Frikkin Fire Drills and False Alarms

I am probably doomed to perish in a fire.  Gosh I certainly hope not but it definitely could be a possibility.  I have no idea how fast a fire moves or how long you can manage before the smoke overcomes you.  AND unfortunately, I have been in SOOOO Many dang frikkin fire drills and alarms that I have become inured to their importance.   

Maybe 10 years ago or so, twice, (different hotels, different states, different cats, different times), I was in a hotel with my daughter's cat and with my two cats..  Someone pulled the fire alarm when I was with my daughters cat and it was during the day so I was able to quickly grab him and stuff him in a carrier.  BUT on my way out the door, I also grabbed my computer and my purse.  Went outside and sat on the bench in front of the door until the fire department came and cleared the alarm.  The second time with cats, I was on the fourth floor and it was the middle of the night.  The cats were sleeping on the bed with me when someone pulled the alarm.  The noise is so loud and tumultuous and ear splitting plus a bright red light whirling in the room that the cats immediate dove for cover under the KING SIZED BED.   I was not leaving without my cats (although I know that one is supposed to do so but my cats are family!).  Took me probably 5 minutes to corral them and get them stuffed into a carrier and that involved throwing the mattress and springs onto the floor so I could reach them under the bed.  This alarm truly terrified me at the time because it was the middle of the night.  I do remember I called the front desk and they assured me they were looking into the matter but I had best vacate my room.  Again, I grabbed my computer and purse and trotted down the flights of stairs and shivered in the cold morning air because I had forgotten to put on a jacket.  At least I was sleeping in pajamas at the time.

Of course both of these were alarms and not drills but still, I didn't get out as fast as I could, I took my time to get my cats and my most important possessions.  My bad.  One other fire alarm was in Singapore.  No cats at the time but we lived on the 33rd floor.  That is a LONG way down the stairs.  Probably took us 15 minutes or more as people were coming out on each floor to join the procession plus some flats had stored their bicycles and grills and such on the stairs.  They bad!   Plus my hubby wanted to stop on the floors where we had friends and made sure they were not in their apartments but we figured they were ahead of us on the stairs.  This is the ONLY time there was actually a reason for the alarm being pulled and it was some of our friends where the wife had caught a skillet on fire and there was a lot of smoke in their apartment but her husband had put out the small stove fire before the alarm was pulled.  She ran and pulled the alarm because she was a nutter.


And one time in the Science Museum in London.  We're on the top floor when there is a fire alarm.  This was mid winter when it was actually quite cold.  By the time we reached the ground floor, personnel was stationed at all stairs and they would not let anyone retrieve their coats so I'm outside in 2 degree C weather, with a wind, and no coat.  AND they had to wait for the fire brigade to come and clear the alarm before we could go back inside to get our coats.   I no longer check my coat when I go somewhere unless it is just a jacket that I could do without for an hour or so.


In a very crowded theatre watching We Will Rock You.  In the middle of a song, the performers stopped singing and left the stage.  OMG.  Then the "Safety Curtain" descends and we had never seen that happen before.  No one in the audience knew what was happening so everyone just sat there for maybe 2 or 3 minutes.  There was no smoke or heat or alarms.  Finally staff opened all the exit doors and started shouting for people to leave the theatre.  A disgruntled employee had pulled an alarm backstage but we never heard it at all.  So out into the cold (with my coat this time) and wait for the fire brigade again to come and clear the theatre and 45 minutes later, we get back in to see the rest of the show.  


There have been a couple of other hotels where the alarms have been pulled and I have exited at my leisure, making sure I have my important stuff.  And there have been drills, so many drills.  Work place drills, hotel drills, restaurant drills, gym drills, store drills and others.  Usually there is a sign or an employee will mention that a drill is being held at such and such a time and please cooperate and exit as quickly as possible.   Never any smoke, never any heat, never any problem with calmly getting up and walking out with my stuff.  apparently my stuff is quite important to me!


