So I stumble out of bed, turn on the hall light, and lean over the second floor railing. Nothing. Figuring I might as well not make it too easy on the ninjas massing in my kitchen, I grab a heavy flashlight. Our dog, who was sleeping upstairs because the temperature downstairs was hovering around too damn cold, joined me on my mission. Unfortunately, she's a miniature schnauzer, and would only be able to growl and gnaw the feet of any intruders.
chirp
"Aw," I groan loudly, "it's the damn thing." Which, for those of you not fluent in pre-dawn-ese, means that it was one of our smoke detectors informing me that its secondary power source, a 9-volt battery, was going dead. Meanwhile, the dog had to pee, so I let her out. Then I waited to hear the chirping again. And waited. The dog came back inside, glanced at me staring up at the round box on the ceiling, and dashed back upstairs where it was warm.
Still no chirp.
So I went back upstairs and informed my wife that it had stopped. When, of course, something chirped. Tricky bastard. A few minutes later I found that the offending chirper was the detector in our computer room, which is upstairs. So I pulled over one of the office chairs (swiveling chairs, of course), and twisted the alarm off the ceiling. And was faced with a puzzle that could only be called devious.
I had replaced a battery in one of these before, but that was also at an obscene hour of the morning. For all I remembered I had manifested psychic powers and teleported the battery into the thing. The battery compartment was obvious, but so was the connector to the house wiring, which featured a large plastic tab that sits over the battery cover. So first I have to remove the wiring connector. It looked like I needed to jam something under that tab and pry it off. Something like a flathead screwdriver. The closest of which was located in the garage, which in the wee hours of the morning makes our sub-60-degree downstairs seem like a tropical paradise.
Ah, but I have a hobby desk upstairs, filled with tools. Tools used for building models and painting metal miniatures, though: no flathead screwdrivers to be found. After putting a nice bend in a pair of tweezers, I found a measuring tool that seemed strong enough. But it soon became clear that prying up that tab would only break something, and I was just coherent enough to realize that I probably didn't want to do that. So I cursed. Then I blearily looked at the connector and tried twisting it, applying force from another direction, and then simple, direct pleading. It popped off. Damned if I know how.
Now, why the hell was that so difficult? Why couldn't I just replace the battery without solving a puzzle that made the Gordian Knot look like a Boy Scout's practice run? The microscopic raised type on the various tabs and covers didn't give directions, much less an explanation. It's not like 120 volts were being pumped through the battery, so why the hell couldn't I have avoided dealing with the wiring connections in the first place? Especially since smoke detectors always run out of battery charge in the middle of the night, forcing the still-sleeping victim to perform a task on the level of nuclear warhead disarming while standing on a swiveling chair and using whatever sturdy tool-like things he has lying around. Why not make the battery compartment accessible from the outside of the detector? Sure, I only have to replace the battery every few months, maybe even every year, but going through the ruthlessly complex procedure of replacing the damn thing is just this much better than just saying hell with it and learning to sleep while it chirps itself silly.
So, task completed, I stumbled back to bed. "We should replace the batteries in
the rest of them tomorrow," my wife said. Sure, but where's the challenge in
that?