I discovered something this morning that is even more annoying than computers: school bells.

It was a particulary peculiar night. My wife was out of town and I had the place to myself...and a lot going through my mind...and I couldn't sleep. My circadian rythm has never been in sync with the 24-hour day/night cycle, so every so often (once or twice a year), I have to stay up all night to reset my biological clock. I decided last night was the night to stay up.

I didn't even realize today was Memorial Day. So much for my memory. Anyway, I thought with all this extra time, I could head out to my shop for some quiet time while I sat and played in good ol' Turbo Pascal in DOS for the embedded computer I have been playing with. You know, a chance to actually concentrate with no distractions.

Heh. Like that ever happens!

At 5:59 in the morning, the bell rang at the school that is right across the street from me. My window, which was open at the time, is a pretty direct shot for the sound from the bell to come through, so I heard it pretty distinctly. You can't miss it. Really, you can't. In fact, I was glad I was awake, because my bedroom window is just one floor below my shop window, so it probably would have woken me up.

At 6:00 in the morning, the bell rang again. I'm pretty familiar with that bell and even though I am not normally up at that hour, I knew it was uncharacteristic for it to ring that early...and twice in a row.

At 6:01 in the morning, the bell rang again. OK, they have screwed up the thing in the past when reconfiguring it for normal school days vs. other times (like the time when it was ringing every night at midnight instead of at noon). So, I figured maybe school was out and someone was over there screwing around with the programming.

At 6:02 in the morning, the bell rang again. Now it was beginning to get a little irritating. I wondered why they were screwing with it so damn early in the morning, and then began to wonder if anybody was over there at all.

At 6:03 in the morning, the bell rang again.
At 6:04 in the morning, the bell rang again. I took a step out the door to peek at the school, and I have never seen the parking lot so empty. Now I was worried...and growing increasingly annoyed by the minute.

At 6:05 in the morning, the bell rang again.

Somewhere approaching 6:30 in the morning, I called the police. They said they would attempt to contact someone to respond to the situation, and the call was terminated.

Somewhere a bit after 7:00 in the morning, I took a walk over to the school with a piece of cardboard in hand, thinking I might be able to jam it between the clapper and the bell to at least shut it up until someone decided to get out of bed and fix the damn thing. But it was futile. There was no way to get the cardboard up in there...and I wondered if filling the thing with shaving cream would make any difference...or maybe JB Weld. But I wasn't about to screw with it. With my luck, someone would show up and I would get charged with tampering with school property.

Somewhere around 7:30, I bought a gun. Well, at least that is when the halucinations started.

I called the police again at some point (can't really remember when, due to my temporary insanity) and someone different answered my call, but she said they had been trying to make contact with someone, but that everybody so far was either out of town or unreachable.

Out of town? Gee, that's convenient!

That's about the time that I began to wonder if today was a holiday. I didn't realize it was Memorial Day until I went into my apartment and turned on the television to try to drown out the bell and discovered the "Outer Limits Memorial Day Marathon."

Now it all made sense! See, someone was trying to make this day memorable! Remember for whom the bell tolls! Or some such crap. Either someone with a really bad hangover, or a really bad sense of morbid humor, or with very little understanding of programming a school bell got hold of that thing and really screwed it up. It must be computer-driven. How else could you screw the thing up so bad that it rings every minute for three hours?

It stopped ringing somewhere after 9:00 in the morning. So much for some quiet time to spend with uninterrupted concentration.

Anyway, this just marked another notch in my stream of irritations I have been enduring lately. I spent the better part of the previous two days building a ramp that our cat can climb up on to get to his cat door in the window of the bedroom so he doesn't have to jump up from a chair and make noise and walk all over me at night getting from my bed to the window. It was a great little ramp (still is). I just need to put some carpet on it and it's all set.

Well, I installed the thing and put a towel on the slope part so the cat would have something to grab on to until I can find some carpet (otherwise, the pressboard is kind of slippery). It led up to a little platform that extended the window sill so he would have plenty of room to stand up there when coming in and out.

Here's the ramp without the towel:


And here's the ramp with the towel:


I always thought this cat was fairly smart. But now I know he is actually just a blooming rotten idiot.

Here is this great little ramp that I slaved over for two days to get all the angles right and the screws tightened down into their chamfered holes, and it fit so well and was absolutely perfect. So what does the cat do to get out? It jumps OVER the damn thing onto the narrow window sill! Then, when coming back inside, he refused to even step on the extended platform, and kind of took a quick half-step on part of the ramp as he jumped over right onto my bed.

WHAT AN IDIOT!!!

Here's the path that he took. The red line illustrates the path he took from the floor to the door. The blue line shows the path he took from the door to my bed:


I guess I can't expect too much. After all, it is just a cat. A cat with a titanium rod and plate and wire in its leg that cost us a couple of grand to install back when he broke his leg a couple of years ago.



Ungrateful, smarmy little weasel! He just purrs and looks at me stupidly.