I took a break from working on home automation software to work on home automation hardware – in particular, I installed a new Ring Doorbell 4 to replace the old first-generation Ring Doorbell we’d had since 2016. The old one’s battery had deteriorated to the point that we were barely getting a month between recharges – and there are no replacements available.

Of course, the new doorbell has a different mounting system than the old one, which meant I had to drill more holes in the house. And that meant finding the drill and recharging its battery. And so on and so on.

Eventually, I got the new doorbell mounted and removed the mounting plate for the old one. And I think I’ve convinced all of the software to use the new doorbell.

We decided to celebrate Purim and Norooz tonight by ordering takeout from a favorite Persian restaurant, Negeen. When I got home with the goodies, Diane told me that UPS had just delivered a surprise package from Green’s Bakery in Brooklyn.

I hope it freezes well, because we may not be able to eat it all before Pesach!

We went to the Farmers’ Market and took our usual walk this morning – it was a good way to start the first day of spring.

I continued to work on Home Assistant and Insteon; I made a lot of progress, but ran into a bug in the documentation page I found yesterday – the examples that I wanted to copy had a small indentation error which was enough to keep the Insteon-MQTT server from starting. There were fairly clear error messages, but they were in a window that I’d covered and didn’t uncover until after I’d figured out what was wrong and fixed it.

After that, I got a couple of automations set up before I ran out of time – it’s looking hopeful!

I did fix the TiVo problem I mentioned on Friday – I restarted the TiVo and it was able to successfully play the recordings that were blank before. I have no idea what’s going wrong, but I guess I should start looking at alternatives; I don’t want to buy another TiVo.

It’s been a low energy day today. We took a walk after Torah Study and got home just as it started drizzling, and that was the last time I left the house today.

I spent a while trying (again) to figure out how to get Home Assistant properly integrated with my Insteon devices. I’ve got everything more-or-less functional, but the UI is wonky (wrong icons for devices, names that are less than friendly), and I still haven’t tried to define any automations. As I was writing this entry, I found this page that describes the interactions between Home Assistant and Insteon-MQTT and how to tame some of them, so there’s hope for progress tomorrow.

The day started in the usual Friday way with a trip to the gym, followed by a short walk, a shower, and lunch.

After lunch, we planned to watch last night’s Late Show, but failed. The TiVo had recorded an hour of black screen and no audio. So I logged into Paramount+ only to discover that last night’s Late Show was a rerun – the next new show will be March 28th.

We decided to take another walk, but as soon as we left the house, we smelled acrid smoke. The whole sky was smoky, too, so I didn’t think it was nearby; I checked NextDoor and actually got information – the smoke was coming from a four-alarm fire in a vacant commercial building a couple of miles away. Fortunately, we had brought masks with us, and they reduced the smell enough that we could keep walking.

After we got home, the rest of the day was consumed by travel planning and home automation.

And so it goes.

We celebrated the overlap of Purim and St. Patrick’s Day today.

We had some of the goodies in the Mishloach Manot package from Shir Hadash after lunch; this evening, we made a new recipe from The New York Times: Whiskey-Glazed Salmon With Salt-Crusted Potatoes. The recipe calls for whiskey, so we bought a bottle of Tullamore Dew – we have plenty left, so we’ll try it again.

The recipe is for four servings, and we were only feeding the two of us, so I cut everything in half; next time, I’ll make more glaze – it was quite tasty. And I’ll keep a closer eye on the potatoes – I didn’t shake them enough in the final few seconds before all the fluid evaporated, so they didn’t get properly crusted with salt (which may make my cardiologist happier).

I don’t think there are any holidays tomorrow, unlike the rest of the week (Pi Day, the Ides of March, Purim, and St. Patrick’s Day). I guess we’ll cope.