@&%^$#@%^&* Beep!

[Al Agnew]

I can't prove it, but I suspect that there's a conspiracy among electrical engineers. I think all of them get together to figure out ways to drive people nuts. Maybe they all belong to an electrical engineers organization, and one of the hidden goals is to make us all bonkers. I can see them sitting around and chortling at what they've done...

I'm sitting in the studio, which is on one end of the house, working on the next Bass Pro catalog cover. I've got streaming audio of NPR on the computer. I hear a beep. You know, one of those beeps that lasts a split second. "Crap," I think, "the battery is going dead on something."

But maybe it was on the radio. I keep working, and a minute later I hear it again. Since a different person is talking on NPR, I've eliminated that possibility. So I turn off NPR and start timing it. Sure enough, one minute later it happens again.

Now the problem with these little electronic beeps is that they don't last long enough for my ears to even get a fix on the direction. I've got a closet full of camera gear, but I've never heard any of it beep before. Can't be that. My cell phone is on the other side of the house. Handset to the landline is sitting on the charger, can't be it. Must be the smoke/carbon monoxide alarm. But it didn't sound all that loud...usually the alarm is pretty loud. I sit still, middle of the room, listening.

Beep.

Sounded like it was coming from the smoke alarm. I have to go get a ladder to reach the alarm. Unscrew it from the ceiling...yep, it's one of the alarms that's tied to our home security system. Should I unplug it from the system? I don't do that, just take out the back-up battery. I leave it hanging by its wires.

BEEP!

Now the alarm is telling me it's back-up battery is faulty. Yep, I know it is because it's sitting on the table. I climb back up the ladder and unplug the alarm, and call Mary, who is in town, and tell her to pick up some batteries. I figure I won't have to listen to that beep anymore.

Beep.

I go back over to the smoke alarm, which is now sitting battery-less on the table next to the battery. I pick it up. Beeeep. Sounds like Wall-e dying. Then, beep. That didn't sound like it came from the alarm, which I'm now holding in my hand. Sounded like it came from the door leading from the studio to the rest of the house. Must be another smoke alarm somewhere else in the house. I count off the seconds in my head as I walk into the middle of the house and listen. Sixty seconds passes and I don't hear a beep. Maybe it came from the basement. Mentally counting off sixty more seconds, I go to the basement. Nothing. Maybe it's stopped. Walk back up the stairs and into the studio.

Beep.

By this time, I'm fully ready to shoot whatever it is with a 12 gauge, if I can only find it.

Beep.

Still sounds like it's coming from the door. There is a big closet in the little hallway between the studio and rest of the house. I walk into the closet, and listen.

BEEP!

Aha! It's something in the closet. But what? No smoke alarm in the closet. Not much but art supplies. I look around, and on a top shelf is a box with a bunch of various computer wires and miscellaneous junk. I drag the ladder in and stand on it with my head close to that box.

BEEP!

Yep, it's coming from the box.

I drag the box down and start tearing through it, throwing wires and stuff on the floor. At the bottom of the box I find...

an old smoke alarm. I removed that alarm from the garage well over a year ago, when it started beeping like crazy for no reason but that it was defective...and I forgot to take the battery out of it.

This has happened before. The last time it was in the middle of the night, and after spending a half hour checking all the smoke alarms all over the house, I realized it was a cell phone. Not our usual cell phone. Our ATT cell phones don't get good reception where we live part of the year in Montana, so we bought Verizon phones for there. We'd gotten back from Montana about a week before, and stored one of those phones without turning it off, apparently. Had to dig it out of a drawer to find THAT beep.

Why don't those engineers design these things so that the beep lasts long enough or is frequent enough that you can find it?

[fishinwrench]

LMAO ! Been there/Done that

My smoke detectors are interlinked, so when one starts chirping they ALL chirp...but not at the same time and in no particular sequence.

I live exactly 16 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart, so I have to either go get six 9 volt batterys at the corner store and pay tourist prices for them... and change them all out.

OR run around sticking them all to my tongue to see which one bites the least and then swap it out with one from the weather radio, OR throw the breaker and pull all the batterys to disable the whole system (not an option).

The worst part is that I can NEVER remember to pick up batterys when I'm out running around... then I come home, walk in the door.... Beep !

My daughter also has a haunted stuffed animal that starts this creepy song all on it's own...then stops when you get close to her room. If I ever figure out which one of those cute little poltergiests is doing that I'm gonna throw it out in the driveway and run over it with the truck. It gives me "Chuckie" flashbacks.

[eric1978]

Yeah those things suck.

But isn't it a bit of a coincidence that they both went off at the same time? Maybe you got a touch of CO in the house???

Either that or a "haunted stuffed animal" is messing with you.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Why don't those engineers design these things so that the beep lasts long enough or is frequent enough that you can find it?

With all due respect, they didn't design them to be in a box in the closet. If it was where it was designed to be, I don't think you would have had any trouble finding it.

[lee G.]

Al, all i can say, is you have to many battery things in your house!

[lee G.]

Before you jump on me, Al, i really long for the days, sitting around the campfire, rubbing two sticks togather to get the heat needed to run a thermocouple, to run a CB radio, to tell the moonshiner where to drop off the jugs, those were the good old days!!

To many everyready's these days!

[lee G.]

What really bugs me, is the ones that start beeping once a hour, or 4hours, then 2 days later they go to once every half hour or 2 hours, then finally to once every 10 mins, lol

[Al Agnew]

With all due respect, they didn't design them to be in a box in the closet. If it was where it was designed to be, I don't think you would have had any trouble finding it.

Not necessarily, Chief. I've had them beep before. You gotta understand, as near as I can figure, between the main house, garage, and basement, we have at least 9 smoke alarms. If one starts beeping once a minute or once every five minutes, at best it takes about five or six beeps to track it down. The one in the garage sounds like it's in the basement or the studio if you're in the middle of the house, those in the basement sound like they are either on the ends of the house or the garage, and if one starts up in the middle of the night when we're in the bedroom on the other end of the house, it's really fun to find it. I especially hate it when they only beep once every five minutes. It can take more than a half hour to track those down. And the worst yet was when one beeped in our new house in Montana. Even though it's a small house, it has a basement and garage and a plethora of smoke alarms and separate CO alarms...and I didn't have a clue where most of them were.

[lee G.]

Al, i really feel your pain, its been the same with me, to many beeps is not a good thing!!

[Danoinark]

Beware of things that go "beep" in the night!