Spooky

For years, my apartment has had two smoke alarms right next to each other. One alarm was decades old, with a wired power connection. The other was a new battery-powered alarm. Some contractors hurriedly installed the second alarm back when the building was being sold. The old owners wanted to bring the building up to code in a hurry; the old smoke alarm were overdue for replacement. But there was no time to replace them all, so we got redundant battery alarms. Recently, my decades-old smoke alarm has been false-alarming. I guess that's not surprising; it's long overdue for replacement. It took a few tries, but I finally begged the property manager to fix it. Well, send the handyman to fix it. Today, the handyman showed up. He disconnected the old smoke alarm from ceiling power. He pulled its backup battery. Then it beeped. Somehow. He pulled down the alarm from the ceiling to be absolutely sure it wasn't in contact with the power wires. It beeped again. Somehow. If it were a week ago,…

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