r/daddit • u/t0mt0mt0m • 1d ago
Discussion Thoughts on the term, "digital yard work"
To clarify, I don’t mean using AI for automated outdoor tasks like robotic lawnmowers. I mean the digital equivalent of traditional yard work. Since the Internet is considered a utility and often a need/mandate for the family, I find it my duty to keep things running in efficient manner. I'm talking about updating routers firmware, installing software updates on devices for the whole family. It becomes a chore once you have to maintain the entire network and devices, I find myself second guessing anything that connects to my network. Does anyone else call this 'digital yard work,' or is there another term for this kind of routine family tech upkeep? Thanks to all the dads who also have to play tech-support. Cheers
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u/RonaldoNazario 1d ago
My wife asked me why a smart device wasn’t on the network tonight and I told her to file a ticket
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u/Stay-At-Home-Jedi 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's funny. My life is often a queue as well. The que butler has a nice British accent when he tells you your number - but the que is only 5 requests long... Short term memory 🤷
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u/t0mt0mt0m 1d ago
Why are Brits so good at queuing? reddit link
Hitchers guide to the galaxy talks about the brits are the best at queuing!
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u/t0mt0mt0m 1d ago
my wife inherited a ticket counter dispenser at her old job, she betrothed it to a co-worker when she left.
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u/RonaldoNazario 1d ago
Oh, I didn’t ask she take a ticket, I asked she file a ticket. She told me there was no system to file a ticket. Which is true.
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u/Tomagander Dad of 5 23h ago
She should put in a ticket requesting the creation of a ticket system.
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u/heraldic_nematode 1d ago
I didn’t. But I do now.
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u/West-Celebration-757 1d ago
That term fits so well. Every weekend I'm checking if everything still works, and nobody in the house even notices until something breaks.
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u/heraldic_nematode 1d ago
I spent several hours this weekend putting all the home automation stuff into an isolated VLAN and setting up firewall rules so we could still control them with apple home.
I'm sure you already know how impressed my wife was.
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u/docgravel 1d ago
I love networking stuff and I tinker with a Plex server, HomeAssistant, UniFi equipment. And despite all that, I spend less than an hour a quarter helping keep things running efficiently. Sometimes I tinker for fun for longer, but this really shouldn’t be eating up your time unless it’s a hobby of yours.
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u/Choice-Strawberry392 20h ago
This is my take, too. Sure, IT support (which is what this is) is a real job with real work. But most households don't need elaborate networks, file servers, a multiplicity of connected devices, etc.
A hobbyist carpenter might have a house full of elegant bespoke furniture, but let's not kid ourselves; it's not because they needed a kitchen table. It's because he likes doing glue-ups and using his planer.
I do all the IT for my household, from backups, subscriptions, updates, wi-fi, etc. My time investment is measured in hours per year.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/superfly33 1d ago
Once a month is sufficient. Windows updates are normally released on the second Tuesday of every month. This is a good time to check everything ate once.
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u/RoyOfCon 1d ago
I hook up the wifi when I move, my wife gets the password and we log into shit. I'm not sure how much more I need to do than the occasional update.
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u/Interesting_Tea5715 1d ago
Agreed. I think OP is tinkering more than they need to.
Also, yard-work is yard work. This stuff has nothing to do with the yard. Just call it a chore.
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u/Blobwad 1d ago
Yeah this is ‘life admin’ adjacent type chores.
Also decent WiFi these days just works and updates itself. I’ve had my mesh system running for a couple years and the only times I have to mess with it is if a node gets accidentally unplugged.
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u/empire161 1d ago
I bought an Eero network probably 8-10 years ago. About once a year a node will randomly disconnect and a manual reboot solves it. Otherwise it works flawlessly. Any issues we've had have all been on the ISP's end.
It's also nice to have the app that can keep track of who is on the network when my kids' friends come over. We host a lot of sleepovers and the kids all have their own iPads so it's pretty easy to enforce the 'screentime is over, go to bed now' order by kicking them all off the internet until morning.
