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How to Protect a Home When Away in Winter?
kidMike writes "I have just accepted a new job in another state, requiring me to relocate. I'm going to keep my house in New England. As I watch the winter storm problems and electrical outages across the country, how do Slashdotters protect their houses (or cabins) when they are away in the winter? Is there a device that will call me if the temp in the house drops below a certain level? How about a broken pipe flooding the house? How can I keep advised of problems happening hundreds of miles away? (There will still be broadband at the house.)"
Friend or relative you can trust. I sincerely hope you are not looking for a technological solution, because I left the autonomous robotic house minders and the holographic repair people in my other pants.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
I would of thought most Slashdotters would prefer to protect their home with either a few Tesla coils or Prism towers. A Mammoth tank left behind can be advisable when your away base-raping however the airfield should normally be able to take care of any surprise threats.
Throw in a subscription to WoW and I'll look after your house as long as you like
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
I usually set up a series of pits and snares and then stock secret rooms with orcs and kobolds. It doesn't hurt to circulate rumors of a powerful demon living in the cellar in local taverns either.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Buy an old P-III tower for 50 bucks, set it up with Fedora Core 6, Apache, and a dynamic DNS service. Add a cron job to reboot the server every Sunday, and maybe enable LogWatch to email you daily status updates. Finally, place the tower on the bare concrete in your basement.
With this set up you can check on your house from anywhere at any time. If the server stops responding, your house has been destroyed.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
The most sure fire way is to burn it.
...I'm sorry, what were we talking about again?
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Well, aside from two dead bodies, the hotel was in good shape. I'd rather have "REDRUM" on a door than a burst pipe, I say.
I have freaks! I did something right...
Get to know his neighbor? In person?? You must be new here.
The truly enlightened person would not care about material possessions. As such, it is better to protect yourself than you possessions.
I took a few weeks off work, and returned to find my favorite geek website had replaced its standard content with content completely unrelated to the topics which used to make it great. Even more disturbing was the fact that no one else seemed to notice.
What should *I* do?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I suggest leaving your youngest child at home to take care of the place. Leave adequate supplies, like paint buckets, firecrackers, cardboard cutouts of famous people, some 1950s gangster films (that you wouldn't let him watch otherwise), a tarantula, and a blowtorch. That should take care of everything.