Cindy and Greg

I give Cindy a lot of crap for all the feel good books that she buys from Amazon or the piles we find at Barnes and Noble. But today while we were having lunch she told me about Randy Pausch and his Last Lecture.

With Father’s day a few hours away, it is hard not to get choked by listening to this and his head fake. Many lessons learned and great memories of growing up came from watching this. Take an hour from your schedule and watch this or order the book from Amazon.

As some of you know, my brother is in the midst of a re-model of his townhouse in Washington, DC. During this re-modeling he has been thinking about adding a security system to the house as a general pre-caution. He has one problem, no landline in the house. He utilizes Perceiva VoIP for his home phone (read: “spam phone number”) and he he uses his Sprint Blackberry for everything else. Most alarm systems from the likes of ADT, Brinks, etc require an analog phone line, or an ungodly expensive GSM transmitter (which is all fine and good if your home is in an area that has good GSM coverage). During his search, he came across a company called Ingrid Home Security. These folks have thought out of the box and developed a home security system targeted to service providers like Cox and Comcast to resell to its customers as part of a “triple play” type solution (telephone, Internet, television and now home security). They have made their product available to consumers.

So after some time reviewing the technology (while Stephen reviewed the company, their investors, etc), Cindy and I decided to place an order. We have been looking for a security system on an off for a few years because of the traveling I do, I hate leaving Cindy home alone. Anyway, we placed the order Sunday morning (5/25) and our order arrived on Friday 5/30 (they apparently upgraded us to 2 day shipping). The boxing was very Apple like (that will make sense to a few of you). It was clean and neat, with easy directions. As I was installing the system, it was incredibly easy to follow and understand. I would recommend reading the directions so you can really understand the system. I had the doors secured in about 30 minutes. We have 14 windows on the main level and choose to go with window sensors, in lieu of the more economical motion detectors because of the pets. The windows took a little bit of thinking to make sure the senors did not impact the way the window opened (either for air or for cleaning), but I found a good method of installation. I did run into 2 problems during the installation, both user related. The keychains didn’t program at first, but I found I needed to program them while standing near the keypad console (makes sense if you think about it). And the senors in my office didn’t seem to want to connect to the security grid the first time I installed them. I fired off an e-mail to IngridHome support desk and had a phone call within 2 hours. They said that sometimes you just need to play with it a little bit, which I asked if that was code for user error, the woman kind of chuckled.

Some of the  truly unique about Ingrid is that it connects to your broadband AND your analog phone line. You can use either or both to support your system. You get a web console called MyIngrid (creative, yes) that gives you a full view of the system, its health and all the configuration options possible. You can have it send you text messages/emails when you have a change in system status, a failure, or breakin. You can program various users and assign notification levels based on the user code entered to disarm the system (for example, the kids coming home from school, get a text page to let you know they are home). You can even bridge systems in geographically diverse locations together (how cool is that)?

There are a couple of wish list items for the Ingrid:

1. Temperature Sensor (monitor temps in specific locations within the house)
2. Carbon Monoxide Monitoring
3. Water Sensor (for flooding)

Check out a couple things:

• Comparison matrix
• Various components of the system
• InGrid Videos

I should add, the entire system was under $700 bucks and less then $30 a month to monitor. This compares incredibly well. ADT/Brinks advertise a system for $200, but then if you have more then 1 window or door, you need to add senors for those, if you want smoke detection you need to add those as well. So the system from ADT/Brinks for our home was well over $1000. Plus the monthly monitoring was more expensive especially when you included the smoke detectors.

So color me impressed!

So for a little more then a year now, we have had two lighting fixtures that were out of reach. Once sits about 10 feet above the kitchen counter, it is a spotlight that provides light around the sink. This light burned out just after we put in the granite countertops, so we couldn’t stand on the counters to replace the bulb. The other was a spotlight over the fireplace. This we could have reached if we really tried, but we didn’t.

So yesterday after a trip to Richmond, we stopped at Home Depot and picked up the bulbs and a little tool to help change light bulbs that are that high. Amazing how replacing two bulbs can change your perspective on a room.