The Internet of Aggravating Things

The oth­er day, for some reas­on, when shower­ing after work­ing out, I de­cided I wanted to check on my weight. It’s been a while since I checked and I have this bad feel­ing I’ve vis­ited Flour too of­ten lately.

A few months ago, I got a new scale. It’s pretty cool. It came with an app!

I found the scale, pulled it out from un­der the tow­el cab­in­et, dus­ted it off, and stepped on it.

No re­sponse.

I flipped it over, found the re­set but­ton, and pushed it.

Noth­ing.

Ok, sigh… must be the bat­ter­ies. Wrapped in a tow­el, I went hunt­ing around the house un­til I found three fresh AA bat­ter­ies in a draw­er. A few minutes later I found an­oth­er stash of bat­ter­ies in my wife’s desk and got a fourth.

I went back to the scale, put the new bat­ter­ies in it, and then stepped on it, wait­ing ex­pect­antly to get the bad news on my weight.

The dis­play lit up… but not with an un­wel­come num­ber.

It lit up with a bluetooth sym­bol, an ar­row, and an icon of a mo­bile phone.

Of, of course. It came with an app.

Wrapped in a tow­el again, I went search­ing for my phone.

Phone in hand, I pushed the re­set but­ton on the scale again and turned on bluetooth pair­ing on the phone. Even­tu­ally, after the usu­al pain-in-the-ass of bluetooth pair­ing the scale and the phone were a mu­tu­ally happy couple again.

I stepped on the scale.

The dis­play lit up!

It said “setup”.

CRAP. I have things to do today! I just want my damn weight!

I launched the scale app on my phone. Maybe it would show me my weight? I stood as lightly as pos­sible on the scale while hold­ing the phone…

The app went in­to setup mode. Of course. It asked me for my lo­gin and pass­word. How the hell should I know? Ar­gh. I opened up my pass­word man­ager on the phone to hunt that down… and couldn’t find it.

Back to the app… I found the “Re­set my pass­word” but­ton, which then triggered email to my mail ac­count with a link to re­set my ac­count status with the scale com­pany.

Good god, I did not want to spend time on this par­tic­u­lar morn­ing work­ing on ac­count man­age­ment… but ok, fine, let’s just get it done.

The link showed up in email… I hit that, went to the web­site, re­set my pass­word, stored the damn thing in 1pass­wd this time around, and then went back to the app to fi­nally lo­gin.

YES! It let me in. Now, what’s my god­damn weight?

But, no… the app took me to my pro­file setup screen. WHAT THE F? I just want my freek­ing weight! I DON’T WANT FRIENDS WHEN I’m STAND­ING ON A SCALE.

I couldn’t find a way out of the stu­pid setup screen. Ar­gh. I’ve come this far… let’s just get this done.

I entered my name.

It asked for my birth­day.

I picked a ran­dom date.

It asked for my height.

Ok, maybe it needs that for cal­cu­lat­ing body mass… sure.

It asked for my weight.

MY WEIGHT??? Are you FREEK­ING KID­DING ME? That was what I was ask­ing YOU!

I got off the scale and kicked it back un­der the tow­el cab­in­et.

Stu­pid scale.

Stu­pid app.

I didn’t really want to know how much I weighed any­way.

-r’m

P.S. So, yes­ter­day, my wife fi­nally bought a new car. It’s pretty cool. It came with an app!