u/MarcJordan

I installed a Pico 3 button unit so that I can turn on the lights in my office from outside of the door. The install went well and everything is functioning as expected. In the ceiling I have four recessed lights with 65w dimmable LED bulbs. One of the bulbs flickers about every 10 to 12 minutes for a second, but not the remaining 3. I replaced the bulb with others from around the house and the socket continues to flicker. When the cans were controlled by a paddle switch, it never flickered.

Any ideas where to start my investigation?

Next June my wife and I plan on renting a one bedroom apartment in the greater London area for four weeks.

Aside from AirBnB and VIRBO, where should I be looking for reputable listings for quality properties?

I have been using (and loving) my Sensi Touch thermostat (ST75) for the past six years without a single problem and have come to trust its reliability and accuracy.

Two weeks ago while I was on vacation I opened the App and found that I couldn't connect, with the error message "Thermostat Offline" displayed, and over the course of the next few days I was able to connected only sporadically. The few times when I was able to connect, I went to view the "Usage" page to see how many hours the A/C had been running (to verify that it was in fact running) and all that was displayed was "Insufficient Data".

Once I got home I pored through the Sensi support documentation and all it states for this error condition is that there is a communications issue between the thermostat and router. This prompted me to check the router logs, and by all accounts, the thermostat is fully communicating with the router and outside world. The logs showed no lapses, no latency and no disconnections at all, just a nice constant signal with increasing data going through. This prompted me to totally reset the thermostat and reestablish the connection, which meant pressing the "Reset" button on the unit, cutting the circuit breaker on the air handler and physically removing the thermostat from the wall mounting. After five minutes, I had a new Wifi connection established and the thermostat was working fine. However, I was - and still am- experiencing the same error message, "Thermostat Offline".

I opened a ticket with the manufacturer, but now four days later, still haven't heard anything.

I suspect that the connection is being made to their server, but that something on their side is amiss.

Has anybody experienced this or have any suggestions that I may have overlooked?

Like a lot of people, I cringe each time Windows goes into its automatic update, and this week I had good reason. I just finished reloading my desktop from scratch after an update prevented Windows from starting. After spending two full days trying to recover, I finally threw in the towel and reloaded from the licensed thumb drive and backups.

Over the past couple of years I have tried countless times to disable automatic updates using suggestions that people have posted, but to no avail. I have gone deep into the registry, modified services and nothing works, Windows will skirt all modifications as if it's laughing at me.

Does anyone have any "modern" technique to try which will finally kill the auto-update?