One might call it ... alarming?
(Rimshot.)
It's a situation I certainly never considered --- in the summer, it was common to see brownouts as everyone in the neighborhood turned their air conditioning on to full blast, overloading the power grid.
Winter has finally caught up with us, and the temperatures have dropped rapidly. People have responded accordingly by turning their heat as high as comfortably possible. The power grid once again seems to be suffering, and that suffering is manifested in the anguished cries of every smoke alarm in my house.
Some are without batteries. When the power dips low enough for them to notice, they freak out --- the trouble is, the dips are so minuscule that the other appliances in the house don't even flinch. When the alarms first went off at 05'44 this morning, I assumed there was a power outage. I sat up and fumbled for my industrial hearing protection earphones (a very, very, useful holdover from a previous noise problem), then proceeded to stumble deafly in the dark as I sought my glasses.
I noticed a faint red glow on the floor.
My alarm clock was on, hence there was still power flowing through the house. I went back to sleep, confused. The heat came on ten minutes later.
Two minutes later, the alarm went off again.
Within the next hour and a half, it went off some eight or nine times, and other alarms in the house began to follow suit. The heat's been coming on every five minutes or so, which I guess gives some idea of how cold it is outside --- or how paranoid our central heat monitor is. Either way, the alarms in the house have been violently ripped from their perches until someone goes and gets a few 9-volt batteries.
It figures that the only batteries I don't have are freaking 9V. Damn rectangles.
It's a situation I certainly never considered --- in the summer, it was common to see brownouts as everyone in the neighborhood turned their air conditioning on to full blast, overloading the power grid.
Winter has finally caught up with us, and the temperatures have dropped rapidly. People have responded accordingly by turning their heat as high as comfortably possible. The power grid once again seems to be suffering, and that suffering is manifested in the anguished cries of every smoke alarm in my house.
Some are without batteries. When the power dips low enough for them to notice, they freak out --- the trouble is, the dips are so minuscule that the other appliances in the house don't even flinch. When the alarms first went off at 05'44 this morning, I assumed there was a power outage. I sat up and fumbled for my industrial hearing protection earphones (a very, very, useful holdover from a previous noise problem), then proceeded to stumble deafly in the dark as I sought my glasses.
I noticed a faint red glow on the floor.
My alarm clock was on, hence there was still power flowing through the house. I went back to sleep, confused. The heat came on ten minutes later.
Two minutes later, the alarm went off again.
Within the next hour and a half, it went off some eight or nine times, and other alarms in the house began to follow suit. The heat's been coming on every five minutes or so, which I guess gives some idea of how cold it is outside --- or how paranoid our central heat monitor is. Either way, the alarms in the house have been violently ripped from their perches until someone goes and gets a few 9-volt batteries.
It figures that the only batteries I don't have are freaking 9V. Damn rectangles.
posted by ryorininseven at 5:09 AM
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