Sometimes I wonder how we ever coped in our lives when just about every person didn’t have a cell phone and when land lines were used through big clunky phones with dials rather than push button key pads. At least back then we never had to face the horror of a flat battery.
My cell phone and the cordless phone in our bedroom both always seem to go flat on the weekend. Now, knowing that, you’d think that I’d charge them both on a Friday evening or night. Same with the man about the house, his cell phone always goes flat on a Saturday. I’ve turned off the warning tones on my cell phone because there’s nothing worse than being woken by a persistent beep to say “hey, I’m running out of juice here,” in the middle of the night–which brings me to an aside, why do these things never run flat during the day? Why, as with smoke detector batteries, is it only ever at around 2am that they start to beep.
Last night the man about the house had to stagger out of bed, extricate his cell phone from his pants pocket and plug it into a charger. Time? 1:50 am. That was a bit rough since he had to get up at 4:00 am to go on a fishing trip this morning. Anyway, I cast a bleary eye at the cordless phone on my bedside cabinet and guess what, it was flashing to warn me that it was running flat too. Get up this morning and check my cell phone and yep, bingo, ‘battery low.’
Do you have similar cycles in your household? And if you don’t, how on earth do you combat the curse of the dreaded middle of the night flat battery?
I’m with you on that 1:50am low battery warning signal. I don’t actually want anyone to call me on my mobile then – I DON’T CARE!
There’s definitely something in that going flat all together thing though. It’s tissue boxes in our house. We must have sixteen of the damn things sprinkled around the house and what happens? They’re all cunningly designed to let loose the last tissue at the exact same time. Which means you can never get away with just one or two in the cupboard for back up.
How does that work?
Comment by trishmorey — 12 April, 2008 @ 11:51 am |
My cell phone battery doesn’t give off “I’m dying” cries- and thank goodness. It just has the battery bar, and when I flip it open, if the icon shows red, it means it’s going low. Smoke detectors though, ack. All of them seemed to die at the same time. And they’d start beeping at night. Only, I swear. Nothing during the day, but when you were trying to fall asleep, or sleep in… there it would be. That annoying beep. And ours are pretty attached, so you need to get a ladder, and disconnect a bunch of wires too. (Yet they still run on batteries.)
Comment by limecello — 12 April, 2008 @ 9:39 pm |
That late night battery is the worst Yvonne. I always have to do it as part of my night time ritual its like MAKE SURE THE CELL PHONE IS PLUGED IN BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP, will automatically play in my head. Well it should after the opposite happens to me, it usually goes in the middle of the day and I have to always be in contact for either work or school so being without it is an inconvenience. It happened five times already so I defiantly learned my lesson ‘to always check the battery meter’ (lol).
Comment by Avi J — 13 April, 2008 @ 10:27 pm |
I don’t have a cell phone. I know my cordless usually lasts 2 days so before I go to bed that second night of it not being on the charge it goes on. I also make sure that the phone in my bedroom is being charged on opposite days so in case I forget to charge one or the other, I still have a phone. And yes I only have the 2 cordless phone because it came as a set with one being on a main base .
Comment by Christa — 14 April, 2008 @ 3:57 pm |
Personally, I think there’s a battery conspiracy out there! Christa, I take my hat off to you for not having a cell phone. I always swore I’d never need one, but now I could barely do without it. It’s peace of mind at being able to contact family members (especially driving teenage daughters) and has become an extension (excuse the pun) of my life.
Trish, limecello and Avi, I’m so glad I’m not alone in this cell phone battery torture. Thing is, if I could convince the man about the house to either (a) switch his phone off at night so we wouldn’t hear it beep if it went flat, or (b) turn off the warning sounds on his phone, I just know it would come back to bite me in the proverbial by either (c) him forgetting to turn the phone back on and me not being able to get a hold of him if I needed to, or (d) having his battery run flat and he wouldn’t notice giving the same result as (c)!
Ah well, gotta love technology, right?
Comment by yvonnelindsay — 14 April, 2008 @ 8:08 pm |
We change the batteries in our smoke detectors twice a year, when the time changes, just like the fire department tells us to. If you don’t change clocks down under, maybe you can pick another significant date, like a birthday or anniversary and try to associate that with changing the batteries.
As for the phone, I don’t use mine very often. I try to check it at least once a day to see if I’ve had a missed call, and when the bars start showing that it’s losing juice, I go ahead and plug it in. If I’m at work, I send myself a reminder via e-mail.
Funniest story — I was reading a romance novel in bed and one of the character’s phone went dead during a crucial call because she’d forgotten to charge it up. I immediately got up and went to plug mine in. When I climbed back into bed, DH gave me a funny look and asked what was up. I told him. He just shook his head.
Comment by Auriette — 20 July, 2008 @ 8:42 pm |
Hi Auriette! I love your funny story. I can just imagine your dh’s face. I know what mine would’ve said.
Generally it’s the phone in our master bedroom that goes flat, because we use it so little and don’t check it. It has a little green light that flashes to say it’s going flat and it invariably wakes me. Trouble is, when the phone goes on the charger, the charging light is so bright it just about illuminates our entire bedroom! I’m tempted to put black marker pen over it 
Comment by yvonnelindsay — 20 July, 2008 @ 8:50 pm |
What a great story thank you!
Comment by Elle — 20 November, 2008 @ 3:17 am |
With todays technology always on the constant rise for finding and sourcing out different alternatives for the energetic battery. I mean if a battery were to run for too long, it would be just like the bubble gum effect. People chew on their gum for soo long that they just dont end up buying another one, in essence causing the business to lose money. Whhyyyy would the battery company do that?!?
Comment by Dell notebook battery — 20 November, 2008 @ 9:40 pm |
Hi Elle, thanks for popping by my blog.
Dell notebook battery — yes, you have a very valid point there, and then there’s always the question of how to dispense with the darn things once they’ve run out of life.
Comment by yvonnelindsay — 20 November, 2008 @ 10:26 pm |