I can vaguely remember a time when, as strange as this sounds, we used light switches to turn the lights in our house on and off. I know, I know — it sounds crazy, but you have to remember that those were simpler times. I mean, we’re talking about a time when we couldn’t even control our thermostat from a thousand miles away. These were truly the Dark Ages before we learned the ways of EUTOMASITAD.The initial problem presented itself quite simply, as problems often do. We wanted a way to make the house look like it was occupied during those evening when we weren’t at home. Sounds easy, right?The first step down this particular EUTOMASITAD path came with using a mechanical timer to turn the living room light on at dusk and off after we went to bed. The lamp plugged into the timer and the timer plugged into the wall. Using little plastic tabs around the outside of the timer’s clock face you could set “on” and “off” times for the lamp. As I look back now I’m embarrassed to even speak of such a thing.That solution worked quite well, like simple solutions often do, but it suffered from two of the things that drive the EUTOMASITAD- inclined crazy: 1) it wasn’t very flexible (it didn’t handle the fact that “dusk” changed from day to day), and 2) it was too simple. Sure, it did what it was supposed to do, but with this newfound capability came newly contrived demands that pushed the mechanical timer into the junk heap.For example, during power outages the timer would end up being out of sync and would turn the light on and off at the wrong times after power was restored. Sure, that only happened once every year or two, but to a person looking for an opportunity to implement a EUTOMASITAD- centric solution that was often enough. We replaced the mechanical timer with an electronic timer that had a battery backup. That was the next step down the EUTOMASITAD path. Momentum was starting to build.One Christmas we decided that we would decorate the house by putting a candle in each window. It turns out that there are two types of candles that you can buy for your windows. The first type has an on/off switch in its cord and you must manually (gasp!) turn the candle on and off. The other type uses a photoelectric sensor to determine when it’s dark enough outside to turn the candles on and will automatically turn the candle on at dusk and off in the morning. Needless to say we chose the second type. Just as with the mechanical timer, however, it didn’t take long to compile a list of requirements that the photoelectric candles couldn’t fulfill.

We realized that we didn’t want the candles to stay on all night but, rather, we wanted them to turn off at midnight, just like the living room light. That’s not the way the photoelectric candles worked, though — they simply turn on what it gets dark and turn turn off when it’s light again. Now a decision needed to made. Should we invest in twelve timers (one for each candle) or should we just live with the candles staying on until dawn? Here was a golden opportunity to solve all of the problems with EUTOMASITAD, and down that path we went.

There is a way to use your house’s wiring as a type of computer network using a protocol called “X10″. As I mentioned in the previous article, one of the tenets of EUTOMASITAD is to use the home network whenever possible, even if it’s not required to solve the problem. Using X10 to turn on our lights certainly meets this requirement.

The X10 protocol is fairly straightforward. Each device to be controlled using X10 is assigned an ID (like “A2″ or “C7″). The controller sends a signal down your house’s power lines with a command like “Turn A2 on” or “Turn C7 off”. All of the X10 modules see all of the commands but only the ones that are identified in the command respond. What could go wrong?

We purchased a dozen X10 modules and a controller, assigned each module a different ID, set up the controller to turn the lights on at dusk and off at 11:00PM, and plugged everything in. As night fell something unexpected happened — half of the candles turned on. Now, maybe “unexpected” isn’t the right word. I mean, one of the side effects of EUTOMASITAD is that there will always be problems, but I really didn’t expect to see a 50% failure rate. I expected a 100% failure rate and was actually excited that fully half of the candles worked. It helps to have diminished expectations when one works with EUTOMASITAD.

So what went wrong? Well, after some reading on line (always part of implementing any EUTOMASITAD solution) I learned that the problem has to do with the way modern houses are wired. It turns out that your 220V AC service is accomplished my sending two 110V “trunks” into your house. The problem we ran into is that the X10 signal has a hard time jumping from one of these trunks to the other. That means that if your controller is on one trunk and your candle is on the other trunk the signal won’t get from the controller to the receiver. And how do you know which of your outlets are on which trunk? Trial and error. Mostly error, as it turns out.

Fortunately, for every EUTOMASITAD problem there is a EUTOMASITAD solution. In this case the solution is to put in a type of crossover in the breaker box to link the two incoming trunks. The crossover worked, and, more importantly, I wasn’t electrocuted.

And now we have a solution which is a perfect implementation of EUTOMASITAD. The problem is solved (the lights turn on at dusk and off at 11:00PM) and the solution uses a computer (the controller), a bunch of receivers (the X10 modules), and a network (the AC wiring in the house). When it works and we’re not in the dark (literally) it works perfectly. You know, just like the lamp in the living room did when we used that first mechanical timer.

Like most people, I watch television programs and movies on my TV, not on my computer screen. As with many things in life, however, I’ve learned to make this otherwise simple activity quite complicated through EUTOMASITAD (Excessive Use of Technology to Make Simple Tasks Difficult).

The first step to watching TV “the EUTOMASITAD way” is to change where you get your programming. Antenna? Too easy. Cable? Too easy. Satellite? Still too easy. No, the best way to get EUTOMASITAD programming to watch on your TV screen is from the internet. I’m not talking illegal rips of movies here, of course (that would be wrong) — I’m talking original, non-copyrighted material that gets published to the internet.

For example, one of my favorite geek shows is from the website DL.TV. The show is a 30-minute video that gets published twice a week and covers all types of tech news. Now, I could just watch the latest episode of DL.TV on my computer screen, especially since the video quality isn’t that great (oddly, it’s almost like they expect that you’re going to watch the video on your computer). But that’s just not the EUTOMASITAD way.

Some modern DVD players are capable of playing videos which are downloaded from the internet. A simplified EUTOMASITAD method would be to simply burn the downloaded episode to a CD or DVD and play that disc using one of these EUTOMASITAD-friendly DVD players. But this method fails to involve one of the most important facets of the EUTOMASITAD home: the home network. A true EUTOMASITAD user will use the home network whenever possible, especially when it’s not necessary to accomplish a given task.

This, then, is the way I watch an episode of DL.TV:

1. set up a podcast program (juice) to automatically download the videos from the DL.TV website
2. set up some sort of service on my computer to handle delivering the content (in my case I usually use the UPnP server “Nero Media Home”)
3. stream content to a media device connected to my home network and TV (in my case I have a Roku HD1000)
4. enjoy the first 5 seconds or so of the video before it craps out
5. begin EUTOMASITAD troubleshooting
6. run to the basement to see if the network switch is working
7. run upstairs to the computer to see if the UPnP service is running properly (and reboot it anyway, just to make sure)
8. run back downstairs and reboot the Roku HD1000
9. return to the couch to watch the next 5 seconds of content before it craps out again
10. goto step 5
11. give up

(Those of you who are programmers will notice that you never actually reach step #11. A true EUTOMASITAD disciple will never give up — they may get frustrated, they may get annoyed, but they will never give up. That is not the way of the EUTOMASITAD.)

I’ve left a few steps out (like transcoding the video to MPEG-2 on the fly and getting the UPnP protocols to handshake properly) because I don’t want to give the impression that the process is overly complicated.

Like most problems solved using EUTOMASITAD the solution works great when it’s working and causes trouble the other 90% of the time. It’s a lot like playing golf in that respect — it’s that 10% of the time when things go right (or that perfect golf shot) that just keeps you coming back for more.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go reboot my television.