Friday, April 09, 2004

5 AM Is A Context

My fire-alarm needs to not start telling me ... something! ... something! ... something! ... whatever it is, at 5 AM. Just these single loud beeps every minute or so. Once I had localised it was the fire alarm -- a chore in itself for something beeping once every minute -- all I could do was get a ladder and pull on the one idetifiable moving part. A battery compartment opens for a 9V mini-brick battery. Fortunatly I had previously seen 9 volters in the tool chest a week ago, and had wondered "Why do we have a package of 9V batteries?" I don't even know if that is what it was complaining about. The battery tester that came with the new batteries tells me the old one wasn't even really seriously depleted. The alarm seems to have shut up now.

In the jargon of the particular field of software I work in, it would be said that my fire-alarm needs to be context-aware. Know what people are like at what they do. Don't wake people up when they sleep.