Saturday, February 5, 2011

Smoke Detectors are EVIL

Source: http://graphjam.com/
When the big snow storm came through, my branch of the power grid lost power for a few hours. I could look out my window and see other buildings with power the next block over. Talk about aggravating.

Anyway, the power went out at about 8:45 or so. I figured I was already sleepy, so I would call it an early night. I was going to need to get up a little early to account for the road conditions in the morning either way. So I'm laying and bed and fall asleep. BLAM my smoke detector in my bedroom starts going off. I'm all what the heck is going on here!? I do a quick check through my apartment to make sure there isn't an actual fire, then I do the wave a towel at the smoke detector trick to get it to shut off. I'm thinking that was weird but whatever I'm going back to sleep. I fall asleep again and then BLAM smoke detector freaks out on me again. Now, I'm getting aggravated. I have 4 smoke detectors in my apartment, and they're wired together so that all of them go off when one goes off. The damn things are so loud my ears are ringing. I do the towel trick again, and open up the window and my apartment door to get a breeze going through. No sooner do I get my door open then the smoke detector goes off again. By now I'm seeing red mad and just about to lose it. I take a few moments to collect myself and pull myself out of my anger, which is not the easiest thing to do with 4 smoke detectors making an insane ruckus while I'm standing in the dark half asleep and still ticked that my power is out. So I calm down enough to grab a chair to reach the darn thing. I yank it off the ceiling and disconnect the electrical wires with one hand using my phone as a flashlight in the other other. I get it down, and it starts going off IN MY HANDS. I reached back to throw the thing at the wall, but stop myself at the last moment before I go through with it. I yank out the battery and finally it shuts off. Finally, PEACE AND QUIET! By now, I'm too upset to go right back to sleep. I go through and close my window and door because it's getting really cold from the wind blowing in. I chill for a bit and finally return to being calm, then I laugh at the whole ordeal and call it a night.

10 comments:

  1. Great story. It made me laugh. You have a talent for writing.

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  2. Now there's some technology that needs reinventing.

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  3. I just take my smoke detector down when I cook inn the kitchen. Kinda risky taking them down overnight though, but I see you're still blogging so I guess you lived.

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  4. lol I know the feeling of a smoke detector that wont Shut the **** up!

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  5. poor you - but did you know that they also have a carbon monoxide detector in them - so its best to open some windows just in case....

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  6. why would you have 4 smoke detectors? thats kinda asking for it :)

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  7. So, why did it go off in the first place? :D
    Following and supporting!

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  8. I don't know why it went off. I'm guessing that it went off because they're all wired straight into the power, then the hardware got confused when the power went off. The power flickered off and on about 3 times when it went off. 3 hard resets in a row can screw up electronics. They're all old. The manufacture date is August 1998.

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  9. some of them will go off when they are low on batteries, but usually thats just a single chirp every once in a while. My CO2 detected started doing it, aparently those warn you if they're going bad. Had to test with a meter after that, lol freaked me out!

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