Yesterday I was in an unannounced drill and it was only a partial drill at that!  I was at the gym and you might recall that I hate going to the gym.  Any excuse not to go.  But I was there and walking fast on the treadmill and watching Chuck on my iPod.  I think I heard something going off but I wasn't paying any attention as I was focused on Chuck and his cornucopia of problems with being a secret computer nerd spy.   Suddenly a lady jumps up on the treadmill next to me and taps me which was quite startling but she shouts "Fire Alarm".  I took out my earplugs and yep, it was going off quite loudly.  I think I didn't pay any attention to it because the music is usually way too loud so I must turn up my iPod as well.  I "emergency stopped" the treadmill, gathered my iPod and walked out.  People are leaving the gym and walking down the stairs but I detoured into the ladies locker room and got my purse and my coat and my keys.  Yep, stuff is definitely important to me.  But no smoke, no fire, no shouting, no running.  Some poor ladies are in the shower, some are half dressed, some are totally nude, and they are not really hurrying so I meandered out as well and when I got to the front of the hotel where my gym is located, it appeared that the only people involved in the drill were the people at the gym and the people at Starbucks and the pub.  There wasn't a single person out there who I would have counted as a hotel guest or hotel staff.  No housekeepers, who have a distinctive uniform or front desk staff who also have a distinctive uniform.   Everyone was dressed in gym attire or swimsuits and surely, at the time of day that this happened, one would have expected to get some executives over for lunch in their suits, or at least one or two hotels guests dressed nicer than sweaty T-shirts and trainers.   And it was a drill because no fire brigade showed up to check the alarm.  Once outside, it was less than 3 minutes before we were allowed back inside.  The Starbucks staff appeared to be the only employees outside with the gym attendees.    The end run of this drill was that I went back in to get my gym bag and then went home to do my errands. Didn't even want to take a shower there in case they figured we hadn't responded quickly enough and wanted to do it again.  


So I have become lackadaisical with fire alarms and fire drills.  No experience with the real thing - thank goodness - but then that gives me no frame of reference for how much time I really do have to get out.   I am probably doomed.


 

Multi-lingual

                    It seems to be fairly common knowledge that people of my generation from the United States, and a bit younger, usually only speak one language, English.  When I was in school, it was fairly rare to travel the world and just really uncommon for anyone to do much more, language wise, than take what was required to get a diploma.  I believe that it has changed somewhat since then but it's still more common than not that U.S. citizens will only have one language good and solid under their belt.  (I'm thinking that for some of the much younger generation, I'm not even sure they have English down pat as a language!)

              I've tried at various times to learn different languages, mainly Spanish, but have failed miserably in that I don't practice, I don't study, and I just don't have a good ear for it either.  I've tried Mandarin Chinese, French, German, and Korean at different times of my life.  and while I might have a very minuscule vocabulary in each of them, I cannot say that I can speak, read, or write any of them.   So it can be embarrassing when I meet people and they are speaking 3 or 4 or 7 or 8 different languages and I'm going "one".    So as a kind of joke, I decided to claim more languages and I proudly list them out for people when asked.

              Now I say I speak, write, read and understand 6 languages and they are: American, British, Canadian, eh,  Australian, New Zealand, and finally Singaporean, la.  This gets a very good laugh among my audience.   But this week I have been vindicated in that they really are separate languages!!!  How, you may ask.  Well, we just bought a new computer for me.  My old one was dying a very slow and painful death.  (It does feel better today because it knows its days are numbered).  My husband was working hard last night to get the new computer up and running and asked me whether I wanted British or American language on it!  See - right there an indication that they are two languages.  Since we are living in England, I said British.

               My husband gets busy and is attempting to transfer my files and programs from the old computer to the new computer when he runs into a very large and big and unexpected snag!  The new computer can't talk to the old computer and vice versa because they don't speak the same language!  OMG.  how very, very droll.  All these years of declaring that I speak 6 languages and I suddenly find out that for computers, it is true and I am totally right!  My new computer could not understand what my old computer was telling it.  Sooo, he had to go back to the beginning and download a language program and change my new computer to American so that it can understand the old computer.

