Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

I bought the MyQ kit for my garage door. Then I returned it. While making my garage door "smart" isn't my highest priority, the MyQ kit had a few pros on paper. 

As the title suggests, I'm installing the Ring Alarm + Retrofit kit in my new-construction home. All of the guides I found online for installing the Retrofit kit were about moving zones from your old alarm panel. Being a new house, there is no existing panel to start with, so I wanted to document my install in hopes that it helps someone else. 

As mentioned earlier, I want to build an awesome smart home without overwhelming anyone with technology. As an Apple user, I'm already using Homekit, though my current setup is small due to living in an apartment for the last 8 years. From what I can tell, I can accomplish essentially everything I want to do without having to pivot a new platform.

As discussed a previous post about Home Plans, I mentioned about building the best network I possibly can (relative to our needs). To accomplish this, I had the builder of my house run 11 Cat6 cables throughout our house, all going back to the closet of the bedroom that I'm designating my office. I've chosen Ubiquiti Unifi for all of the network equipment. 

As I've mentioned in other posts, my wife and I are currently building a house. We've been talking about buying a house for 5 years, and have been saving specifically for the downpayment since 2018 (after paying off our car and taking care of some out-of-pocket medical stuff). It's currently still a plot of dirt with some boards laying out the foundation, but that hasn't stopped me from nerding-out with tech plans. After a lot of research and thinking, I've come up with some (reasonably) solid plans for the network, distributed audio, home theater and smart home functions.

My wife and I have had our S3 Watches for over 2 years at the time of this writing. I know that everyone has talked a bit about the Apple Watch and there are a million reviews out there already, but there are 3 specific things I love about it. I've watched and read a lot about this device and I think I can offer a different perspective.

If you've read some of my other posts, you'll know that my wife and I are very in-tune with our finances, and are working to keep our bills low and our net-worth high. As a car-enthusiast, I care a lot about what car to buy and didn't like the advice to buy the cheapest car you can find. I've found a lot of mixed advice about the "right way" to buy a car so I've done a lot of asking around and have thought a lot about the options. Here's my take on the "best" way to buy a car.