IMTRWTF



  • Some time ago, I heard some beep late at night from my son's room. It repeated a couple times, so I took a look, thought it was the airconditioning, changed some setting, and it stopped.

    So I forgot about that for a couple days, and then I heard it again, also late at night. I checked again, slapped the airco (hey, it used to work on old TVs), and when that didn't help, I noticed it wasn't the air conditioning at all, it was the alarm command center. It emitted a strong beep every 30 seconds, very annoying, but for some reason, the little guy managed to sleep through it. So I called the alarm guys who came in, concluded it was a communication error, fixed it and went home. So what if it happens again, can I disable it? But they assured me they'd fixed it, no problem sir.

    And of course, that night, the beeping started again, this time already at 10.30 PM.

    I called them the next (working day), a bit annoyed this time. This time I got the owner of the firm, and he immediately said: that's impossible, the command center doesn't beep. This annoyed me more and I assured him it really did beep, very loud, very annoying. He thinks for a minute and asks: does the room have a fire alarm?

    <FACEPALM>

    So I'd been blaming 2 innocent pieces of electronics for what turned out to be a battery that needed to be replaced in the firealarm. I could of course point out a couple other WTFs, but I'll have to admit it: I am the real WTF here. 

    (I still don't really understand why it only happened at night... could the drop in temperature between day/night cause a drop in voltage?)



  • @b_redeker said:

    (I still don't really understand why it only happened at night... could the drop in temperature between day/night cause a drop in voltage?)
    No.  It is a scientific fact that fire alarms are actually sentient, and their only goal is to drive people slightly crazy.



  • It's true. They always pick around 2am as the best time to start beeping at you. And they know you can't do anything about it because they can always come back at you with "Well, what if it was a real fire at 2am? You'd be pretty grateful then, wouldn't you?"



  • I used to sleep with one of those beeping at me... eventually I just opened the battery compartment, took out the dead battery, and left it open. It flashed an orange light at me, but at least it wasn't beeping anymore.



  •  Smoke alarm batteries <u>never</u> go out at a civilized hour.  It's either at 2:30 in the morning, or the middle of the day when everybody's out of the house anyway.

    I've found it best to remove them from the wall, wrap them in several heavy bath towels to muffle the sound, and stuff them in an out-of-the-way drawer until morning comes and I can make my mind work well enough to change a battery.

    (Some day I'll tell you all the tale of the mysterious gurgling sound that woke me up in the wee hours of the morning and that seemed to follow me from room to room as I searched the whole house for it.)



  • @da Doctah said:

    I've found it best to remove them from the wall, wrap them in several heavy bath towels to muffle the sound, and stuff them in an out-of-the-way drawer until morning comes and I can make my mind work well enough to change a battery.
     

    Or you could do a pre-emptive strike and change the battery once a year, before it starts bitching at you!



  • @da Doctah said:

    (Some day I'll tell you all the tale of the mysterious gurgling sound that woke me up in the wee hours of the morning and that seemed to follow me from room to room as I searched the whole house for it.)
    Oh, yeah; I've been there before.  Did you eat $80 worth of Taco Bell on a dare, too?



  • @Zemm said:

    Or you could do a pre-emptive strike and change the battery once a year, before it starts bitching at you!

    But that would require actually keeping spare 9V batteries around. In my case, smoke detectors are the only devices in the house that use them, so I don't keep spares.



  • @bstorer said:

    @da Doctah said:

    (Some day I'll tell you all the tale of the mysterious gurgling sound that woke me up in the wee hours of the morning and that seemed to follow me from room to room as I searched the whole house for it.)
    Oh, yeah; I've been there before.  Did you eat $80 worth of Taco Bell on a dare, too?

     

    I don't think there's any such thing as $80 worth of Taco Bell.  Certainly not at any one franchise.

    But that's the general idea.  Not so much indigestion as a half-empty gut deciding to make as much noise as possible while it digested.



  • @da Doctah said:

    Some day I'll tell you all the tale of the mysterious gurgling sound that woke me up in the wee hours of the morning and that seemed to follow me from room to room as I searched the whole house for it.
    ... are you a character from a H.P.Lovecraft book?



  • I had almost the opposite of this happen... I was convinced a (seemingly) random, loud beep was the battery from the smoke detector just outside my bedroom door. I ignored it (it was my parents' house, I was about 12) for a while, then got sick of it and changed the battery. Still the beep kept going. Again, I ignored it. After a few months the ceiling light in the closest bathroom blew. It had a plastic globe-type shade, which I took off to replace the bulb. It was full of water, which was leaking from the floor above. The 'beep' was presumably some weird effect of the water, the bulb and the shade when each new drop made its home in the shade. After I changed the bulb I didn't replace the shade, and I never heard the beep again (I believe the leak was eventually fixed - it was a rented house with a useless landlord).  The funny thing was, the sound never happened when I was actually in the bathroom.



  • @Mel said:

    I had almost the opposite of this happen... I was convinced a (seemingly) random, loud beep was the battery from the smoke detector just outside my bedroom door.
    I had the same problem. In my case it turned out to be the fridge hinting that I hadn't shut its door properly.



