BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

5/11/08

I just spent a couple hours wrestling with a piece of electronics, trying to get it to stop beeping.

Pulled the whole thing out of its case and checked all the circuit boards for one of those piezo speakers, which

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

should have a contact switch wired in somewhere there that I should be

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

able to slip a bit of cardboard into or something, to break the connection

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

and stop the beeping, except that I’ve been over the whole thing and

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

can’t find a switch anywhere, or a speaker either; I can’t even figure out

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

where it might be drawing power — and then I notice that the

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

beeping is actually coming from my testmeter, which has a little warning

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

light flashing to tell me that the toolbox temperature doesn’t match its

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

reference temperature, it’s off by about half a degree. So I adjust the reference temperature until

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

it matches but it still keeps beeping at me anyway.

Then I wake up.

Except I can still hear the beeping noise. That really wakes me up; I sit bolt upright in bed trying to hear what in my house has been beeping all this time, loudly enough to infiltrate my dreams. Did an alarm go off in some other room? Is it the smoke detectors?

It’s a bird, outside. Emily left the window open a crack last night, and it’s dawn, and I’m hearing a birdcall. Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet. It’s just like the first morning of our honeymoon, when jetlagged me tried to answer the phone which turned out to be a gecko. It sounded very digital.

So does this stupid bird.

I’m going to try to go back to sleep, now.