I hate to dicker. I do not come from a haggling culture; the price on the tag, we assumed, is a fair price with profit built in, and if we didn’t like it we were free to go elsewhere. But something snapped this morning when the garage door repairmen gave me their estimate, and that “something” was “the amount of money I paid for a water filter the previous day plus what I know gutter cleaning will call next week.” They were genial fellows, industrious and serious about their trade. It took them half an hour to troubleshoot the problem, which led me to believe they weren’t just going to say “welp, the framjat that controls the wheegis motivator is fried” and sell me a new one. Or they were sitting in the garage having coffee and sandwiches, waiting for me to come back down.

When they called me down they ran through their diagnostics, and how they’d settled on a fried circuit board. This I bought. I knew it wasn’t the rollers, or belt, or the wiring, because it had worked one moment and then it had not worked the next. Some cheap piece of Chinese electronics just gave it up. He recommended installing a LiftMaster, and gave me a price.

“Sorry,” I said. “A half-horsepower does the job, and I priced them at Home Depot. And that’s retail. Installation is $97 on top of that, so I can get the job done for $290.”

The main installer looked up at the dead garage door opener, said he could shave a few years off the warranty. “One remote or two?”

“One.

“Three twenty.”

“You have a deal.”

I walked away so proud of myself. I should try this more often! Can’t wait to go to the grocery store now. Well, I priced these yams at Sam’s Club, and I can get the bag for four dollars.”

“Okay! Have a nice day.” Is how that would work.

When I came back it was fixed, and there was a new control panel on the wall. I paid them. They discovered another switch that didn’t work with the new control panel, and, well, I’d paid them, and wasn’t inclined to say “oh, there’s more? Let me open my wallet and let the Jeffersons sing their plaintive lament as they bid a sad farewell.” They just installed it. But there was one more thing.

“This comes with the MyQ wireless option,” said the crew chief. “Let me explain what that is.”

“That’s where you open it from an app on your phone, right? Takes a $49 adaptor.”

“Rrrrright.”

“I saw those at Home Depot. I can’t imagine why I would want it, but if I do, I can just plug it up there, right?” I pointed to the outlet in the ceiling.”

“No, you plug it into your modem.” What? “It goes into your modem and controls it from there.”

First of all, there are no open plugs in my office. None. Deal killer. But why wouldn’t it just work on the wireless network? I start to consider this issue when the trainee pipes up:

“There’s a small charge per cycle.”

What?

“Yeah. They’re thinking of going free though, but I don’t know.”

I laughed. Who wouldn’t? “You mean they want me to sign up for a service that charges me to open my garage door with my phone, instead of just using my remote?”

“Yeah.”

I suspect this service won’t have the customer base the consultants predicted.

Oh, BTW: during last night’s “nothing works” phase of life, the remote for the DirecTV wasn’t working, or so my wife said. Enter Roy Mode.

But she doesn’t turn it on and off, ever. So I unplugged the Genie Module, which connects to the Main Genie, and waited for it to cycle. This time I got a boot screen with system IDs and long numerical strings, with a “REBOOT” button at the bottom that could not be activated because the remote wasn’t working. So I hit OFF on the remote, because who knows, and that rebooted it and loaded the firmware and the software and the slightly-malleable ware and the going-all-soft-from-the-heatware, and it worked again. I should also note that I had a week of Neflix and other streaming media going from razor-sharp to VHS seen through a TV screen smeared with hair oil, but that resolved itself. Still have a new internet dead spot in the kitchen. No idea.

Anyway, let’s go to the Community Support page and see how it’s working out for people:

unable to register gateway: "That device is on another User's Account and unable to register. (310)”

Because you forgot the original account or the machine decided to belong to a neighbor’s account. Or because the software is FUBAR’d and thinks it’s on another account. Or it just doesn't know what it's doing. In any case, that door's staying closed until the software sorts it all out.

MyQ opens the door randomly withour being pushed to open

Just want you want. It's like going to a home security system product suport page and reading "program constantly turns off all the lights and throws the doors open."

