Yearly Archives: 2014


36
My original ecobee3 review is now two months old, so I decided a “here’s how things are going two months later” post might be in order. Over the past two months, I’ve received numerous questions (both in my blog comments and over in the ecobee discussion forum at SmartHomeHub.net), and I’ve also […]

ecobee3 Review Followup: Two Month Update


3
Remember when you were a little kid, and your mother would take you to the supermarket, and as you approached the glass doors you’d wave your hand at them… causing them to open… with… The Force? It was almost like magic! Sure, deep down you probably knew there was some kind […]

Product Review: KOHLER Touchless Toilet Flush Kit


Updated HomeIQ Activity and Temperature 5
Sir Francis Bacon is commonly credited for coining the phrase “scientia potentia est” — Latin for “knowledge is power.” Though one might argue that, instead,  control is power, particularly in the world of smart home devices, such as WiFi thermostats. The new ecobee3 smart thermostat does indeed give you greater control over your home’s comfort, while […]

First Look: ecobee3 Web-based Home IQ Charts



10
When I first received an ecobee3 smart thermostat for review, I wrote a guide to installing an ecobee3 for first-time ecobee users. This post, by contrast, is for ecobee old-timers. I’ll walk through how to replace your original ecobee “Smart” unit and upgrade to the ecobee3, while re-using your existing in-wall wiring […]

Upgrade Install Guide: ecobee original Smart Thermostat to ecobee3


TPMS warning on dash 50
Last month, I noticed the Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) warning light turn on in my 2007 GMC Yukon Denali. When I pressed the button on the dash to see my tire pressures, the left-front tire showed nothing… meaning the computer wasn’t getting any data from that wheel. After a few miles, it started […]

TPMS Warning Light? Replace your TPMS Sensors for Cheap


Furnace ignitor working properly 42
You wake up in the morning, or come home from work, and you can instantly tell something is wrong. The house is cold. You can hear the furnace running, and you can even feel air coming out of the registers. But it’s not hot air coming out, it’s cold! Well, it’s not COLD cold, […]

Fix Your Furnace If It’s Not Blowing Warm Air



FreeDNS.Afraid.org A Record Setup 11
The Problem In the “early” days of the internet, you could find free Dynamic DNS (DDNS) accounts everywhere. The providers of those free services, such as DynDns, hoped that by giving you a freebie, you’d eventually become a paying customer for one of their pay services. Unsurprisingly, that’s not what happened. […]

Using FreeDNS.Afraid.org with DD-WRT when you lose your Free DynDns ...


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You probably haven’t stopped and really thought about exactly how many devices you have in your home that plug into a power outlet. So do it now. Go ahead. I’ll wait…. Now, think about how many of those devices have some sort of electronic or digital component. It’s probably way […]

What’s the “Best” Whole-House Surge Protection?


10
I received an email today from a friend and fellow Linux sysadmin, Todd Lyons, informing me of a very sneaky way to exploit the Shellshock vulnerability under what he calls “just the wrong conditions.” Here’s how his email starts out: With your recent blog post, you might also want to […]

Shellshock Warning: Even after patching, your old vulnerable bash binary ...



Setting up multiple WLANs in DD-WRT 3
Because I publish a lot of articles on DD-WRT router firmware, and I also recently published an article on patching the Shellshock bug on older Fedora-based Linux systems, I’ve been receiving a lot of emails asking if DD-WRT firmware is affected by the Shellshock Bash bug. The answer is… maybe. By default, the […]

Is DD-WRT Vulnerable to the Shellshock Bash Bug?


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With the announcement of the Shellshock Bash Bug, Linux admins around the world have been scrambling to patch their Bash shells so that they’re no longer vulnerable to the exploit. If you have a Fedora, RHEL, or CentOS system that hasn’t reached End-Of-Life, then updating to a patched version of […]

How to Manually Update Bash to Patch Shellshock Bug on ...


Proper ecobee3 wiring for PEK users 73
So you got your hands on an ecobee3 smart thermostat, and instead of reading through the installation manual (which is actually pretty good), you came to the Internet to figure out how to install your ecobee3. OK, fine… I’ll help you. 🙂 This how-to guide for installing your ecobee3 covers a […]

How to Install an ecobee3 Smart Thermostat



The new ecobee3 136
In 2009, Toronto-based ecobee released the very first “smart” thermostat  and called it, not surprisingly, the “ecobee Smart” (see my original review of the Smart from 2010). Since then, they’ve followed up with the ecobee Si (which I call the Smart’s “little brother”), along with a handful of firmware and mobile app updates for […]

ecobee 3 Review



The new ecobee3 1
While the Nest smart thermostat has fans of Apple-inspired designs swooning, it wasn’t the first smart thermostat. Toronto-based ecobee is actually the pioneer in this industry, and had two iterations of smart thermostats (the original “Smart” and the “Si”) on the market well before Nest (and now Honeywell) jumped into […]

New ecobee3 thinks it’s time to leave the Nest



There is no such thing as privacy 4
Another day, another story about nude photos of celebrities being hacked and posted online. I won’t mention the names of the celebrities in this most recent round, because it really doesn’t matter… and I really don’t want to accidentally show up in web searches of people looking for the photos. […]

What Hacked Nude Celebrity Photos Can Teach Us About Privacy ...


Stomping the mole hills doesn't work 10
Like a lot of guys, I take great pride in my lawn. I like it green, flat, fertilized, and weed-free. Because I have an irrigation well, I’m able to water my lawn all summer long and keep the soil moist. But wherever you have moist soil, you have earthworms. And wherever you […]

Getting Rid of Moles: What Works, and What Doesn’t


Grill like a geek 6
This year has been one of the best summers I can remember in Seattle. The weather’s been perfect, and I’ve been able to relax — which includes working on a bunch of projects around the house (don’t judge how I relax :)). But one of my favorite things about summer is […]

My Favorite BBQ Accessories



6
If you do a Google search on “Escalade warped rotors,” you’ll quickly find lots of stories from Cadillac Escalade owners complaining about their front brake wear. It’s easy to understand why. These behemoths are heavy. The standard 2008 Escalade’s gross weight is 7,100 lbs. But if you opt for the longer […]

Product Review: Brake Performance Front Rotors for 2008 Cadillac Escalade ...



Final assembled grill 18
I’ve been a “big stainless steel natural gas” barbeque grill guy for a long time. I’ve owned everything from entry-level Nexgrill units, to mid-level KitchenAid grills, all the way up to the big-daddy Viking grills. So this past Saturday, when my wife and I hit our local Costco, our intent was […]

Product Review: Traeger BBQ 400 Select



Why doesn't it look different? 14
Here’s the scenario: you’ve set up Dynamically Allocated Storage for the hard drive on your Guest VM in VirtualBox and you’ve run out of space — even though your Actual Size is smaller than the Virtual Size (this happened to me recently when my Virtual Size was 10 GB, and […]

Resize a Fedora, CentOS, or Windows Dynamic Guest Virtual Disk ...


Linux Uptime 6
CentOS 7 was released recently, and so I fired up my build VM so I could attempt to build the OpenDKIM package for submission to EPEL. But the compile barfs on strlcat/strlcopy, because RHEL/CentOS doesn’t have libbsd available (yet?). The libbsd package was a requirement for the package to work […]

Rant: Why is there no libbsd for CentOS 7?


19
Earlier today, I received the following email from someone who is not named Bob, but that’s what I’ll call him to protect his privacy: Steve, Did you recently sell an F40? Or are in the process of selling one? I have one with your vin number being offered to me that I am […]

Fraud Alert: Mark Raider of Rogclassics in Ely, Nevada is ...