My hotel room’s thermostat didn’t work last night. I sleep a bit hot and was hoping to crank up the AC a bit before I went to bed.
The hotel had an iPad that controlled most aspects of the room: lights, “mood”, TV, and—most importantly—thermostat. The iPad didn’t work, “Guided access is unavailable, download app on your phone”. Not too surprising.
After downloading the app, it spent a few minutes “Initializing flow…”. I needed to log in with my wife’s account since she made the reservation, but I couldn’t auth with a password; the site required her to use “Sign in with Apple” to create an account.
I re-downloaded the app on my wife’s phone, watched the app initialize “Initializing flow…,” signed in with Apple, scanned her face, and success!
Tapping the button to change the room’s temperature notified me that “the function isn’t available at the moment.” Quitting the app, tapping the button a couple of times, clenching my jaw, box breathing, quitting the app, re-authing with the WiFi… none of it worked.
The app had a pleasantly snappy interface for chatting with support. It put me on hold for a few minutes then showed three dancing dots after connecting me to my agent. Cody finished typing and asked me what the problem was. I explained I was hot and wanted to be colder. Cody responded with a poorly functioning web form in a chat bubble. Cody was not a human. Cody told me to dial 0 on my hotel room’s phone to talk to a human.
The hotel room did have a phone (sheesh, so old-fashioned). I dialed 0, heard a ring, then nothing. I optimistically waited a bit longer. Hmm, no luck. A few tries later, I noticed the hotel’s phone showed a message: “No logon. Inform reception.”
I got dressed and went down to inform the extremely nice front desk self-checkin kiosk assistant I had “No logon”. I asked if they could “remote into my room” to make it cooler. “Of course! Hmm… I’m so sorry, there seems to be a problem.” I asked if he could “try restarting my room” as I further dissociated. He considered the question seriously, but told me he could not.
I’m home now thinking about my AC.
I have considered sending datagrams through the air to a remote box, letting some electricity carefully spin around inside that box for a second, then shoot back over hundreds of miles of wire back into my home, fly through the air yet again, then spin around in another box here at home to turn on my AC.
Right now I just have about 20 feet of copper wire in my wall that, when charged, turns on my AC.