First, turn off everything that beeps
The power went out today in our neighborhood. I found out when I got this SMS and email from our home:
Scott's Main House: The Panel reported a Power Failure at 12:45 PM on Thursday, July 12 2007. This is a monitoring message from Alarm.com.
One day I'll blog about Alarm.com and how much they rock. Anyway, later I got this message:
Scott's Main House: The Panel had its Power Restored at 1:41 PM on Thursday, July 12 2007. This is a monitoring message from Alarm.com.
I wasn't concerned, of course, because if you remember, Dear Reader, I, as recently as April, put everything of importance of the house on an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). That included the TVs, DVR, four computers, the routers in the wiring closet, everything. They are beefy, and could last the hour the power was out.
However, when I spoke to my wife around 2pm, and she complained about some irritating beeping in the house this afternoon, and wanted to let me know that she went around the house, looking for the beeping, and turned each of the strange beeping devices off.
She reported to me that the gray boxes did stop beeping after she turned them off, but that the house was eerily quiet and that nothing electrical in the house worked. Perhaps we'd lost power at some point, she suggested.
Mental note - Tell wife when I rewire the house.
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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Putting the TV on a UPS, especially a good one, "cleans" the power and prevents damaging brownouts. If you talk to anyone with high-end a/v equipment, they'll all have power cleaners, often in the form of a UPS.
These home-based UPSs (or all of them for that matter) should have a way to acknowledge the beeping. Maybe they could even communicate through the power lines so they could all be simultaneously shushed.
I think it's hysterical -- I do many of the same things with my wife, but due to her quitting her job to stay home 2 months ago, it's getting very very difficult. I no longer am able to go drop a couple hundred bucks on some new toy that will revolutionize our lives (even if she doesn't realize how cool it is) because it's much harder to explain away the lack of funds in the budget.
Anyway, I really enjoy your blog, and I hope you continue to intersperse your posts on the tech world with your personal touches. I really enjoy them.
LOL. We all make this mistake. She won't understand (or won't care) until it really matters.
What kills me is when these UPS beasts go on the fritz. It's impossible to get them to shut up!
I have UPS's for the office and fortunately, the power does not go out very often, because the wife either yells for me to get the beeping to stop or goes on the proverbial easter egg hunt for where the units are located (they are not easily accessible because I experienced Scott's problem a couple of times too many).
Yesterday, the wife received a pop-in alert in her browser that told her that her hard drive was filled with unmentionable data that could cause all kinds of problems. She immediately called asking what she should do. I am glad she decided to ask rather than just push ok buttons.
I found out two important pieces of information that day ... my hard drive was going bad ... and I needed a server closet. Ahhh, the good ole days.
I just replied, "Scott is uber geek." :)
Mental note to self: disconnect or disable the buzzers/speakers of any UPS devices in my home if at all possible.
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I really don't know what to say about that.
Perhaps you should seek help?