The phantom alarm and other gripes

One of my favorite things in the world is when I email someone (be it tech support for a vendor, or one of my colleagues) with a request and get a response back in indecipherable technobabble. Yep, I just love that. Today, for instance, after several months, I finally sort of learned what "sync-i-wam" is, and that it's not pronounced "sink-ee-wham." But when you open a window, you close a door and in response to another question I received (from a different person) advice to log in to a server the "same way you do any other." But of course, I don't do to any others, so I'm back at square zero.

For at least a week now, I've been awakened every morning at 6 am (a good 45 minutes before I normally wake on weekdays, and let's not even talk about weekends) by a beeping alarm emanating from some corner of my bedroom. I thought it was my watch, whose oversized nodules get randomly pressed by my shirt cuffs, causing all sorts of lights and chimes to activate. I've gotten up several times to rifle through drawers during the 30 seconds the alarm sounds, but could find no culprit (and it wasn't my watch). Finally, last night I decided it must be the clock on my desk. It has one of those mutant third arms on the clock face that determines (in a very inexact manner, unless you want it on the hour) the alarm time, so there's no way to set it to 00:00. And even though I hadn't touched it EVER, it appears to just have started sounding every morning. As far as I know, jiggling the switch (which was already in the "off" position) seems to have fixed it, unless I slept unusually hard this morning.

And that was my exciting day.