Thursday, October 15, 2009

Misquoting Scarlett

To mis-quote Scarlett O'Hara, as Cow (watch the Big Bang Theory!) is my witness, I'm never buying a First Alert talking carbon monoxide detector again. Ever.

First, the rotten thing can only use a certain brand of battery. Any "inferior" battery leads to monthly replacements, after being scared out of your wits at 3 freaking a.m. when it decides the battery's dead.

Occasionally, it talks in the middle of the night for no good reason. This leads to the whole family levitating in bed, then taking a while to get back to sleep.

One of the "features" is that you can use the infrared beam from a TV remote to do the weekly test and make sure it's working. Thanks to a lousy floor plan, the only place in our hallway for the detector to be mounted, is also more or less in the line-of-sight of our usual TV-watching spots. We'd learned to be careful where we aimed the DVD remote, but the TV remote didn't seem to be as bad. That changed last week when I put a new battery in that one. I've set the damn thing off half a dozen times this week alone. We put masking tape over the "test" button, theorizing that the pinhole in the button was the IR receiver. Not so much, as it turns out - I set it off this morning and woke El Burrito up early. He hates the test script, so of course, he didn't go back to sleep.

And just now, from the bathroom counter (where it's been exiled to), the detector's started talking again. I was too busy jumping out of my skin to notice, but I think it's wanting a fresh battery. So now it's face-down on the counter and wrapped in a towel. I may shut the bathroom door before I go to bed, too. That damn voice freaks me out every time it starts talking out of nowhere.

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