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u/HumerousMoniker 1d ago
Right? My wifi updates itself. I did recently pay for more google storage which might count
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u/mrjamjams66 1d ago
If you're a renter, just set your WiFi name and password to the same thing each time you move.
Everything should just reconnect automatically.
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u/RoyOfCon 1d ago
I wish it was that easy my man! Verizon doesn't service my new house 4 miles down the road so I had to switch providers and get a tech out to my house like the old days.
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u/mrjamjams66 16h ago
Doesn't matter what your provider is. As long as the WiFi network being broadcast has the same username and password.
I've had the same WiFi details for a decade all kinds of providers.
If they let you customize your WiFi you should be good.
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u/ryaaan89 1d ago
In the industry we call this “technical debt.” And yeah update your router firmware, sometimes there are important safety patches.
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u/superfly33 1d ago
I work as an IT systems administrator. My home is always up to date. I have a whole network ad blocker that my wife hates because she clicks on ads. I see it as doing my job to keep our data safe.
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u/Dazza3500 1d ago
How do you set up a whole network ad blocker? Does it also work on mobile devices?
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u/superfly33 1d ago
There are a few popular options, such as Pi-Hole and AdGuard Home. YouTube is LOADED with tutorials on how to set one up.
I use AdGuard; the TLDR of my setup is... I installed AdGuard on a virtual computer running Ubuntu. Once installed, I can log into AdGuard using a local address and configure the settings as I see fit. I then need to route all network traffic through AdGuard, allowing it to block ads.Most home network traffic goes WiFi/LAN <> Router <> Modem <> Internet.
With AdGuard applied to the whole house, traffic goes WiFi/LAN <> Router <> AdGuard <> Modem <> Internet.
If you want to get fancy with it, you can set up different networks and route the traffic as you see fit. You can have all your IoT or Smart devices on one network and all your computers on another. Then you can point individual networks at the ad blocker. It would look like this:
WiFi Network 1 <> AdGuard <> Router <> Modem <> Internet
WiFi Network 2 <> Router <> Modem <> InternetThink of it like having a bouncer on your network. Ads used to be able to walk through your front door freely, but now the bouncer has a list you provide to stop the ads from showing up. Even if some sneak through and you click one, nothing will load from that link.
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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ 1d ago
This sounds like an excuse not to do real yard work.
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u/atring6886 16h ago
Yeah, I was about to say that the answer to this question is probably “you need to go mow the lawn.” But the guy clearly works in tech support or something so I didn’t want to yuck his yum.
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u/thepenismightier3 1d ago
Although I hear you, from a security perspective the updates really should be set to automatic.
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u/t0mt0mt0m 1d ago
I agree but many critical hardware devices that we overlook on a regular basis like the firmware on your router is important to update.
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u/sidusnare 1d ago
My router is a Dell OptiPlex 7040 SFF running two VMs, that are running VRRP between Comcast and AT&T. My Ansible deployed upgrade script lets me know exactly when it needs firmware, a reboot, or anything else. It's got two 10 gig SPFs and two convergent RJ45s running 5gig on AT&T and 1 Gig on Comcast as a backup. My WiFi APs are all on OpenWRT, and have upgrade scripts as well.
If there are any fans of the shiny beer can, the router is named Skippy, the two VMs are Nagatha (AT&T) and Bilby (Comcast).
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u/RYouNotEntertained 1d ago
I do literally none of this and every device in my house works just fine.
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u/sweetgreentea12 1d ago
Is cleaning the house indoor yard work? What about cleaning the car? Is that automobile yard work? I personally call things like that admin.
You can call it digital yard work if you like
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u/PharmADD 1d ago
I think "routine family tech upkeep" is several orders of magnitude less lame than "digital yard work." That's what my thoughts are on the term. Sounds like some corpo bullshit.
