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Read (Part One here)
When Ellis awoke on Sunday, the unusual cold broke through her drowsiness right away. Her new thermostat was programmed to maintain a lower temperature overnight, but at 6:30AM, it was supposed to climb again, kicking the heat on right when she got out of bed.
Why was it so cold? Why was the furnace dead silent? Something must've gone wrong again. So soon?
It sucked to get out of bed when it was dark and cold, but Ellis had no choice. She forced herself to peel back the covers and launch into her morning routine. Her cat shadowed her, helpfully letting her know several times that his plate had no food on it.
She attended to the cat's needs first before approaching the thermostat downstairs. The set point was at the overnight setting even though it claimed to be following her programmed schedule. Using the touchscreen interface, she increased the set point manually. The heat cut on just fine from there, thank goodness.
Through her dehydrated, hungry, uncaffeinated haze, Ellis suddenly remembered the time change. They had "sprung ahead" for Daylight Saving Time. Had her new thermostat joined them in this archaic ritual?
It had not. Checking its day/time settings, Ellis found the time an hour behind. She pressed her index finger onto the hour, expecting a dial or drop-down or some other such control to appear. Nothing. Hours, minutes, and AM/PM were all fixed. Only the time zone could be changed. It was currently set to EST. Opening the drop-down menu, none of the options she skimmed over looked promising.
Her old thermostat (out of support, incompatible with her new HVAC system) had handled time changes all by itself, and had allowed every possible manual adjustment one could wish for. It frustrated Ellis that the latest so-called "smart" thermostat couldn't manage the same despite being hooked up to the Internet at all times.
Part of her wanted to keep digging at this, but it was way too early. Ellis was unprepared in every possible way to descend into a troubleshooting rabbit-hole. She had places to be that morning. The heat was working, that was all that really mattered. More importantly, someone from the HVAC company was already scheduled to perform a 1-week follow-up test of her newly-installed system in a couple of days. She could disable the schedule and make manual adjustments until the technician arrived.
With HVAC having taken center stage in her brainspace for over a month by that point, Ellis desperately needed to give herself this break.
The technician who arrived was equally mystified. He tried a factory reset of the thermostat, which had no effect. It was determined that future time changes would have to be handled manually by toggling the time zone between EST and ... Eastern. An unhelpful label that Ellis' sleepy brain had completely glossed over early on Sunday morning.
Annoying, but not the end of the world.
Once the technician tested her system (all good, thankfully) and left, Ellis sat down in front of her laptop to check her usual subreddits. Ah, the World Baseball Classic! Someone had posted a highlight reel of her favorite baseball team's best pitcher—arguably the best pitcher on the planet—recording 7 strikeouts in a single game. She opened up the video, eager to watch.
Why the hell is Ellis suddenly telling you about sportsball? Because, in an amazing coincidence, she spied the name of the company that had built her new thermostat, right there on the backstop behind home plate!
So they had WBC advertising money, but couldn't pony up for a sensible day/time interface. Ellis suspects she's in for an interesting couple of decades ... assuming her new system lasts that long.
P.S. Since Ellis has shamelessly segued her way into sportsball, there's something else she wants to share: a new player on her favorite team, Jhostynxon Garcia, is nicknamed The Password.
His younger brother Johanfran, also a baseball player, is called The Username.
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