They warned me about a lot of things when I started setting up smart home automations--security issues, buggy updates, the weirdly addictive nature of putting sensors on everything--but one thing nobody warned me about was how it's destroying my belief in our ability to know anything about the world.

I have five separate devices in my apartment that sense temperature, four in roughly the same location (as far as I know; I'm not actually sure where the heat pump's thermostat is, but I'd think it's on the controls, right?), and they give five different temperature readings, sometimes as different as 5°. None of these readings seem to be consistent with my experience of the temperature, even taking into account things like breeze, HVAC vs fresh air, etc.

Which of these is right? Are any of them right? Which ones matter the most? Are they fine actually but I'm hitting menopause? Does it even matter, if I'm uncomfortable? (Verdict is yes, because the whole idea of this was that I shouldn't have to be adjusting it every ten minutes.) Is the cat a reliable indicator of the actual temperature? (Almost certainly not.)

Obviously you can have these issues any time you wind up with multiple tools doing the same thing, but I feel like focusing so much on tiny changes in order to create automations has made it so much worse. 72° is too warm--but wait, is that 72° by the sensor at the balcony door (much colder than the rest of the apartment, but it's where my desk is) or 72° by the sensor in the hallway (central, but again, not where I'm actually sitting). And wait, those are different models of sensors, if I put them next to each other do they read the same?...not always! It feels like the universe is messing with me and I don't like it.

Regardless, objectively speaking, it is difficult to maintain fine grained temperature control in a two-bedroom apartment with a single heat pump in the living room (but also baseboard heat under most windows).

It's a gorgeous late summer October, the high for today is 83 but the humidity is low, the breeze is blowing, and the trees are just beginning to turn. It is a glorious time to take advantage of the fact that my current apartment complex is not wildly particular about how we use our balconies and do a little woodworking.

In my previous apartment, I had a huge balcony that was fully screened-in on all sides--closer to a three-season room than a balcony. I love fresh air, so as often as I could, I left the patio doors open and let the cat wander in and out as she liked. The new place, alas, has a more normal-sized balcony that is not screened in at all, and she was not thrilled to have her outdoor space removed.

My first thought was just to DIY some screening-in; a lot of places I've lived won't let you do that, but lots of balconies on this building have chicken wire or privacy screens or child netting hung on the railing, so that clearly wasn't an issue. Alas, I couldnt get it to work in a way I'd be comfortable with: there's just no place to attach anything to the wall without drilling into the brick, which I suspect would be a little too far. (Also, I don't have the tools for it and I don't wanna.)

Attempt two worked for a while: I got one of those pop-up doggy playpens that zips up on all sides and put it up against the screen door. Sofiya can wander outside as long as the door's open, and while she doesn't have a ton of space, she can get fresh air and watch the birds in the trees and the people (and cats! One of my neighbors takes hers for a walk on a leash) on the ground.

This was great--I even built a frame I could stick in the sliding door that I could put a cat flap in without cutting into the actual screen door--until yesterday, when somehow an extremely ambitious bird got into the playpen. Sofiya took it down in one pounce before I could coax it out again; fortunately she had her teeth removed before I adopted her so she didn't kill it, but unfortunately she did bring it inside. The bird was pretty smart and managed to get outside again fairly quickly, but she's still looking at the ceiling hoping that maybe she's just missed it. And I do not want to be doing that again, thank you.

So I've resorted to the proper solution: a DIY catio. Yesterday I went down to Home Depot and bought an armload of 1x2s and some screws, and today I'm building frames. The plan is to construct it out of square panels screwed together--it takes a little more wood than it might otherwise, but it should be more stable this way, and it'll be easier to disassemble and store for the winter or if I move. Plus, I could tuck it further over in the corner so I can actually get out onto the balcony without squeezing my way out through a 10" gap.

I am pathetically out of practice with hand tools, but there's something very satisfying about spending the morning with my grandpa's tape measure and my dad's ripsaw and a carpenter's pencil I got out of a stationery advent box, building something useful. I have no doubt that my grandpa would have thrown himself wholeheartedly into having cats for great-grandchildren, and my dad will be very pleased that I'm using the tools he gave me (and impressed I finally got around to the project; I definitely get the ADHD from him).

There has of course already been one bump in the road: I forgot how many inches are in eight feet and didn't have as much wood as I'd planned. (And of course I cut one piece to the wrong length, because you have to, as a sacrifice to Haephestus.) It'll be a little smaller than originally intended, but since it's a modular design, I should be able to add more height later on, and Sofiya isn't as interested in climbing on things as she is in being outside. Besides,I don't really want the landlord to think I'm building a structure, since that might need permits or something, so I want to keep it under the height of the balcony railing anyway.)

I took a break after cutting five of the ten boards I bought--like I said, I'm doing this with a hand saw I'm not very good at using--and I think it's probably a good idea to eat lunch before I go back to playing with sharp objects, but I think I'll be able to get at least a couple of panels done today, and hopefully the rest tomorrow. It would be really nice to finish a weekend project in a weekend for once.

It's been a hell of a few months for my little website. First I moved, which required (naturallyl) shutting down and moving the home server--we were down for probably three days altogether, because it took that long to find a place I could reach an outlet to plug in the power strip behind all the boxes. It took about three weeks to be thoroughly unpacked, and about two months to reach a state I could comfortably call "moved in," and the server didn't get much attention during that time.

Then it was ArchiveCon, which was a delight as usual but even though I didn't go to the conrunner's get-together this year it still takes a lot of energy. Not to mention the panel I wound up writing at the last minute (I have no defense for this, I'd been planning for it for a full year).

And then my hard drive decided to fail. The boot drive. On my server.

This is also indefensible on my part; I'd known it was an old drive, I'd known I was getting a ton of I/O errors, I should have been more prepared and I should have replaced it long ago. But I waited until it was actually dying, and I let it sit on my desk for three tense days while I waited for the replacement to arrive, hoping I'd be able to copy everything off it before it completely gave up. And then the new drive arrived, and I set up the copy, and I...copied the new, blank drive onto the old, dying one.

Yeah.

Fortunately, for the first time in human history or at least in my life, I had backups of everything--except, of course, my Home Assistant installation, which was undeniably the VM with the most pseronal/customized data on it.

Well, I'd been thinking about redoing it for a while anyway.

And then, of course, I had to spend all that time putting it back together, and then I had to get over it emotionally enough to write a blog post about it, and then I had to finish writing the blog post, and now it's October. On the plus side, my Home Assistant installation is looking better than ever. And I have a better backup system.