a rude awakening

Well, that was interesting...

At our house, we have those smoke alarms that listen to each other, so that if one goes off, they all go off. So, at exactly 6:00 this morning, they all went off. Just for one series of beeps (at least that any of us sleepyheads heard) - but definitely enough to get the heart pumping. Only the littlest of us didn't seem to notice the beeping... still sleeping peacefully.

So I stumbled around the house and checked everything out. All perfectly still, inside and out. Not a breath of wind outside, and even our birds and guinea pig were just sitting there... none of their usual hyper antics this morning. Kinda weird. Maybe they didn't like the rude awakening either.

I've seen glitches with those kinds of smoke alarms before. We had them at one of our old houses and sometimes they would go off during parts of Diddy Kong Racing (or one of the games around that time). It's like the game's music would hit just the right tone that they were listening for and they would go off. I think we had other things set them off too but it was too long ago, I can't remember what.

The idea of the "networked" smoke alarms is cool... get the word out and make sure that everyone hears. But I wish that they would add a strobe or some kind of easy indicator to see which one actually detected smoke (instead of just hearing one of the others go off). Maybe also indicate which one actually has the battery dying.. so it doesn't take hours (or days) of trying to track down the "chirps" to figure out which one needs a battery change.