Naggy Electronics

I spent a half hour this morning, between 2:45 and 3:15 am, being nagged by my electronic devices.

At first I thought it was my Kindle Fire HD making the plaintive wail. It was a noise I hadn’t heard before, but as I’d recently added a few apps, I thought perhaps I’d missed shutting down an automatic notification.

But no. Everything looked good. Except the wailing continued every three or four minutes.

I couldn’t shut the Kindle off as it’s also my alarm clock. I thought, briefly, I’ll just bury the Kindle under the blankets. That’ll muffle the noise.

No. That put the noise next to the dogs, who woke up when it wailed again and decided since they were awake, it must be time to go outside.

As I stumbled out of bed to take care of the dogs, it dawned on me – The noise might be my new cell phone. Sure enough, the phone’s battery was dying and the poor thing was wailing. I tried to turn it off in the darkness. But it’s a new enough phone I couldn’t find the power button. I tried using my Kindle as a flashlight, but as I didn’t have my glasses on, I couldn’t see any of the buttons in the light anyway.

Now the dogs are really getting anxious and my wife is awake, wondering if I’m okay. I mumble something, take the dogs and the devices to the kitchen downstairs. The dogs go out, happily. I find the charger to my phone and plug it all into the wall, hoping that’ll shut up the wailing. I also dig through my bag to find the charger for the Kindle, as it’s starting to complain about a weak battery as well.

The dogs come in. Shutting off lights as I go, I follow them back upstairs, stuff them into bed and then fumble with my solar flashlight to plug in the Kindle charger. Then I go back to bed.

And lay there awake for five minutes, waiting for the Kindle screen to shut down.

I hate nagging electronics.