Consider the motion sensors in every bathroom and closet: flipping the light switches off produces enough motion to automatically turn them back on. Then there’s the homewide stereo system. You can play a CD throughout the house, but it turns on all the televisions at the same time. The front door unlocks when it detects motion inside, which means it graciously opens even if a family member sees that it’s an intruder ringing the doorbell. And the back door has the opposite problem: it senses someone’s presence and promptly locks. Add to those headaches dozens of remotes to control everything from the garage to the window blinds; an autofeeding fish tank that doesn’t, and such a complex mess of audio and video controls that Kirsch’s wife, Michele, says with a sigh, “Sometimes I wish I could just push a button and turn on the TV.”
Kirsch recognizes the high comedy in his dysfunctional domain. “I thought I could spend a zillion dollars and make our lives simpler,” he says. Alas, now he’s paying an electrical engineer with degrees from Harvard and Stanford $60 an hour to diagnose the dream house–and exterminate the bugs.
