The Phantom Beep

"It's outside," said my son yesterday, more right than he knew. It beeped on and off all through the day, and by evening the street was empty and we still didn't know what it was. We walked from room to room, checked the microwave, changed batteries in smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, electric clocks--even stared at the heating system for a while. But the beeping, not quite loud, not quite queiet, just carried on. We wondered at the inanity of making something beep when it's battery's low without giving a visual signal. Then we wondered if anyone had left a cell-phone lying around. Not a battery? Nobody knew. And this morning it was beeping again, sounding convincingly outside though we knew it had to be in.

I checked the garage--well, I drove the car to the station and back, then happened to look at the wall. Our FIOS box had a nice red light  next to the green one. Was that there before? Shifting boxes (our garage is a little full) and squeezing round the car I saw it said "replace battery," but when I checked the internet it seemed such batteries can cost $100! Help! No way! So I phoned frontier.

The lady with frontier was very nice and incredibly patient with me. She waited while I ran up and down-stairs looking for the right size screwdriver to open the box. She waited while I prodded and poked and finally found my way in. She sympathized when I told the battery weighed a ton. And she phoned me back when I disconnected the plug and cut us off. Finally everything was put back together and it turned out a power surge had confused the system. Battery's fine. No need to pay. And, at last, the beeping's stopped!

So that was my morning...
I added some subpages to my weebly website too, and worked on the header (see pic). Do check it out. Do weeble. It's easy and fun!


Comments

CA Heaven said…
All these alarms and beeps can be quite annoying and difficult to locate. Now we even have an alarm going off if the door to the fridge is left open.

Cold As Heaven
July 12, 2011 at 2:56 PM
Bearman said…
I had a similar issue. The internet access in our house wouldn't work. I went all over the place trying to figure it out. Seems somehow our internet power was connected to an outlet in our kitchen that was tripped. Once I reset it, everything worked fine. Don't ask me how I figured it out.
July 12, 2011 at 3:35 PM
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