  • @OzPeter said:

    @Mel said:
    I had almost the opposite of this happen... I was convinced a (seemingly) random, loud beep was the battery from the smoke detector just outside my bedroom door.
    I had the same problem. In my case it turned out to be the fridge hinting that I hadn't shut its door properly.
    Remember kids: if you've changed two light bulbs and see a third one stop giving light, all in the same room, check the light switch.



  •  I had this problem about a week ago: The smoke alarm would only ever beep after I get in bed. All day its quiet. Its downstairs and I can still hear it through two closed doors!



  • @da Doctah said:

    (Some day I'll tell you all the tale of the mysterious gurgling sound that woke me up in the wee hours of the morning and that seemed to follow me from room to room as I searched the whole house for it.)
    Of course, it would be ridiculous to do it right now.  Good call.



  • @Zecc said:

    @OzPeter said:

    @Mel said:
    I had almost the opposite of this happen... I was convinced a (seemingly) random, loud beep was the battery from the smoke detector just outside my bedroom door.
    I had the same problem. In my case it turned out to be the fridge hinting that I hadn't shut its door properly.
    Remember kids: if you've changed two light bulbs and see a third one stop giving light, all in the same room, check the light switch.

     

    In this case there was only one light, and after it was replaced I think it lasted until I moved out. The bulb just blew as normal, I don't know if even the water had anything to do with it. It's just that was the reason for removing the shade and discovering the water.



  • Whenever I replace the batteries I always write the date I made the change on the battery with a sharpie. When this happened a few weeks ago, I was quite ticked to discover that the battery had only lasted 3 months. Apparently, Duracell sucks.



  •  Of course, this thread should have been titled either:

     

    "I'MTRWTF"

    or

    "IATRWTF"

     

    Indeed, you certainly are the WTF, good sir. Such sloppy writing mistakes will get you nowhere.



  • @jpaull said:

    Whenever I replace the batteries I always write the date I made the change on the battery with a sharpie. When this happened a few weeks ago, I was quite ticked to discover that the battery had only lasted 3 months. Apparently, Duracell sucks.

    Seriously? Do you put name labels on all your pairs of underwear, too?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @jpaull said:

    Whenever I replace the batteries I always write the date I made the change on the battery with a sharpie. When this happened a few weeks ago, I was quite ticked to discover that the battery had only lasted 3 months. Apparently, Duracell sucks.

    Seriously? Do you put name labels on all your pairs of underwear, too?

    No, he puts the date he last changed them.  Were you paying attention at all?



  •  There are way too many things around that beep at you.  I've had the experience on a number of occasions of hearing intermittent beeping and having to figure out what it is; the culprits have varied from smoke detectors to cell phones to the dishwasher (which had the door opened before a cycle was completed and proceeded to complain about it indefinitely until it was reset).



  • Try having an alarm that alerts you to a low battery by going off, leading you to try to fight an invisible fire at 3AM.



    As for security alarms, a battery died in one in a place I used to work. When we came in that morning we found it completely nonfunctional, despite still having AC power. After a few hours, it came back on, beeped once, and went off mid-day to the bewilderment of customers. The control panel, however, was still dead, so one of the managers tried ripping it out of the wall, and when that didn't work, they cut the single unprotected wire going to the actual alarm speaker.

    The alarm company responded about 90 minutes later, after not answering several phone calls.



  • My phone warns me of an empty battery by displaying a small modal dialog that says "Battery Empty!" when I bring it out of keylock, and then turns itself off because the battery's empty.

     In practice, this usually means that I notice my battery's empty because the screen stays black when I try to unkeylock it.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @dtobias said:

     There are way too many things around that beep at you.  I've had the experience on a number of occasions of hearing intermittent beeping and having to figure out what it is; the culprits have varied from smoke detectors to cell phones to the dishwasher (which had the door opened before a cycle was completed and proceeded to complain about it indefinitely until it was reset).

    Annoy-a-tron



  • @lolwtf said:

    Try having an alarm that alerts you to a low battery by going off, leading you to try to fight an invisible fire at 3AM.
    Been there, done that, didn't even get a t-shirt.

    Did I mention the apartment's walls are really thin? At least I got some level of revenge from the neighbours who like having fights from 1 to 2 AM.



  • Funnily enough, I work in the Fire Alarm biz, and have a few tales about mystery beeps...



    I tend to always have a bunch of smoke alarms laying around in my car (a service vehicle), since I'm replacing them all the time for customers. Occasionally, I don't pass a garbage can on the way out, and so take old ones with me to dispose of later.



    Well, one day, I'm driving, and I hear a chirp. After 15 seconds, I hear another. And another. Etc. It drives me nuts.



    When I arrive at my destination, I start digging through my pile of smoke alarms trying to figure out which one is chirping. Well, eventually I find it. It was one that didn't have a battery, which I'd replaced the day before. Sigh.