I own a Samsung Galaxy S5. I was successfully getting "Push" and "Email" notifications for my rule created (door open/closed). But after closing out MyQ, then restarting, I was only getting email alerts, but not push alerts.

EMAIL FROM YOUR GARAGE DOOR OPENER

Created account. Repeated attempts to login with new password(s) continue to fail. Password Lockout. Please Help!

A password-protected garage door opener. I repeat: PASSWORD PROTECTED GARAGE DOOR OPENER

I love this:

My Android App alerted me 3 times that the garage door closed at 7:55 am today. I pulled up the History on the App, it only shows closing once at 7:55

I then tried to logon to the myQ site to look for a notification of an outage/problem, I can't logon. I then try "Forgot Password" and the link does nothing.

Or:

Hello guys, The timestamp of my email notifications are off.

That would nag at a man after a while.

Hi - my iPhone app has my left and right garage doors now switched.   Everything else is fine and nothing has changed.

Except for the fact that the doors are now switched. Here’s a fun situation:

The Door cannot be controlled because of too many failed attempts. Please operate the door locally to reset and allow unattended operation.
I am getting this message almost every time I try to close the door with my phone

The number of posts about the doors JUST OPENING FOR NO REASON would lead one to believe that the software isn’t as rock-solid as you’d hope.


 

 

 

We're having a merry time with the Black Widow serial, and this time it's . . .

Never "Skis of Minor Abrasions" in these things. Wrap up:

Back at Sombra HQ, she says something mean to the Science Lady she kidnapped; the brave scientist says something mean back to her. In the next scene we see why Joyce is such a perspective reporter:

Uh, yeah, Joyce, that’s kinda what the story said.

By the way, have I noted this? The editor?

Well:

It’s the heavy, literally and figuratively, from two other serials we’ve done here before. This is his most respectable role.

Anyway, back to the show. What’s our McGuffin this week? Steve Our Writer Hero has already gone to the morgue, and using the special powers granted to him by a newspaper, photographed the dead scientist’s hands. There was something scratched in her nails.

Round up The Miller Brothers! Since the doctor’s ring was turned around, it was apparent she scratched the letters herself before being killed, in order to send a message about her abductor.

“Mystery? Mystic? That’s it! Dr. Curry was trying to tell us the Black Widow was a mystic, or fortune teller.”

Hold on. First episode, they went looking for a fortune teller who’d seen the dead guy shortly before he was bitten by a spider.

Here they are together in the same room. In a building that has SOMBRA FORTUNE TELLER outside on the wall, and was next to the cigarette stand that sold the Black Widow’s henchman’s custom brand.

Then there as the Black Widow in the cave just the other day:

They don’t remember any of this. He goes through the list ALPHABETICALLY until:

Ring any bells, genius? Well:

Criminey. He gets her fingerprints on a picture, and acts all superior, as if he’s got her number. Sombra sends Blinky, the aged photographer, to follow Colt. Joyce is out fiddle-farting around, and passes some Republic promo:

Sombra uses Blinky’s microphone to eavesdrop on Steve and Joyce, who spill the beans about what they’re doing and why, which alerts the Black Widow to the necessity of KILLING EVERYONE INVOLVED WITH THE PLOT. Kidding; she has to send her goons to retrieve the handbag she left behind while posing as the Science Lady, which would incriminate her. Got it? The minions arrive as Steve and Joyce are going through the fingerprints whorl by whorl, and it’s fistfight time. Behold the most ungainly stunt in the series thus far:


HATS REMAIN ON, as the code requires. The crooks get away with the handbag, but Steve decides to jump out the window, secure in the knowledge that he will not lose his hat, nor will he disturb the hat of his enemy:

What do they use for hair oil, JB Weld? Well, since Steve’s unconscious in the alley, it’s time for the henchmen to remember the name of the episode.

I do so love this hokey stuff. I really do. But believe me. I'm saving you a lot of time.

That'll do; see you around. Industrials concludes the "Vendo" film with some nifty 50s scenes. Enjoy!

 

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