I think they’re owned by the same parent company, but a few manufacturers offer Smartkey. It’s nice if you want matching keys for a fancy Baldwin front door set, and regular Kwikset for the garage and backdoor.
I’ve also noted some cheaper brands that are using “smart” on their packaging but are not really offering Smartkey. Read the box.
The wood chipper. I had no idea there was such an easy way to get rid of a body.
Clearly, you don’t live in Nevada.
It was nice for shutting a door from anywhere in the house.
It was nice to know what time my kids came home as they use to use the garage door keypad entry at the old house. The app told me not only if open or closed but also when the status last changed.
At least twice, people came over that needed access to the house and I was able to open the door remotely with said app while I was up in North Jersey the one time and 20 minutes away a different time.
If I was working in the my basement shop, I would know when my wife pulled in upstairs. That was also very nice.
Kind of messy to clean up, though. I prefer hydrofluoric acid. Just make sure you use a chlorosulfonated polyethylene barrel, else really bad things will transpire.
Stranger
Also, if you are planning to get rid of a body with quicklime, make sure you don’t actually use slaked lime instead.
Some of them do have that. It’s called Geofencing, and it requires it to have location access to your phone, etc. It will open the door when you come into the neighborhood and the door is closed. There is all sorts of stuff that you can do, depending on its compatibility with various cloud-based apps and your own level of technical competence.
I built my first computer, an Altair 8800 back in 1975. People asked what I was going to do with it and said it was stupid.
I said, “Well this one is just to play with* but someday…” It took a good ten years to make good on that, even in Silicon Valley.
*It had no peripherals so everything was fingerboned in and flashing lights out. It had 4096 bytes of memory.
Last year while at work I was using a tracking app on my phone, Life360, to alert me when my son got withing a block from our home on the school bus. I then would access our front door cam to wait for him to appear. Then I’d remotely open the garage door, switch to the camera intercom and in my best robot voice say “Welcome home sir.” My proud Phil Dunphy moment.
Of course he would just roll his eyes and shake his head. He did however have a friend come home with him after school once and the friend thought it was “Sups Cool!”
I was happy enough using my Avocet cycle computer - all I wanted was to track current speed and distance, and that’s all we had for some years.
They couldn’t leave well enough alone, now we have cycle computors that will map your route, and give you all sorts of data including power related to the windspeed that you encounter on your ride out.
They can show you your route on a map, you can put in maps and follow routes you create, they can also give you route suggestions, they can turn your lights on and off and sound close pass alarms from vehicles coming past you.
Of course who needs such as thing and all the data it can churn out?
Me, now just saving up for a configuration that will read out current power output live and give me a comparison with previous rides - live, and maybe also tell me if anyone is riding nearby that I might know.
Back in the day if you wanted to know your way around, you had to read a map or just ride around a lot and work it out.
My iPhone, except for the part that does phone calls.
Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip… load. Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip… load.
Repeat oh, several thousand times. Then find out that the program doesn’t run. Must have missed a flip somewhere along the way…
Am I still traumatized? No, I am not. Honest.
The last gadget I can think of that changed my life was the computer. A good friend got an Apple II in 1979 and I really could not understand why. Then in 1981 we began to collaborate on a book. We would mail typed material to each other but mail between Cleveland and Montreal took a minimum of two weeks. Then a colleague of mine went on leave and lent me a teletype machine with a builit-in modem. I got an account with my university mainframe and he with his and, using data networks (Tymnet in the US and Datapac in Canada) we were able to exchange files. Then my colleague returned and I had to return the teletype. So I bought a computer, a genuine IBM PC in April, 1982, along with an acoustic 300 baud modem and printer and we still exchanged files that way. The book was finished in late 1984 and published in early 1985, by which time we had email. We did some more work together and published a second book in 1990, but by that time it was thoroughly automated.
Incidentally, that 1990 book took an hour to compile from the source text tile, an hour and a half to convert to a .hp file and another hour to print it on an HP Laserjet. I had occasion to recompile it a couple months ago and it took 20 seconds to convert the source to a .pdf file ready for the printer.
I bought a clock radio for a buck at a yard sale. Cool, I can see what time it in the dark, an interesting curiosity. After a few years, I had to get up at 5, so I dusted it off and spent 10 minutes learning how to set it. Then I woke at 4:55 and watched it go off. I set it on an AM station so the crackling would be heard even if the station was not on all night. It was a dollar well spent.
I found out that my van had heated seats after my son borrowed it and forgot to turn it off. I wasn’t sure what was happening when it first started warming, but I got used to it fast.
Of course, I had to have the boy come out and show me where the switch was.
I’m a little behind I guess. I never saw the point in a remote unlock or even having a keyfob, and never ordered a truck with them. I bought one off the lot in 2017 which had the keyfob with a button to unlock/lock the doors.
Now I’m spoiled. No more checking the door locks by pulling the handle as I leave. I can push the button in my pocket as I walk away and listen for the chirp to tell me it’s locked. And if my hands are full I can push the button and unlock all 4 doors. No more fishing for the key, turning it in the lock and reaching around to unlock the back door. I should have gotten this technology sooner.
the huge hard drives in modern pcs … when I saw the “new” 1-1.5 gigs my first remark was "other than businesses or graphic designers who the hell needs that much HD space "… I mean my biggest game was sim city 2k … then games like return to zork came out along with the cd rom drives and endlessly updating online games (EverQuest)… Now I get sims 4 updates on my box one that needs more space than my first 5 computers had all together …
In college, I agreed one time to guest host the early morning shift on our campus radio station. As I was setting my alarm the night before, I realized that I couldn’t set it to the campus station because it wouldn’t be on the air until I got there to turn stuff on.
I think I’d rather have to dispose of a body than hydroflouric acid.
At least you figured that out before you didn’t get woken tomorrow morning. 