As luck would have it, I was up well before the doorbell rang at 7:45 Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
It was garbage day, when we all celebrate the lobbying talents of Silver State trash-hauling employee Jennifer Simich, who somehow managed to convince then-Las Vegas Councilman (and former cop) Michael McDonald to land her outfit a zillion-year monopoly garbage contract. (No one known how she did it. Councilman McDonald swore under oath to the Ethics Commission that he and Ms. Simich weren\u2019t \u201cdating\u201d at the time — though he did give her a big public smooch at the New Year\u2019s Eve celebration downtown, that year. I mean — would a former Metro cop lie?)<\/p>\n
For the record, unless it\u2019s a medical emergency of the \u201cIs this your squashed cat?\u201d variety, I would advise anyone planning to ring a stranger\u2019s doorbell in this town after 9 p.m. or before 8 in the morning to call ahead, describing precisely what\u2019s on your warrant. In this home-invasion era, some folks react poorly to Strangers in the Night.<\/p>\n
On the Thursday morning in question, three guys had arrived in a white truck with a ladder.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here to install the new thermostat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new thermostat. Clay sent us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ah. We\u2019d recently purchased a new rooftop heater and air conditioner. The guy had told me he\u2019d throw in a free digital thermostat, since I\u2019m such a good customer. (Since I rarely haggle, paying the asking price for such stuff, I suspect there are portions of the country where \u201ca good customer\u201d is an alternative spelling for the word \u201csap.\u201d)<\/p>\n
From the back of the house, the brunette asked what was going on. I told her.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you\u2019re going to let them put it in?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sure, why not? On the old thermostat you just slid a little bar till it was set at APPROXIMATELY 70 degrees. This way you\u2019ll be able to tap in PRECISELY 70 degrees.<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you forgotten how much you love to deal with the digital control for the lawn sprinklers?\u201d<\/p>\n
I had, actually.<\/p>\n
Fifteen minutes later, thanks to the miracle of the battery-powered screwdriver, the thing was in.
\n\u201cIs there an instruction book?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, the instructions are right here, inside the cover.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre they leaving the old unit?\u201d asked the brunette.<\/p>\n
Sure enough, they had my old thermostat in a box. They\u2019d been preparing to spirit it out the door. I reclaimed it.<\/p>\n
The thing was set to 72 degrees, and it thought the time was 9:20 a.m., although it was actually 8:10. To reset the clock, I hit \u201cprogram\u201d till the clock numbers flashed, then reset them. Then I bumped the temperature down to 68. Then I looked for a button marked \u201cdone\u201d or \u201cset\u201d or \u201csave changes\u201d; \u201cquit\u201d or \u201calrighty then\u201d or \u201cget me the hell out of here.\u201d Something.<\/p>\n
There was no such button.<\/p>\n
I pushed \u201cprogram\u201d some more. To what temperature would I like this thing to reset my home at 6 p.m. tonight? At midnight? At 6 a.m. the next morning? How about Monday through Wednesday, what temperature? Flash flash flash. How about Friday through Sunday? Flash flash flash. No matter what I pressed, it kept giving me new options, flash flash flash. If I\u2019d kept at it any longer, I\u2019m sure it would have asked me whether I\u2019d like to have all my kitchen appliances turned on at 7 a.m. July the Fourth, whereupon my new, \u201csmart\u201d thermostat would play a tinny version of The Star Spangled Banner to advise us when the coffee was ready.<\/p>\n
A short time later, I was on the phone to Clay, asking him precisely why he\u2019d sent me this thing. I know the folks at Nevada Power — pardon me, they\u2019re calling themselves \u201cNV Energy\u201d this month, \u201cGreen Clean Energy at Twice the Price\u201d having already been taken, presumably — are hot to trot for these digital programmable wonders, since they want to be able to access them remotely by radio wave to re-set the temperature in your house during \u201cpeak load\u201d hours, bumping up your thermostat on hot summer afternoons to reduce demand, stuff like that.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re already got a pilot version, called \u201cCool Share,\u201d insisting they\u2019ll \u201cgive you a rebate on your electric bill\u201d if you sign up.<\/p>\n
So if we all sign up they\u2019ll operate at a loss? I don\u2019t think so. Since the rates are going to be juggled to leave their authorized profits precisely where they were, I suspect you could also express the concept \u201cgiving you a break if you participate\u201d as \u201cadding a penalty to the bills of those who refuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve worked in retail. You think no one has ever bumped up the price of the $84 overcoats to $120 so they can announce a \u201cHuge Blowout 30-Percent-Off Sale\u201d?<\/p>\n
Clay insisted there were no such hidden incentives. It was just a gift from him, \u201cworth a hundred dollars!\u201d He\u2019d offered it to me \u201cbecause it makes the unit more efficient. You can program it!\u201d<\/p>\n
Finally, I pushed something called \u201crelease\u201d or \u201creverse\u201d or \u201cretreat,\u201d I no longer remember precisely. The temperature setting returned to 72. The clock went back to thinking it was 9:20. Now I just used the little up-and-down arrows to click down the temperature to 71, 70, 69, 68. OK, as long as I avoided that whole \u201cprogram\u201d trap, I could live with the fact this thing was going to be an hour and 10 minutes fast for the rest of my life. No big deal. It was easy!<\/p>\n
I stood there admiring the new technological wonder for 2 seconds. 4 seconds. 6 seconds. At which point — pop! — it reset itself to 72 degrees, 9:20 a.m.<\/p>\n
Was that the \u201cset temperature\u201d or the \u201ccurrent temperature\u201d? No way to tell. No instruction book.<\/p>\n
The men came back and took out the new white monster within the hour. I wonder where my old thermostat would have been by then, if the brunette hadn\u2019t insisted they leave it behind.<\/p>\n
I contacted Chelsie Campbell at NV Energy that afternoon, asking if there are any commercially available units that come \u201calready enabled\u201d to receive the pager-like radio signals that allow the company to reach into your home and reset your thermostat, whether you\u2019re there or not — the way we now expect televisions to arrive \u201ccable ready.\u201d I also asked if the company currently has any incentive arrangements to encourage contractors to install these \u201cdigital, programmable\u201d monsters in new construction, or to retrofit them into older homes.<\/p>\n
Ms. Campbell says no, so far as she knows there are no \u201cradio enabled,\u201d remote-accessible thermostats yet available on the commercial market. So, obviously, there currently isn\u2019t and couldn\u2019t be any incentive program to encourage or reward contractors to get such a unit into your home.<\/p>\n
Yet.<\/p>\n
If you go for the power company\u2019s \u201cCool Share\u201d deal, they send folks from a private, \u201cturnkey contractor\u201d called \u201cConverge\u201d to install a special radio-accessible thermostat manufactured expressly for the utility. Then, if the utility does indeed remotely access your thermostat to bump up your temperature during high-demand summer hours, they\u2019ll send you a rebate check each fall for \u201c$1 per event after the first four events, up to a maximum of $29 per summer,\u201d to reward you for your participation.<\/p>\n
No word on whether they\u2019ll have the thing turn on your coffee-maker, while they\u2019re at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As luck would have it, I was up well before the doorbell rang at 7:45 Thursday morning. It was garbage day, when we all celebrate the lobbying talents of Silver State trash-hauling employee Jennifer Simich, who somehow managed to convince then-Las Vegas Councilman (and former cop) Michael McDonald to land her outfit a zillion-year monopoly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-repair"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-2F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}