               HA!  all you smug people who snickered at me for not knowing more than one language when you knew 2 or 3, I knew 6 all along and now I have been vindicated.  Thank you Google and Microsoft and Chrome and Internet Explorer and all the rest.  Let me thank you in all six languages,  Thanks, Thank you eh, Cheers, Thanks, Ta, Thank you la la.

Quicken 2007 bites the dust OR What happens to my mornings

     Mornings are spent updating the blogs, the finances, the emails, etc.  Usually it doesn't take very long unless it's a time for reconciliations or I've done a really big shopping day or all my friends have decided to email me en-mass.

     Scottish Power recently decided we weren't giving them enough money, monthly, to cover our vast expenditure of gas usage, meaning it sure as heck been cold here lately!  I like being warm so that means turning up the boiler to heat the radiators to heat the cavernous house that I love renting.  It should have been a quick little "open and change the amount" fix to my scheduled transactions on Quicken.  I open them once or twice a month to enter the regular monthly expenditures such as rent, utilities, mortgage, insurance, etc.  This morning it was not to be.

      First try, open scheduled transactions, nothing happens.  After a minute, I hit a couple of mouse clicks and the whole Quicken crashes.  Grrr, Argh, as Josh Whedon would say, and one of my favorite sayings when working with computers - which my husband fondly reminds me that "computers are our friends!".  Second try, same thing, crashes Quicken.  Reboot the whole system.  Third try, open Quicken, open scheduled transactions, nothing happens, wait longer, hit the mouse, crash Quicken!!!!  GRRRR  ARGH.  Now I call out for help, "Honey!"  Ok, it wasn't much of a call as he was sitting right next to me at his computer but he did come up and walk over to see what was happening.

       "Have you ..." "Yes, or course, you always tell me to do that.  I've done it!"  He proceeds to check the magical computer things that he knows to check and that he always shows me but never works for me.  Reboot again.  Open Quicken, open scheduled transactions, Quicken crashes.  In all, we must have gone through the same scenario a dozen times but now we are including his magical checks of the system and processes and such but nothing is working.    We are now also including looking up for old backups and there are about a million and a half backups on my computer and I haven't a clue what any of them are or if they are any good now or not.  In a massive fit of pique, I delete all backups that don't have a year end date of them and start labeling with something that makes sense to me, not Quicken!   I do manage to open a fairly recent backup and print out my scheduled transaction list so that I have it in case I need to re-enter it.

      Hubby is looking on his computer and he finds something new to try.  We go to the file and have it validate the quicken that we are using.  It says it found 20 errors in the scheduled transactions.  All Right.  Getting somewhere.  Well, NO.  it found them but I think that's all it did.  found them and validated them and knows they are there but didn't fix them or delete them or anything.  Back to where we started.  Open Quicken, Open Scheduled Transactions,  Try to do anything, Crash Quicken.  slumped shoulders, heavy sigh, head in hands, curses out the ying yang, Grrr, Argh times 1000.

      The other day, on our banking website, I noticed it said that it would not be supporting Quicken 2009 after a certain date.  I looked and saw that my Quicken was 2007.  Wow, I really haven't been keeping up with the new ones.  Not that I ever needed anything like 2009 because I don't tend to download anything from the internet onto my Quicken but instead just put in my own figures, trusting them more than some high school graduate entering figures as she/he tries to stay awake at the bank where they have a minimum paying job.  But it occurred to both of us that maybe it was time to upgrade to a new Quicken.  Not only will the banks stop supporting it but it has been our experience that the manufacture tends to stop supporting products after 3-5 years too (depending on the product) and anything that has now gone wrong with our Quicken is probably wrong to stay and won't fix itself.  AND it is now past lunch and what should have taken me 5 minutes has now taken me several hours and still isn't working.

     Onto Intuit and look at the new Quickens and there's one for 2012!  Glorious.  I can download it too and only pay - grr argh.  But we bit the bullet and bought it and now, happy to say, I have updated my scheduled transaction to take into account my lavish use of power and to keep Scottish Power happy. This is what happens to my mornings sometimes!