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.