Got woken up again early in the morning by “YASD”: Yet Another Smoke Detector chirping away at a failing battery. WTF?! Why do these things even have batteries? They’re wired to the house so a 1 Farad cap in each would save a dozen 9V alkaline batteries a year and lots of aggravation!

And the one time I did have a fire and the house was full of smoke, not a one of them worked. *I* was the smoke detector. They quit detecting smoke after about 5 years and the only way you can know is to spray them with a can of “smoke …check” and see if they go off. The test button is worse than useless: it’s completely misleading people into thinking it’s working when it isn’t. I had no idea smoke detectors expire until after the fire. Good thing I sleep lightly. When I replaced them, I had to change all the connectors because they’re all proprietary designs. It’s also funny that one is not required in the area where a fire is most likely to break out — in the basement where the furnace and gas hot water heater are… go figure.