You know what’s fun? Having a fire siren in your attic go off in your attic at 5:15 A.M. … when it’s right over your bed.

At 5:15 A.M. Saturday morning I was awoken to the most atrocious sound I have ever heard, and what do I do? I grab my BlackBerry thinking it’s my alarm. One small problem I quickly notice is that it is way too dark to be my alarm … and my phone isn’t that loud.

I take a second to gather my thoughts and realize it’s the house fire alarm in the attic going on.  I quickly throw on some pants and start running around the house looking for a fire, but after about 45 seconds the siren stops, which it isn’t supposed to do.  I make my way to the ground floor and my four Cocker Spaniels just look at me like, “What in the hell was that?!?”, but they make no noise.

I continue searching the house for fire, sniffing my way as I go, and after I have checked every room on every floor (basement and two above ground floors), I find nothing.  Satisfied it was a false alarm, I go back to bed.

Nothing else happens all day Saturday until I put the dogs to bed on Sunday morning around 1:30 A.M., and after about 10 minutes the siren blows again for about 1 second.  As the dogs are wide awake, they go nuts.  So I let them out of their room for awhile to calm down, and after I put them back to bed, I start the hunt for the control that will shut down the smoke alarms … and this is where I start to get angry.

When e built this house 25 years ago, we made a decision that each floor of the house would have its own electrical panel so everything as compartmentalized.  I start on the top floor, check the panel, and there is no mention of smoke detectors or alarms.  So, down to the ground floor I go, and there is one marked for “alarm”, but when I flip it, the smoke detectors continue to have power.  Okay, now I’m getting miffed.

I head to the basement, and on that electrical panel is a marking for “smoke detectors/office”.  Uh oh.

Not only had I discovered a mistake the electricians had made 25 years ago, but of all the rooms for them to tie in to, they tied into the office.  Little did anyone know 25 years ago that would be the room that holds my cable modem and one of my two network switches.  In other words, shutting down that room means me losing my Internet.  I take a chance, flip the switch and sure enough the red light goes out on the smoke detectors on all three floors.

Damn.

This means I need to leave the office turned off if I want to sleep, but this means no Wi-Fi, no femtocel to boost my cell phone signal, no Skype phone and so on.  I decide sleep is more important and leave it all shut off.  I get to bed around 5 A.M. from running all around the house trying to piece this together.

So, wake up Sunday, what are you going to do?  I go buy a 50′ extension cord, run it down the hallway from a working room and power up all the Internet stuff and leave the office and smoke detectors dead until we can get it looked at.

Long story short: obviously my priorities go Internet, then safety and then bothering to get things fixed.  Yep, I have my priorities in the right order!