The Lair

We had a fire alarm yesterday. No, more accurately, we had fire alarms (note: plural). The usual setup around here is that there is an annual fire drill conducted around spring time. We had our fire drill for 2006 about two weeks ago. The first time the fire alarm went off yesterday, a lot of people could have been excused for thinking it was the weekly test of the alarm system - except it was the wrong day of the week.

So, we all obediently trooped outside and huddled in the freezing cold and sleet.

Another giveaway that it was not a carefully prepared drill: the firewarden designates hadn’t shrugged into their luminous jackets beforehand. MJF has a theory : if they have time to get into their fancy jackets, then there is no emergency.

A seemingly interminable 30 minutes passed before the fire and rescue truck arrived. No wailing sirens, just a subdued flashing light. It turns out that the fire truck had gotten lost enroute to campus. This was despite the best efforts of hastily evacuated students yelling and screaming (or so they insisted) from the top of the hill at the firetruck.

False alarm. Just as well, because the fricking building would have burnt to the ground otherwise. But oh well.

About 10 hours later, the fire alarm goes off again. Ok, once is fine but twice on the same day is pushing it a bit.

A considerably smaller number huddle outside in the freezing darkness waiting for the firetruck. The driver remembered how to get to the department (it was the same guy). An admirable response, the truck was here within 10 minutes of the alarm.

Once again, the firemen stride confidently into the building and come back outside 5 minutes later. All-clear. Faulty sensor. *mumble mumble*

We head back inside to the warmth. A mere 20 minutes later, the fricking alarm sounds AGAIN. Oh, screw this for a lark. I shut down the machine leisurely, wrap up and head outside. 30 seconds after my unhurried exit from the building, the fire truck pulls up for the third time. No smiles or confident strides into the building… one guy hops off the truck, heads in, comes back out 30 seconds later. Yes, the sensor.

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence.. but thrice has to be enemy action.

In other news, my greasemonkeying with a nearby aggregator site has progressed well… All entries from specific authors/blogs can now be hidden and revealed with a mouseclick and some more stuff has been added to the sidebar. I’m even considering sentence filters for topics (someone else’s idea) for 0.05

Still wondering about evolving this Greasemonkey script into a meta-aggregator - pulling in all the random sites and linking entries at a whim. but that would require a longer stint of true joblessness to develop, I think.