WiFi

After a superb night's sleep, I wandered downstairs for a coffee at 07:15. Di followed me down about 30 minutes later. Being Saturday, the first scheduled event was the Zoom call with the Empsons. Having told them, last week, that Zoe had bought us this smart kettle that could be controlled by Alexa, they took it in turns to yell, "Alexa, turn on the kettle." How droll!

While the early morning coffee was percolating through, I spent some time reading the social media and looking at some of the astonishing photos and videos from Storm Ingrid and the devastation she was wreaking along the East Devon coastline. 

Finally, I was comfortable and set off for my walk with a new audiobook accompanying me. I passed Ellie on my walk. She was out with some friends and stopped to give me a cuddle before we both marched on. I wasn't out quite as long as usual, but I still managed a pleasant 5km. I hadn't been home for too long when I got a message from Zoe. "Is there anything you can do to improve my WiFi signal?" It appears that she had installed a "smart" bulb in Ellie's bedroom, and Alexa was having trouble staying connected. "Ah ha!", though I. I have just the answer. I used to have 3 BT Whole Home WiFi devices, which create a WiFi mesh across the house. These became redundant when I switched to an EE hub. I grabbed the devices and headed for Zoe's. A little while later, the mesh had been activated, Alexa had been swapped onto the mesh, and Ellie's TV and iPad were also swapped. Success.

I headed home for a quiet afternoon with my Kindle. Upstairs, Diane was sorting out some of her drawers, so she was unlikely to join me.

I started on dinner, and as soon as I had the hob and the oven running and food cooking, Zoe phoned. She was providing a relay between an Apple help desk agent and me while trying to set up an old iPhone for Ellie. The idea is that this would effectively be a dumb phone (providing virtually no apps or access other than location services and telephone calls to known numbers. I was involved as the manager of the family account. Rushing back and forth between the hob and the MacBook, I managed to get the rudimentary account set up, but I have no doubt there will be more to do later.