Oh, my nerves! The beeping!
What is that beeping sound?
I follow the noise to a dead end.
It could be anything.
Everything is plugged into something, or powered by batteries, or animated by the collective evil of a thousand big brothers floating somewhere just out of sight ... in a cloud.
Of course, it's an alarm, but for what?
A digital monsoon?
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep!
Nine-fifty-five in the evening. Past bedtime. The house is mostly quiet save for the whirring of gadgets that give us the pretense of silence.
It's not a watch, or a phone, or the smoke detectors. It's not a video game or sound effect on the television. It's not the ghost of a toddler's toy.
It's just a soft, lethargic alert that seems to be coming from everywhere … or nowhere in particular.
My best guess is that the sound is coming from somewhere in the bathroom ... some battery-operated thing is possessed.
Since I can't locate the origin of the alert, I cover my ears and resign the search until it stops. Which, thankfully, it does is short order.
Add it to the list of mysteries of the modern age.
The mid-evening series of assertive beeps, which is the harbinger if nothing, go silent as fast as they made a sound. They repeat only once a fortnight, so I have not wasted a moment on an investigation.
Just another modern inconvenience brought to me by so-called progress.
You know … like e-mail and e-bank. All those excellent services that seem so simple until they go haywire. You know … like your e-address gets filled with junk mail or gets a virus, and the e-medicine you subscribe to can't give you e-ntibiotics without an international scene.
Did you back it up?
Errrrrr.
It turns out we never have the right backup plan.
Of course, in some cases, I've learned to adapt.
I can set the clocks on all of the devices that keep track of time.
I can usually connect my gadgets wirelessly to other gadgets.
I know exactly where to place the digital bathroom scale, and how to stand on its glass surface to ensure the readout shaves off a few pounds.
I know that Siri won't respond to questions asked of Alexa and vice versa. I don't try to force them into some awkward friendship, though I wish they'd put their petty rivalry aside and do a better job of snooping on my son's conversations.
I'm reasonably certain all e-mails of importance find their way into the trash folder based on an inverse ratio of my need to see them, so I check there as regularly as my primary inbox.
A strategy helps even if it's not enough for mastery of all these bells and whistles.
When I find it difficult to adapt, I simply employ avoidance.
Avoidance, it turns out, is the easiest way to deal with so many mysteries of modern life. Real problems won't let you dodge them. But for all the rest, especially the infernal noise of modernity, the batteries will give out eventually as we weather this storm.
What is that beeping sound?
I follow the noise to a dead end.
It could be anything.
Everything is plugged into something, or powered by batteries, or animated by the collective evil of a thousand big brothers floating somewhere just out of sight ... in a cloud.
Of course, it's an alarm, but for what?
A digital monsoon?
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeep!
Nine-fifty-five in the evening. Past bedtime. The house is mostly quiet save for the whirring of gadgets that give us the pretense of silence.
It's not a watch, or a phone, or the smoke detectors. It's not a video game or sound effect on the television. It's not the ghost of a toddler's toy.
It's just a soft, lethargic alert that seems to be coming from everywhere … or nowhere in particular.
My best guess is that the sound is coming from somewhere in the bathroom ... some battery-operated thing is possessed.
Since I can't locate the origin of the alert, I cover my ears and resign the search until it stops. Which, thankfully, it does is short order.
Add it to the list of mysteries of the modern age.
The mid-evening series of assertive beeps, which is the harbinger if nothing, go silent as fast as they made a sound. They repeat only once a fortnight, so I have not wasted a moment on an investigation.
Just another modern inconvenience brought to me by so-called progress.
You know … like e-mail and e-bank. All those excellent services that seem so simple until they go haywire. You know … like your e-address gets filled with junk mail or gets a virus, and the e-medicine you subscribe to can't give you e-ntibiotics without an international scene.
Did you back it up?
Errrrrr.
It turns out we never have the right backup plan.
Of course, in some cases, I've learned to adapt.
I can set the clocks on all of the devices that keep track of time.
I can usually connect my gadgets wirelessly to other gadgets.
I know exactly where to place the digital bathroom scale, and how to stand on its glass surface to ensure the readout shaves off a few pounds.
I know that Siri won't respond to questions asked of Alexa and vice versa. I don't try to force them into some awkward friendship, though I wish they'd put their petty rivalry aside and do a better job of snooping on my son's conversations.
I'm reasonably certain all e-mails of importance find their way into the trash folder based on an inverse ratio of my need to see them, so I check there as regularly as my primary inbox.
A strategy helps even if it's not enough for mastery of all these bells and whistles.
When I find it difficult to adapt, I simply employ avoidance.
Avoidance, it turns out, is the easiest way to deal with so many mysteries of modern life. Real problems won't let you dodge them. But for all the rest, especially the infernal noise of modernity, the batteries will give out eventually as we weather this storm.
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