nah nah nah you can't find me.

A couple of months ago I bought a tablet.  A Samsung Galaxy .. that was highly rated. I contemplated it for weeks before I finally pulled the plug.  I even brought this super cool case/keyboard and awesome bag for it because I was just sure I was going to be using it all the time.  Well, I don't use it that much ... for a lot of reasons that I don't really want to get into at the moment ... because this blog isn't really about my tablet.   

At least not exactly. 

Okay, so like most people ... I was all excited to set up my tablet...so I loaded it up with all the gizmos and then set it on the nightstand to charge up .... and then it began.   My tablet starting talking to me.  It started innocently enough ... little noises like my cell phone makes.  (Which are both on the Android platform by the way).  The annoying part of these little noises was when they would occur ... not in the middle of the day or evening ... no that would be too nice.  Nope, my tablet would whistle that "hey baby" construction working cat call at me in the middle of the night.  Why?  I never really figured that out ... except that maybe it was to tell me that I had "NEW EMAIL" ...  cuz  I want to be notified of that at 2 am. 

So the first couple of days I thought it was cute .. but a week later I wanted to throw the thing out the window ... so I went into the settings and turn off all notification whistles.  I thought that would take care of the problem.  Umm, No.  Then it started buzzing at some equally god awful hour for I don't know what reason.  Again back into the settings to turn that noise off -- which actually took a couple of attempts because clearly I'm retarded in the technology department.  Finally after about 15 tries,  I was able to silence all noises out of the damn thing.  

And things were quiet for a couple of days .... and then suddenly one night at 1:30 a.m. I was awaken from a sound sleep by some buzzing sound.  It sounded like an old-style telephone ringing.  You know the ones we had when we were kids?  The kind that hung on the wall with the rotary dial and the silver hook/disconnect bar?  And if you're having a nostalgic moment like me .. you remember how those phones rang loud enough to wake the dead ... yeah?  Yeah, well, that's how loud this buzzing sound was for all of like 10 seconds.  

10 seconds to hell -- to ruin my deep drool infested sleep ... 10 seconds enough to wake me up but not awake enough to figure out what the hell was making that noise.  10 seconds times 30 days of going crazy trying to figure it out.  

Okay, so right off the bat I thought it was my tablet again, in that shoot first ask questions later mentality.  It had to be the tablet because there was no alarm going off in my room at 1:30 in my life before the tablet.  So I checked it AGAIN to confirm that somehow when I was playing Angry Birds or something I didn't accidentally set it to do something.   I checked and checked and rechecked the damn thing ... until I was ready to toss it out the window.  

Then finally I just shut the tablet off ...(which someone had to suggest to me by the way --  because why would I think of that myself?)  ...and I snuggled in for a long winters night, thinking .. "HA!  I got you.  There will be no alarms tonight!" 

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.   

1:30 am.  On the dot.  Okay .. so the only thing I accomplished was ruling out that it wasn't my shiny new tablet.  So WTF?    

I knew for a fact that it wasn't -- but checked anyway ....

• My watch .. because there is only 3 alarm slots and I already had all three in use. 
• My clock radio on my night stand .. because besides that I barely knew how to set the clock, much less the alarm ... it was just flashing 12:00 because I had unplugged it weeks ago and never got around to resetting it.
• My cell phone because none of the alarm sounds I had programmed where the wake the dead variety.  
• The smoke detector to tell me I had a nearly dead battery because I had just changed the battery.  
• The alarm clock in my sister's room because I checked that too ... also just flashing 12:00.   
• The TV in my sister's room .. because she's practically blind and who knows... maybe she got all button pushing happy the last time she was home and pushed something that turned something on and didn't know it.  (or did and didn't know how to fix it so she just left it for me to figure out).

That just left my laptop .. .which never ever in the history of my owning it has made any random buzzing noises.  But I checked it anyway ...  looked every where for something that would solve something .. and found nothing.  The only thing I could think it might  be was the Google Calendar -- because I have all my work days programmed into the Google Calendar -- with an alarm that goes off on my cell phone.  I have never heard the alarm go off on my laptop. And the alarm is scheduled to go off at 4:30 am, not 1:30 -- but maybe the laptop time was off.  

So I ran a test by disabling the alarm for one day and then snuggled in for the night. And ta-da!!  No 1:30 wake up call.   Thank Gawd for that.  Only took 2 months to figure it out.  So sadly I had to edit all my calendar entries for the rest of the year ... and set the actual alarm on my phone instead.   

BBZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ 

The next night, 1:30 on the dot.  

I pretty much wanted to cry.  

Seriously. 

Okay, so another couple of days go by with me getting rattled from my sleep at 1:30 -- which actually was beginning to become routine for me.   I even started to get up and make my nightly bathroom run at that time. Why the hell not?  And that was all well and good until this past weekend when I was actually WIDE ASS AWAKE at 1:30 when the stupid alarm started to do its thing.  

I jumped out of bed quick and started to crane my head to "find" the culprit on the night stand.  And I FOUND IT!!!!   And it wasn't the tablet, or my phone, or my laptop, or the clock radio or any other obvious thing.  

It was the effing Heart Rate Monitor!!!

Who knew that damn thing had an ALARM function any damn how?  And why would someone want it?  (Because it's not like I would be just wearing the HRM around randomly)  But somehow the button got pushed to activate the alarm, which, after I played around with the button, I realized didn't take a lot of pressure to put into the Alarm On Mode.

Needless to say .. the monitor has been moved to a "safer" location and tonight will be an alarm free night.  

At least I hope.  

If not .. the next thing you read will be my obituary.