Monday, November 25, 2013

Insanity by a thousand "dings"

If I believed in ghosts I'd swear my world was haunted.  A thousand times a day, out of nowhere, I'll hear "ding".  They come at all hours, usually solo, sometimes in pairs, and always at irregular intervals. The really frustrating part is, I can't find where they're coming from.  Grrrrr!

I've pretty much ruled out the doorbell "ding" because our apartment doesn't have a doorbell, but just a knocker.  And I've checked the timer on both the microwave and that other big hot-box thing under the cooktop.  The elevator down the hall makes a "ding" when it arrives at our floor, but it is much louder than the faint "ding" I'm talking about here.

It's aggravating the same way a smoke detector is when it's battery goes dead.  Except that's always, always at 3 am, and it goes "chirp", not "ding".  But nowadays with 6 or 8 smoke detectors in every home, finding the culprit is a hair-pulling exercise.  I've even changed ALL the batteries at the same time, figuring that would absolutely shut the damn things up.  But as it turns out, sometimes those things just go bad for no apparent reason and need to be replaced. *sigh*

In our humble abode we have two computers (his 'n hers), two iPads (his 'n hers), and two smartphones (his 'n hers), plus "her" has a couple of other electronic gizmos that might also make noises, too, I'm not sure.   But right now, my guess is it's one of those contraptions.

But why would it "ding"?  To notify me of something?  But what?  Wouldn't there be some sort of announcement on the screen?  To tell me there's some new blog post or Facebook entry or email ready to read?  Those things come and go all day long, and I get many more of those than I hear "dings".



Me and Luke out for a stroll.

Maybe I'm the unwilling participant in some sort of psychology experiment to find out "how many unexplained 'dings' does a man have to hear before he goes completely insane?"  In which case they've got the wrong guy.  Some say I passed that milestone years ago.  ;)

S


9 comments:

  1. 1. Wouldn't the elevator "ding" be fainter in your apartment than if you standing right in front of it?
    2. Check the notification settings all all your "gadgets".

    Have a nice day!

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  2. Your last paragraph pretty much sums up the comment I was going to add.

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  3. Maybe someone is playing a prank on you. When you hear this sound do you have an irresistible urge to cluck like a chicken? Have you been hypnotized recently?

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  4. might be an aural hallucination. I was reading about those recently.

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  5. Oh I can't STAND unexplained noises! The other day at work I had to march into a coworker's office to turn her phone ring down - I could hear it in MY office & it was making me crazy(er).

    One noise that always surprises us & always takes us awhile to figure out is the low battery signal on our (not smart) phones. I never remember what that racket is until I have a dead phone :)

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  6. I'm convinced it's all in your head. I, too, hear "ding" when there is none. Our minds are so trained to hear the dings every time there is a new email or you get tagged in a Facebook post that pretty soon we just assume the dings.

    Come to think of it, I haven't tagged you in a bacon meme in a while. I should do that, just to mess with you. ;-)

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    Replies
    1. So "ding" is a subliminal message for me to eat more bacon? Ding...ding...ding...ding...

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