Gotta love what you do...

This is my dining room table as of 1:30AM this morning1 Why does it look this way?

Easy- I was troubleshooting a problem that we were having at a clients house integrating a Control4 system with a doorbell and intercom system, and I wanted to replicate the issue we were having.

Even though I have Control4 in my house- it wasn't the same system, so I couldn't just use what I had-

I connected a HC300 to an audio matrix switch, and integrated it with Sonos, a doorbell and a phone paging system. This system gives you the ability to pickup the phone, make an annoucement over the speakers (page) and then someone else can pickup the telephone to answer you... It's a great clean solution that does not require any extra wires in the house (other than an audio system) there is no extra wall clutter and it does not require a proprietary phone system either.

I got everything working the way it is supposed to- and so tomorrow we get to install it! Thankfully my wife was sleeping, and I have time to get it all cleaned up before she wakes up!

High-tech Eskimo?

What else are you supposed to do when there's 3 feet of snow on the ground?


Build an igloo! Otherwise known as a big CAVE inside the big mound of snow piled up at the end of the street...

There's really not much to it, just grab a shovel and start digging. It helps if you are using a small trowel type shovel to break up the snow and ice first, then use a larger snow shovel to remove the loose snow... It really only becomes a problem when you're burrowed in a tunnel and trying to get the snow out- Ninja claws seem to work pretty well too! If you can start the tunnel from both sides, I would recommend doing that as well. It's a whole lot easier to clear the snow when you don't have to crawl on your belly and scoop it past you.

So now that you've built the largest snowcave in your city, what are you going to do with it? After all it's only fun for an hour or two- then it's just cold. Well I would hate for any kids to go into the snowcave and get caught under a ton of snow- even though I made sure it's pretty sturdy. So I wirelessly extended my Control4 home automation system in the house to the snow fort- and placed a motion sensor inside to alert me whenever anyone comes by... This lets me call my wife and tell her that some kids are playing outside...

If I really wanted to, I could set a speaker that shouted at the kids to get out...