Lights: Switching to light sources/bulbs with lower brightness/warmer light temperature (lower Kelvin/K-value) 3 hours before bed. (Light affects our sleep-wake cycle, aka the circadian rhythm. Our brain processes bright light as “the sun is still up so it’s not time to sleep yet”)
Screens: Gradually dimming electronic screens until bedtime (Computer: using F.lux and lowering the brightness gradually in the graphics card’s control panel. Phone: with a built-in Night/Dark Mode option that you can schedule or by using an app like Twilight). // Don’t take your devices to the bedroom, or keep them far away from the bed and set them on silent/shut them off.
Sleeping in a closed and completely dark room (including covering LED lights on electronics, or using a face mask) with something that makes a white noise.
Food: Having a light meal 3-3.5 hours before bed and light snacks 1.5-2 hours before bed, to not put the body into overdrive digesting a heavy meal or cause heartburn/indigestion, and also to not go to sleep hungry and get distracted by that.
If you sleep on your stomach with your head to the side, you can use a thin and narrow side pillow (but firm) along your torso to support your shoulder on the side that your head is pointing to. (you can also use a thin pillow for your head to not strain your neck/spine - there are ones made for kids if needed)
I’ll throw a weird one in here. If you want to do any smart home automation stuff, Lutron. Their stuff is famously bulletproof and generally “just works” and almost never needs troubleshooting.
It can be a little pricy for a light switch, but it will work with just about any platform you want to use. Also, all of their wireless switches work without internet.
The door from my driveway opens into my office. The light switch in my office is in a really shitty place. When coming into my office at night, I have to navigate to the light switch in the dark to turn on the light.
Or, at least I did. Now when the door opens at night, the light in my office comes on at 10%.
WiFi is really handy because it’s easy and accessible, but as you add devices, you wind up with WiFi network issues.
Because these devices can just talk to the internet, they can talk to their manufacturer’s websites and tell them everything they learn about you from your network, such as all the other devices on your network, any open file sharing protocols (and the files on those devices), any other devices that are willing to talk to the WiFi device. So - literally - everything on your network becomes exposed to the manufacturer of the device. It’s unlikely the manufacturer would be nefarious, but they would extract all your data.
And if the device has poor security, opens a port to the outside world, or - as I discovered this weekend on my soundbar - just has a root ssh shell with no password requirement, it could pose a security risk to you and your devices.
…. And I just remembered outbound federation is currently broken on my instance and maybe one person will actually see this comment. Fuck.
I have my lights set to turn on slightly before I am supposed to wake, turn off after I go to work, before I return from home, and after I go to bed. I’ve recently added mmwave sensors to turn them on and off based on my presence within a room. I can do all kinds of automations that I could do manually sure but if I don’t need to and can minimize the amount of excess energy waste then why wouldn’t I want a wirelessly controlled switch and or lights?
And yes most everyone can do this. Google Home Assistant and get lost in the rabbit hole.
Flexibility. A hardwired switch is choosing your lighting configuration at build time, but when you have light bulbs that can all be controlled individually through software, then you want a switch that can interact with that software.
For instance, let’s say you do something crazy and unprecedented like add a lamp to your room, with hardwired switches now you either have two switchs in two different spots to deal with every time you enter a room, or you need to call an electrician to wire up a switched plug. If your switch was instead a software switch you could just reprogram it to also control the lamp.
We bought a bag less vacuum 4 years ago. The turbo brush for pet hair stats showing some wear but the whole thing works solid to this day. Even the flimsy feeling handle is still fine Edit: EU - Germany
I have known and seen so many people make that mistake, and the story always ends with them replacing it with another brands, the smart ones under warranty, the stubborn ones out of pocket.
It might be dead when I get home this afternoon, but I’ve been lucky with my Samsung fridge. I got it as a deeply discounted discounted floor model 9 years ago.
Hosted a party and someone had leaned up against the ice/water buttons and put it into store/demo mode so everything looked fine but the compressor was disabled. The button combo should have been impossible to trigger accidentally but they did. I had defrost problems after that until I took the back panel out and cleaned the drains. That was 6 years ago and it’s been good.
I think all French door models are designed to die. Run far, far away from those.
I think it was Technology Connections that did a video on French door fridges. One major problem with them (among the countless others) is airflow. Refrigerators have one refrigeration unit for both the fridge and freezer. The air is cooled in the freezer and moved to the less cool fridge. Cool air is denser than warmer air so it falls. Conventional fridges (freezer on top) were designed that way on purpose. When the freezer is on bottom you add levels of complexity and work against what has already been proven effective. That’s not a problem, per se, because humans are ingenious. But in order to compete with traditional fridges these companies have to do this at the mercy of the lowest bidder.
I’ve had a bonavita electric kettle for 5+ years and it’s been great. I just use it for heating up water ~daily and have zero complaints (not sure if there is anything else that you would be looking for an electric kettle to do). I’m pretty sure it was like $50 on Amazon.
Thanks, I’ll check it out. Yeah, there’s not much features to expect from a teapot other than maybe specific cutoff temperatures for brewing exotic sorts of tea. Other than that, reliability is the main concern, and I’ve had even the seemingly well built ones suddenly die on me for no particular reason.
The one I have you can set temperature that it heats to and tell it to either hold that temperature or get to it and then it’ll just cool off if you don’t use it. It has more settings but I’ve just had it set to 194 for forever.
I will say that I swear I spent closer to $50-60 for mine but it’s at like $105 on Amazon right now which is absurd. But looking at the price history on camelcamelcamel the price really has climbed a bit over the past few years. It used to drop around $60-70 a bit. Ridiculous how expensive things are getting.
We’ve been through half a dozen fridges at least in the last 10 years. They’re all horrible now. The best one we’ve found Medea convertible. You can change it from upright freezer into a refrigerator if you want. We use it as a fridge, and got a chest freezer. I’ve tried every other brand i can get my hands on, and none of them last. It’s horrible.
We’ve replaced our Samsung washer, dryer and dishwasher with LG. Which has been pretty rock solid so far, our Samsung range finally died recently and all the LG ranges we looked at were absolute trash using the cheapest metal imaginable. We ordered a whirlpool this time, not sure how well it’ll work out… Find out tomorrow I guess
If there’s one brand I’m not buying again it’s LG.
I know of two LG dishwashers (mine and my parents) that have… issues.
My fridge from them is okay but I’m fairly confident there have been a few times that freeze portion had gone significantly above its set temperature because some popsicles melted. I’ve also had issues with the ice maker design not actually knocking down the ice so I have to open up the door and bang on it to break it loose, at which point a few pieces of ice fly onto the floor.
My oven/electric range from them well … so far so good on that one. I do wish there were actual knobs/buttons instead of the weird “touch” buttons but that just seems to be the trend these days.
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