Pro Tip: Wear Shoes

It’s a beautiful overcast day, and I feel like blogging, so I think I’ll tell on myself. Here goes.

I have a burglar alarm. It’s annoying sometimes. This weekend it annoyed me by beeping over and over.

I had a half-hour power outage. The burglar alarm has a UPS-type battery for backup power. When the battery is low, the system beeps. It appears that the outage drained the battery and the system was not able to charge it enough to make the beeping stop. The battery is from March of 2017, so it’s a little bit past the halfway point of its expected lifespan.

The control panel is not a good product. It’s not intuitive. For example, before you enter the security code to turn things on and off, you have to enter a “1.” This should be printed on the panel in big letters in case a friend has to turn the alarm off while you’re away. It has tiny instructions printed on it, and they don’t tell you very much. It has directions for turning off the annoying beep, which it spins as a “chime.” These directions do not work when the power goes out. When you turn off the CHIME, the battery beep does not stop. Because when your battery goes bad, or the system simply isn’t man enough to charge a good battery, you need to be reminded every 90 seconds, forever. Especially when you’re trying to sleep.

I can’t get burglar alarm batteries where I live. I have to order such things, or I suppose I could pay the alarm company $150 to install a $20 product. I ordered a battery with a larger capacity than the old one, and then I thought about killing the beeps.

I did not call the alarm company. I figured it was impossible to kill the beeps using the panel. After all, the CHIME shutoff did nothing.

I decided to try two things. First, I got out an old computer UPS I wasn’t using, and I plugged it in, hoping it would charge its own battery to the point where I could substitute it for the alarm battery. After a few hours, it charged up, but when I installed it, the beeps continued.

My next genius move was to open up the alarm panel and look for the buzzer, which really is a buzzer, not a chime. I think. It certainly looks like what electronics people call a buzzer. My plan was to take my soldering iron, remove the buzzer, and reinstall it when the battery arrived. Or not. You don’t really need a buzzer on your burglar alarm panel. It has a text display, and it also communicates through my phone. I guess the buzzer is nice if you enjoy hearing the CHIME go off over and over as doors are opened and closed. I don’t have much use for that feature.

I plugged my soldering iron in and turned it on. There is no furniture near the panel, so I left the iron on the floor. I wasn’t going to step on it. Who would step on a hot soldering iron, knowing it’s turned on?

While I was doing all this, I decided to call the alarm company. They might conceivably be of use. I talked to some lady who said she would refer me to their technical people and have them call me.

While I was talking to her, I felt a terrible pain in my right little toe. I was standing on the soldering iron.

It’s not that easy to have a calm conversation on the phone when you’ve just stood on a soldering iron, but I found that it could be done. What really bothered me was the smell of burning flesh which filled the area after I moved my foot. Apparently I left a significant amount of myself on the soldering iron.

It was very late, and I figured I would hear from these people the next day, so I heated the buzzer’s lugs and started pulling. One slid out of the PCB just fine, and then the buzzer fell apart. Now I had a permanently deleted buzzer.

Immediately, the phone rang. It was the tech guy. I told him my problem, and he said, “Press the star key.”

Mmmf.

I put the panel back together and went to bed. Before turning out the lights, I hit Ebay and ordered a package of buzzers for $3.65. The pain went away after about half an hour, thank goodness. Falling asleep was not a problem. Too bad it happened pretty close to 2 a.m.

I don’t know if pressing the star key actually works, but I suppose I should have called and tried before mutilating my alarm panel.

For all I know, the panel has been straining to beep all night with its larynx ripped out. I sort of hope so. I like the picture of an annoying adversary screaming at me silently, features contorted with desperation, while I sleep in peace.

Later this week, my buzzers and battery will arrive, and maybe this will be the end of my problems.

Why didn’t I just look up my panel’s manual? You’re so smart. You think you know everything, don’t you? Get ready for some humble pie.

My panel has no manufacturer’s markings on it, inside or out. Seriously. It has a logo sort of a thing consisting of symbols. It’s sort of like the thing Prince used as his name for a while. You can’t search for it on Google.

Today, by sheer luck, I found out what type of panel it is, and I downloaded a manual. Guess what? There are no instructions for turning off the battery beep. Totally serious. What kind of sick mind writes a manual like that?

I can see him now. Some nerd with 42 pens in his shirt pocket, sneering that if people don’t feel like buying spare batteries, they don’t deserve to sleep.

I should have had a spare battery on hand. Actually, I did, if you count the UPS. Not sure the UPS battery is up to the task, though. Can’t tell without a buzzer. BWAH HA HA HA HA.

Should I get a spare battery now? Don’t know. The new battery should last at least three years. Will I still be here?

I’m thinking I should hook the battery up to a car charger the next time this happens. I think the internal charger in the alarm box is junk. It works off a tiny wall wart. I’ll bet I would have to put up with a solid day of beeping even if I had a good battery, because it would take that long to recharge.

I also think I should put a UPS on the wall wart. If the system never knows there’s a power outage, it won’t be aware it has an excuse to bother me. I’m not sure why the internal battery doesn’t provide complete backup. Maybe it’s deliberate. Maybe the company wants me to know the power is out, even if the alarm is working. I don’t see how that helps me, though.

If I add a UPS, the system won’t know there’s an outage for a considerable length of time, and that will give the power company time to fix things before the system finds out. Most outages are short. They wouldn’t challenge a UPS. As for long outages, the UPS will run down, and then I’m no worse off than I was with a depleted internal battery. It will just take a little longer to get there.

Maybe I should get a motorcycle gel battery to replace the internal battery. It seems stupid to protect your house with an expensive system when you’re going to back it up with a $20 Chinese lead-acid battery that won’t keep a PC running for 20 minutes.

I guess a gel battery would need a different charger. Okay, maybe I should get a lead-acid motorcycle battery. Still better than what I have.

In other news, I got another useful revelation.

One of the tough things about serving God is getting humility right. Even when you credit God with the good things that happen in your life, you can do it in a way that draws admiration to you. I’ve noticed that preachers who heal people get a lot of thanks and admiration, and they don’t do a great job of deflecting it.

You can say, “God did this for you,” but that doesn’t capture the truth of what happened. You can’t help but sound a little condescending.

God showed me this: don’t just say, “God did this.” Say, “My master did this.” Call God “my master” whenever possible. Don’t say “the master.” It’s not personal enough. The feel isn’t the same.

I got ahold of this, and I started telling God he was my master. Try it. It feels wonderful. It makes our relationship seem like what it actually is. I feel tension drain out of me when I say it. It’s as if burdens are sliding off of me.

God has to receive proper credit in order for his power to flow through us. It can’t just be words and thoughts. It has to be in our hearts. Using the proper language can change your heart and open you up so he can flow.

You have to try it in order to understand how helpful it is.

God’s glory is a problem if it starts to stick to you. When you’re close to him, it’s easy to end up in a situation where you are overly exalted. It appears that this is what happened to Satan. You need to be able to reflect the glory and prevent it from harming you.

The Bible makes it clear that God does his most impressive work when others are standing aside. When you’re striving, the credit for what you do is yours. God won’t take credit for it or get heavily involved. When he gets the glory, he does the work.

I can’t say enough about it. Give it a try and see how it works out.