I don’t like having assistant always listening on my phone. I tried it for awhile but it bothered me having an always listening device right there waiting. (I’ve become a lot more privacy oriented with my personal data over the years)

One thing I did partially setup was having NFC tags in various places so all I had to do was unlock my phone and hold it to a specific tag for a timer to start (like my washer, dryer, food cool down, etc). But unfortunately due to an update making scanning NFC tags while your phone is locked not a thing anymore (combined with the death of Smart Unlock) that fun little project basically died in the cradle.

One little project I’ve been floating is setting up a couple micro controllers (1 in my laundry room and another in the kitchen) with some buttons I can just press to send me a notification on my phone (via contacting my home server) in X time when a timer expires. I’ve been in the planning stage of that one for awhile now but it had to get shelved until my server rebuild happens. (Hopefully soon)

So the stop gap right now is practicing a skill I’m perpetually shitty at: resisting the allure of memes and shit posts.