I hate alarms.
Chirps, and beeps from Alarm clocks to alarm systems will put me in a really nasty mood. I can’t count how many alarm clocks I’ve destroyed half awake because they freaked me out.Car alarms, beeps from UPS devices saying that they’re running when that should be obvious since you’re sitting in a lab that has suddenly gone pitch black.
My irritation level rises if I’m in a room full of people with smart phones chirping, whining, dinging, booping, or whatever. All of these noises represent something that needs attention.
FYI an incessantly ringing telephone won’t be answered… It will be ripped out of the wall! If it’s a cell phone, or a cordless phone, it’s battery will be ripped out. In those cases it’s pure dumb luck if the unit ever works again.
The ONE and ONLY time a fire alarm went off because of a real emergency, it went off as I and my family were already evacuating our burning home.
In point of fact it went off, further terrifying a dog who then panicked slipped her collar and ran into a bedroom where she died because we couldn’t get to her without losing our lives too.
The alarms in question over the years had gone off from the slightest whiff of smoke from the stove but for some reason waited until the flames were roaring across the ceiling before they went off, when they were really needed.
For me fire Alarms are a particular nemesis. I hate the things!
I hated being in corporate America when the company tested fire alarms. I’ve never understood the need for fire alarms to be so loud, with a frequency so piercing that they cause physical pain.
I’ve actually experienced temporary partial deafness from having to move down a long narrow hallway with hard floors and walls where the fire alarms were positioned every 30 or 40 feet.
The echo was deafening, painful and pushed me from pissed off to ready to rip someones throat out. I can remember screaming “MOVE YOU DUMB FUCKS!” at the top of my lungs because I wanted nothing more than to get out of the gauntlet of pain as quickly as possible. That comment landed me in the HR department because I’d been mean calling my co-workers dumb fucks.
By the way that incident happened while my fingers were firmly in both ears and I was still in excruciating pain. It felt like ice picks being driven through my head. I was partially deaf for days after. The HR bitch didn’t believe that I’d been physically hurt by the noise. I’m sure that I could have made a case today under OSHA rules. But back then… it was the cost of having a job.
(I just checked. Apparently sustained 85db is sufficient to cause hearing damage over an 8 hour day, which just so happens to be the db level of all three of the smoke alarms in my house.
It appears that in a commercial situation the db level can be higher. 100dbA can cause permanent damage after just 15 minutes per day, and 120db or higher can cause immediate damage.
I’m guessing that my reaction is a completely defensive reaction. I’ve always assumed that if something hurt it was probably damaging, Apparently, I’m somewhat correct. )
I have on more than one occasion leapt straight up and ripped an errant fire alarm off a ceiling of my home. By errant I mean one that has decided to go off because there was a spill on the stove or grease spatter in the oven. Even after being ripped off the ceiling the damn thing wouldn’t shut up. So in those cases I disemboweled the device to make it shut the hell up. There is something satisfying about hearing the death wheeze of a machine that’s pissed me off.
With all this in mind, can you imagine how fraught with peril running the self cleaning cycle of my oven is?
I mean you’re going to have smoke! Even with all the doors and windows open your’e still going to have smoke accumulating along the ceiling for at least a short time.
The house I live in now, has 3 smoke detectors in a nice straight line, they’re spread out over about 12 feet. One in the master bedroom, one in the hall and one in the guest room. Oddly there’s not one in the living room, however this means that these detectors are all less than 20 feet from the kitchen.
It’s a safe bet that when one of these smoke detectors goes off, they all go off, usually with a lovely 1/2 second delay so that the full painful, piercing,reflected sound is present. This will put me from zero to crazy pissed off in just about the half second they all decide to go off.
I’ve actually left the kitchen with something potentially dangerous smoldering on a burner to shut these damn machines up.
Why? Because with the sound causing the kind of pain they do I can’t think of anything except making the hateful noise stop.
Well today, I’m cleaning the oven.
I tried scrubbing it so that I didn’t have to run the self cleaning cycle.
But at some point, someone must have cooked something in the oven that fucking exploded. That same person didn’t bother to clean up their mess or tell anyone that they’d made a mess in the first place. I’m not naming names or anything…
What this all leads to is that in order to run the self cleaning cycle, I had to take certain precautions.
1) open all doors and windows (it’s 45F… I can put on a jacket for 3 hours)
2) Remove all smoke detectors and put them in a safe place.
3) Deal with the monitored house alarm smoke detector.
Number 3 is a bit of a sticky wicket. You can’t just pull it off the ceiling, that will cause it to go off and then the Alarm panel will be bitching for the next 3 hours “BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! FIRE FIRE FIRE BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!”
Long before you figure out that the panel can’t be shut up… the Fire Department has driven onto your lawn.
This is bad.
So I called the alarm people and asked them how to put the panel into maintenance mode so that the smoke alarm wouldn’t go off, summon the fire department, and most of all wouldn’t scream for 3 solid hours.
Guess what?
You can’t!
Oh, you can tell the alarm people not to call the fire department. But you can’t tell the alarm something simple like
“I’m the Human, I know whats going on and you don’t so shut the hell up and let me finish what I’ve got to do here.”
I told the alarm people that I considered this a serious design flaw.
“Yeah, I’m really big on the human having control because as the human in the equation I have the ability to reason and evaluate the situation.“
Until a machine can think, I will aways believe that a human should have the ultimate control. And yes… that includes even the control computers in a nuclear power plant.
I also believe that any human over-rides should require some challenges, The human, no matter how smart or well intentioned should be forced to think through their decision to over-ride automation.
That being said… this human over-rode the automation in a remarkably simple fashion.
It always makes me laugh when Star Treks Mr. Scotts words are true.
“The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.“
If I can’t take the device off the ceiling… I can at least prevent the smoke from getting to the device.
Only after I’d taped the bag in place did it occur to me I could have used a CD cover.
I’ll do that next time.
I’d have used one of those spray on foam oven cleaners but the instructions to the oven said not to.
Now the question is will I have to repaint the ceiling where the scotch tape was holding the plastic bag in place?
Well, we shall see in another hour.
I guess the thing that makes me crazy is that you can’t do the simplest of things anymore without it turning into a furball.
I miss the good old days when mom would burn something in the kitchen and we just had to open the windows.
I’m going to put on a heavier jacket. the sun is dropping behind the mountain and with it the temperature.
And by the way… I will be putting the hated fire alarms back up. Yeah, they’re a pain in the ass but one that I’m willing to put up with for the sake of having a little warning (hopefully) in case of a real fire.