who should be home by now and isn’t.”

I called my son once and asked him to turn on the heat because my thermostat was set up on his phone. He doesn’t like doing the tech for me, because ya’ know, you give a child a fish and he eats for a day … you teach him to operate the thermostat and he stays warm for a lifetime. However, he’ll enable me occasionally. Like when I asked him to call me an Uber. Why can’t you do it? I don’t know how. Sigh, OK, where are you? I’m not sure. Left an event at a New Orleans big conference center and just walked with the crowd. Can’t you track my phone and find me? Then send an Uber there. He wasn’t happy.

I dreaded telling my son I wanted to be free from the high-tech prison my house had become. He said, go ahead and do what works for you. I said I either had to go to mediation with it or move on without it.

Ultimately, I paid an HVAC guy to take the smart thermostat off the wall and put back the previous one. To be clear, Old Faithful isn’t exactly no-tech. It’s digital.

Frankly, I prefer to push a button instead of having something voice-activated. Nothing needs to be voice-activated in my life, except the people. “Yo Dude” is my wake-up signal for real humans like “Hey Siri” is for gadgets. “Yo Dude … can you bring the groceries from the car?”

Older Son also bought me a doorbell camera, so I could see who was at the door. I said I’ll look out the window to see who is at the door. He asked, but what if you aren’t home? If I’m not home, I don’t care who is at the door.

He was concerned about intruders or vandals. I’m not sure what intruders would intrude in my life for, and vandals would probably spray paint millennial versions of graffiti insults on the side of my house. Tech-Phobe. Thermostat-Hater.

My kids say I’ll be churning butter on the porch soon. And making my own brooms. Guilty as charged.

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If it’s about the status of having a fancy thermostat, I said, let’s hang a fake one. The sleekest, most stainless-steely, digital blinking thing. It wouldn’t be connected to anything, it would just pack an impression tech punch.

My main complaint isn’t even the technology. It’s the changing technology. You barely get the hardware out of the box when the software updates begin. Some of the updates rearrange whatever you finally learned to do, doesn’t work the same way anymore. I’ve long believed there’s a market for charging more for a device or system if you promise no updates for two years.

I’m surprised we don’t have programmable digital screens mounted around the house so we can leave on-location notes for each other. A digital note might be fun when you want a nap. Sorry, we have closed early today due to not enough help.

I have a now faded, Post-It taped to my front door from months ago. “Take shoes off before coming inside.” Put it up one day when I’d just mopped inside of the house at the same time the grass had been cut outside. Grass clipping confetti was all over the house. I re-cleaned floors and put up the note.

Even after floors dried and I didn’t care so much about yard bits being tracked in, I left the note on the door. Fun study in human behavior. Who reads it and does it every time. Who reads it and ignores it. Nobody mentioned it. They did it or didn’t.

I was impressed my son’s girlfriend took her shoes off every time she came in to the house. Even more impressed she could get five pairs of shoes packed in her little airplane carry-on backpack. She was following the instructions on the note, because no doubt she’d been cautioned about the House of Loons and Mom Loon getting on a jag and expecting the random request of the week to be honored.

Growing up, my mother expected us to take our shoes off at any door to anybody’s house. Good manners and respect. Provided, of course, you took decent care of your feet. If you had no socks, then took off shoes to reveal crusty, gross feet, leaving the shoes on might be more respectful. If Mom was still around, I’d ask her thoughts on it. I figure she’d say you have to at least exfoliate and lotion up your feet now and then. To keep from shedding feet dandruff in people’s home.

In the cases of smart homeowners who can manage smart thermostats, no doubt the thermostat can sense dried foot skin giblets on the floor and will notify the smart vacuum to clean it up.

I simply use one of the old-fangled brooms I made.

This is the opinion of Nancy Williams, the coordinator of professional education at UNC Asheville. Contact her at nwilliam@unca.edu.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Nancy Williams: Fancy thermostat wanted relationship control