¿Me puede ayudar, Mr. Fireman guy? ¿Por Favor?

I had to have the fire inspector come in to my house today. Remember a few posts ago when I lit some candles and set off my smoke alarms? Well I couldn't get one of them to turn off, so I disconnected (it was hardwired in) it. Then it kept yelling at me, so I took out the battery backup. Then, somehow, miraculously, it KEPT beeping to remind me to put it's brain back in and re-attach it.

I tried to do it, I really did. I put the battery back in, and it immediately started screaming that it had a low battery. Jerk. So I gave it a fresh battery. Once that was in, it wouldn't stop telling me that it was detecting high levels of CO. Fail. I took it out to the middle of the yard. Still detecting high levels of CO. Either I'm seriously screwed, or it is malfunctioning. I took the battery back out (to get the damn thing to SHUT UP) and went and read the little manual.

I put the battery back in and held down the 'reset' button.

NOW the stupid irritating piece of shit machinery is yelling at me in Spanish.

No hablo español.

Estoy triste. :(

Not only do I not know how to kill it, but I can't even understand what it's saying anymore.

You know what's cool? Google. There are sites that will "listen" via microphone to what "you" (or your smoke detector) are saying and translate it.

Apparently I am detecting high levels of CO.

*facepalm*

Battery comes back out, and Señior Smoke-Detector gets buried in blankets in the linen closet. Eventually the beeping dies a slow and apparently painful death, and all is finally quiet.

Except that, do you know that disconnecting your smoke alarms is illegal?
Further, do you know that if they are hardwired to your house, there's a chance they are hardwired to the fire department dispatch too?

Si.

"Ding Dong!" Doorbell!

He was very nice. I told him the evil little white disk was ALLLLLL his, and the bathroom was down the hall if he wanted to drown the demonic thing, because no. me. gusta. I don't know what he did. No entiendo. There is ONE button on that thing, and I'd already pushed it about a bazillion times. Apparently I wasn't doing it right. He made it stop beeping. He made it realize there was no CO accumulating to deadly levels on the ceiling of the second floor with all the windows open. He made it hablas el inglés.

Then he put it back in it's little mounting dealie, and the dastardly, hateful, idiotic, imbecilic, insensate, meaningless, mindless, moronic, obtuse, senseless, stolid, stupefied, trivial, unintelligent, unthinking, witless THING had the audacity to thank him.

It THANKED HIM. In English. It's lucky I can't reach it or I would have ripped it out of the ceiling.

A peaceful and CO-less existence once again reigns at The Mommy's household. No thanks to IT.

¿Donde esta el tequila?