One evening I tried to set up my old Oregon Scientific weather station, the kind with the little outdoor sensor that tells you temperature and humidity. I thought it would be straightforward—put in some batteries, press sync, done. But instead the screen kept flashing some weird icons I couldn’t understand, and the indoor unit wouldn’t pick up the outdoor sensor at all. I started pressing buttons at random, which only made the display switch to a mode that looked like an alarm clock. I dug through drawers for the manual, checked the box it came in, even looked behind the bookshelf where I usually stash papers. Nothing. Online wasn’t much better—I clicked five different links that promised the manual, but half of them were broken or led me to “register to download” nonsense. It was one of those nights where you think, “How hard can it be to just connect two pieces of equipment that are literally designed to work together?”