    On another occasion, I hear beeping as I'm driving, different from the smoke alarms. I dig through everything, trying to figure out what it was.



    Eventually, I discovered that one of my screwdrivers in my tool bag shifted just enough to press the button on a particular sensor tool continuously. It would turn on, beep, turn off, and then turn on again, etc.



    That one was really annoying.



  • @Zecc said:

    the neighbours who like having fights from 1 to 2 AM.
    I've got news for you: those aren't fights; they're fucking.  I'm sorry I have to be the one ruin your innocence.  But while I'm on the subject, remember that time your mommy said they were wrestling when you walked in on her and Mr. Jones from next door?  Fucking, too. So, so much fucking.



  • @bstorer said:

    I've got news for you: those aren't fights; they're fucking.
    This is the part I tell you they're mother and son.

    Oh, and the upstairs neighbour with the rhythmic thumping every night at 10 PM? I once went there and she was jumping rope. Total disappointment.



  • @Zecc said:

    @bstorer said:
    I've got news for you: those aren't fights; they're fucking.
    This is the part I tell you they're mother and son.
    You say that as if it's a dealbreaker.



  • @lolwtf said:

    Try having an alarm that alerts you to a low battery by going off, leading you to try to fight an invisible fire at 3AM.
     

    I used to have a CO detector that was AC powered with a battery backup. Unfortunately, if the battery went, it would use the AC power to scream at you every 15 seconds. So if you were without a battery, you'd have to either have no CO detector or go batshit insane until you could go to the store and get a battery. Great plan there - ensure that people have no CO detector when the battery dies, even though the detector has power and can function perfectly well! I suppose the goal was to make sure that people don't just ignore the battery and have no CO detector when the power goes out...

    But, of course, the end result in this case is that I threw the fucking thing in the trash and got one that runs on AC power only. The pellet stove I use which might cause a CO problem stops working if the electricity goes out...



  • @Zecc said:

    @bstorer said:

    I've got news for you: those aren't fights; they're fucking.
    This is the part I tell you they're mother and son.
     

    How do you think bstorer lost his virginity?



  • Please, no jokes about bstorer's mom.

    She's so fat it isn't even funny.



  • @Zecc said:

    Please, no jokes about bstorer's mom.

    She's so fat it isn't even funny.

    No, that's morb's mom you're thinking of.  My mother is the disease-ridden streetwalker.  Please try to keep up in the future.


  • For my uni placements I go out with the local ambulance service. Anyone who's seen the back of an ambulance knows that theres a load of electrical appliances that need power to maintain charge. Cue a dodgy fitting cigarette lighter-style socket, travelling at 60mph over bumps and potholes in the road, and lots of equipment losing power, and then regaining it, several hundred times in a journey. VERY annoying, especially when it's inappropriate to stop and plug it back in!


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Marine said:

    For my uni placements I go out with the local ambulance service. Anyone who's seen the back of an ambulance knows that theres a load of electrical appliances that need power to maintain charge. Cue a dodgy fitting cigarette lighter-style socket, travelling at 60mph over bumps and potholes in the road, and lots of equipment losing power, and then regaining it, several hundred times in a journey. VERY annoying, especially when it's inappropriate to stop and plug it back in!

    Why are you plugging defibrillators into the cigarette lighter? (My first image, anyway.)



  • @Marine said:

    travelling at 60mph over bumps and potholes in the road, and lots of equipment losing power
     

    ... and being unhinged and strewn all over the fucking car?

    Awesome service!



  • @PJH said:

    @Marine said:

    For my uni placements I go out with the local ambulance service. Anyone who's seen the back of an ambulance knows that theres a load of electrical appliances that need power to maintain charge. Cue a dodgy fitting cigarette lighter-style socket, travelling at 60mph over bumps and potholes in the road, and lots of equipment losing power, and then regaining it, several hundred times in a journey. VERY annoying, especially when it's inappropriate to stop and plug it back in!

    Why are you plugging defibrillators into the cigarette lighter? (My first image, anyway.)
     

     To keep it charged. It's not just a defib (does blood pressures and ECG's and pulse ox aswell). It's a cigarette style accessory socket but i have no idea if it's 12V or 115V.

     

    @Marine said:

    travelling at 60mph over bumps and potholes in the road, and lots of equipment losing power
     

    ... and being unhinged and strewn all over the fucking car?

    Awesome service!

     Actually most shit is either tied down or so heavy it doesn't move anyway!

     



  • @Marine said:

     Actually most shit is either tied down or so heavy it doesn't move anyway!
     

    I guess that it good to know.

    Because I find it comforting that, despite this forum and its laffz, there exist nuclei where insanity has no reign.



  • @da Doctah said:

     Smoke alarm batteries <u>never</u> go out at a civilized hour.  It's either at 2:30 in the morning, or the middle of the day when everybody's out

     

    Well, that does eliminate most of the day.  A conservative estimate of nine hours unoccupied plus six hours when everyone is asleep between midnight and six AM gives us only nine "convenient" hours for the battery to die: 37.5%.


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