Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Alarm from Hell

So unlike my home in the US here in Denmark my room has an alarm system. I have yet to use it because I think that is a little excessive especially in a relatively peaceful and low crime country like Denmark. Yesterday when I returned home my alarm system was beeping and apparently it had been for several hours. In fact my neighbor Lou tried to facebook message me because she did not have my cell number and even checked outside to make sure no one broke in. I opened the door and found that my alarm's battery was low. With some help I stopped the beeping and thought nothing of it and continued with my activities. Unfortunately shortly before 4am the beeping started again. Now I knew how to make it stop so I did. and I tried to go back to sleep. I dozed off and then it started again. Luckily I was tired enough that I actually fell asleep this time, but half an hour later it woke me up and this continued until about 8 am. I did not want to leave my room and try to find somewhere else to sleep because I knew that my neighbors would not be thrilled to have the alarm going off for hours. Unfortunately the intervals between me entering the code and the alarm beeping were rapidly getting shorter to a time of less than 15 seconds. I decided I had three choices. Find a hammer and smash the dam thing which would likely cause something else to start beeping, try to take it apart and figure out the problem or suffer from beeping because at this point I could no longer fall back asleep. Out of fear of an early morning police visit I decided the second option. After unscrewing the case I realized another problem. The alarm more than likely is designed to be tamper proof. I did not know the master code so I guessed as soon as I started to take it apart it would beep even more. Being overly tired I decided to keep trying but what do you know as soon as I pulled the case off another alarm started beeping even louder. I quickly slammed the case back on and started entering in my code very rapidly which stopped that problem. After half an hour of suffering I then went to david the collegium president who luckily was awake and home (It is about 9 now). He was able to solve the problem temporarily but ten minutes later it was back in business so I asked him again and he texted the janitor who doesnt speak much english. Meanwhile I had to wait. My first thought was to listen to music with my headphones on my computer on a very loud setting. Unfortunately my computer's head phone jack which had been on the fritz for well over a year now was not working. So I decided to take a long shower with the hope that the noise would drown out the beeping which it did. But even still the janitor had not shown up. So I found my ipod plugged it in and blasted some hard rock music which did the trick as I sat in my bed. Luckily the janitor finally showed and realized he could not fix it so he called the technician from the alarm company. Another 15 minutes later of more incessant beeping and the technician shows up. He tries a few things then makes a phone call and somehow shuts the machine off and leaves. The janitor tells me they will return in a week with a new one. So I am thinking thank god it stopped beeping. But god dam it I should have just smashed it will a hammer, I could have gone back to bed (I dont have class today) and they are replacing the dam thing anyways...  So I am about to take a nap because I got barely any sleep last night and I have to get up early to catch a plane tomorrow.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Maybe you should take a minor in alarm technology!!!

Bet you'd be in demand all the time!