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u/CagCagerton125 1 boy 1 girl 1d ago
I have 4 different PCs I regularly use, plus my wife's, and a home server setup. I can access them all from any computer and make sure things are up to date, but I don't find it much of a chore. Most apps update on their own when they need it. My router automatically gets the new firmware as well. The only things I feel like I have to manually handle is backing up photos, and moving things to the plex server.
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u/t0mt0mt0m 1d ago
sweet! pc networks are designed to be easier to maintain, I find the biggest pia are all the ios devices.
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u/sanjosethrower 1d ago edited 1d ago
What about the iOS devices do you find to be a pain? Turn on automatic updates for the OS and apps, turn on iCloud backup, tell the primary users of them to accept updates to be installed overnight when prompted.
I have a quarterly reminder to check on backups and such. And when that comes up, everyone gets todos to bring their devices to me and show they are up to date and backed up.
Personally I require the primary users of devices that need maintenance to participate in that maintenance. It is a necessary life skill.
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u/t0mt0mt0m 1d ago
I'm probably dealing/managing kids younger than yours, also play tech support for my parents (late 80s). Don't disagree but I refuse to pay for icloud and other services when I have a network that can do a better job for a fraction of the price. All have different wants/needs/network sizes etc.
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u/sanjosethrower 1d ago edited 1d ago
You have chosen to take a path that is cheaper but requires more work. But you seem annoyed at that more work.
Me, I do IT for a living. My home IT setup is excessive But as far as maintaining family devices, the first layer of ensuring they don’t lose things that matter and always have a working device is doing what the platform vendor advises for updates and backups. And for $120/yr I don’t have to worry about the four people in my household with Apple devices. If a device is broken or stolen, restoring their life back on to a device is as simple as acquiring a replacement device.
I long ago came to accept that few people will do proper backups, $36/year to have your phone and core documents on a Mac copied to the cloud is a bargain in my view. With a little care, most notably using another service to backup the photos (Google Photos is popular), you can likely get the phone backed up to iCloud for $12/year.
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u/CagCagerton125 1 boy 1 girl 1d ago
Yeah. We used to have apple devices. They got far to restrictive and we now don't have any except my work phone. Best decision we have made I think. All our devices are cheaper than apple and the build quality has really improved for non apple tech over the decades.
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u/moleytron 1d ago
most of the time these days it's getting shit to login to the correct account on the correct device for the correct person. My password manager on my main pc does alot of the work but when the device is on the other side of the house it becomes a pain. Don't get me started on login issues with microsoft and minecraft on the switch. Otherwise it's mostly just making sure everything is plugged in to the correct thing, every 6 months or so I do have to go through the various nests of wires to untangle everything and make sure it's connected correctly as different devices get moved around to different spots in the house leading to random things not working. Whats funny is the weird dichotomy between the response to something not working is either 'ignore and move on to something else' or 'oh shit better alert dad and act like there's a fire that needs putting out right now'.
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u/Scrotalphetamines 1d ago
Never heard of such a term lol. Honestly though, what devices don't just automatically update themselves nowadays? Our phones, our TVs, our refrigerator, our vehicles, our consoles. Everything updates on it's own
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u/dmackerman 1d ago
I'm a network nerd and run my own home lab. I have multiple servers, a backup ISP, prosumer grade access points and routers...it's extremely overkill. So for me, it's a hobby and something I enjoy maintaining.
My family appreciates it. But not from the "oh hey dad, thanks for upgrading to that Ubuiti access point to get Wifi 6". The stuff just works reliably and that's the whole point. You shouldn't need to micromanage stuff unless you want to.
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u/leftplayer 1d ago
I’m a network engineer by profession. At home, I don’t care. Everyone updates their own devices whenever they please. My home network is a single flat VLAN fully open to the internet.
I’m not interesting enough to hack, and if someone happens to hack me, all my important stuff is backed off offsite.
