Watched The Santa Claus 2 and Love Actually yesterday, both charming and utterly fitting movies for the season. During Santa Claus 2, high-pitched squeaks began at roughly one minute intervals. Sounded like a robot mouse was being systematically tortured. At first, we thought it was the DVD, but rewinding and fast forwarding didn’t duplicate the chirps. Then we thought it was the fiber optic tree over the mantle as it has a revolving part which causes the colors to change. We turned that off, but the electric mouse continued its intermittent shrieks. Spent the next half hour standing by the security motion detector, the glass break alarm, and finally the smoke detectors before determining that it was one of the upstairs smoke detectors. And it continued squawking after we disconnected it and removed the battery. I’m totally baffled at what powers the things now. But it quit its complaints after we put in a new battery.
There are a lot of devices in our home whose workings baffle me.
Writing Stuff:
Got a note back from the WotF folks. A correct HM certificate will be sent soon.
Saw on The Third Alternative‘s message board that issue #40 with my novelette “Running on Two Legs” in it is now at the printers and the editor hopes to begin mailing it out by next weekend or sooner. Squee! Also it looks like my story will be in the venerable position of last! I’m so excited. I really love this story.
haven’t seen the santa claus movie, but i loved love actually. so damn cute!
At first I didn’t think Love, Actually would be all that good…but now it’s one of my favorite…just a great cast and interesting storylines. Especially love the couple who does the stand in for love scenes, lol. COurse..Billy was my favorite..what a great attitude! lol.
For the smoke detector: Could it be that it was signalling that its battery was running out? (Maybe even with a small capacitor to power the ‘Help me’ beep in case the batter dies)
Yup
That’s what it is. All the smoke detectors in my appartment building do the same thing. Annoying when the one in my appartment starts doing it at 2am. Worse when the unoccupied appartment next door does it until the battery runs completely out.
PJI