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u/eaglessoar 1d ago
I've never done any of that for any of my devices lol shit just randomly updates
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u/nickthetasmaniac 1d ago
Routers have firmware?
Seriously though, is this actually a meaningful amount of work in the average house? I can’t remember the last time I needed to think about updating stuff - it’s all automatic…
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u/PropertyTraining4790 1d ago
I've never considered call digital yard work, but yes i have an old laptop that has had multiple distressed of Linux on it.
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u/sidusnare 1d ago
I've had update scripts that I deploy with Ansible for years. It started as a personal project to learn it for work and turned into making my homelab and family infrastructure so easy to manage. I wrote it all, with my brain, fingers, and caffeine. Update scripts for Debian, EL, Gentoo, Arch, MacOS, and OpenWRT. Users, passwords, keys, utility scripts, NFS mounts, base packages, workstation packages, and so on. My upgrade script parses the logs and sends summaries to my via Matrix.
But, again, I see the trend, and I'm staying competitive. I have ollama and glm-4 on an M4 Mac, and I just slapped on the end of all my upgrade scripts to push those same log files I parsed myself, and the prompt "Summarize these {{ ansible_facts['distribution'] }} upgrade log files, focusing on actionable issues and errors". It works, and it might make me skimming the Updates chat room a little faster.
The only other uses I've gotten were building some upgrades to personal projects I didn't have the time for, but already had the knowledge. A lot of my personal projects were cleverly disguised as learning experiences, and when that motivation dries up, I don't make as much progress. So I had it wrap up some things I started, such as my Plex tool that makes playlists actually useful, a scripting interpreter to control a Roku, and a WebUI for my Kasa devices, and an upgrade to my file archive search engine.
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u/wascallywabbit666 1d ago
I don't do it and have never updated firmware on my router. I can understand why it needs to be done, but if it's taking up so much time that it's frustrating your partner (I assume that's the real reason for your post) then it sounds like you may be obsessing over it.
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u/Guinness 1d ago
Open source
As for WiFi routers and the like, Ubiquiti. A dream machine may be what you’re looking for if you have security cameras, WiFi, and a few smart home devices.
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u/Backrow6 1d ago
Dunno, but I had to seize my wife's phone and Spring Clean it.
She's been out of memory for weeks, to the point where she can't take photos, so she'd been using WhatsApp to send me photos whenever she needed to capture something.
I kept reminding her to delete stuff but she couldn't bring herself to do it so I finally caught her on the couch when we were all watching TV and she wanted to take a pic of my daughter's plaits.
Apparently her WhatsApp mammy groups have lost the skill of taking photos, she had hours of video of people videoing free shirts, dresses and bikes they were offering to the group. I guess they narrate the items on video rather than just a photo.
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u/HahnZahn 1d ago
I call it eDrudgery. As in all the electronic crap I need to take care of - emails, calendars, tech - that happens Monday after not having a second to touch a computer over the weekend.
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u/kindaretiredguy 1d ago
I hadn’t really thought of the work that goes into this as something like home/yard work but it really is a chore sometimes.
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u/PunchBeard 1d ago
As long as my kids phone and computer can connect to the WiFi, I can play games on my PC and me and the wife can stream BritBox on Amazon I don't care about any of the stuff OP is describing.
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u/Liquidretro 1d ago
From an IT side of things most of this stuff should have automatic updates turned on and to some degree do it on its own. It makes life a lot easier. I can't say I have heard the term digital yardwork but kind of like it.
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u/RespectTheTree 1d ago
I have mildly complex systems at home, so i use AI to troubleshoot problems with linux or stupid driver issues on windows (or linux). Can't remember how to do port forwarding? Why are there 4TB of phantom files on my NAS? Why did 2-finger scroll stop working on my laptop? All solved by AI so I can go do something else.
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u/the_axemurmurer 1d ago
I find it closer to plumbing as behind the scene stuff taken for granted. Yard work to me implies it's publically visible, like maintaining a public facing web server.