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Dear smoke alarm company: Two years ago I wrote what could have been considered an open letter regarding your product line. In the months since I have seen no improvement, only regression. Here is another letter because I hate you. We recently had guests visit our home, guests who included two boys, 2 and 5 years old. As they slept—as we all slept—at around 3 a.m. I was greeted with the all-too-familiar sound of “Beep … … … … … … beep … … … … … … beep.” The Arizona weather had dipped below freezing, which is to say it had plummeted to an overnight low of 60 degrees, making it an absurd 73 degrees inside our home. As such, the extreme cold had drained the battery on one of our smoke alarms—one of your smoke alarms. I jumped out of bed in a panic and ran to the hallway to try and determine from which of our 28 smoke detectors the beep was coming. Luckily for me, the beep was not coming from the room where our guests’ boys were sleeping. (Lucky for you, too, because...

Note: This column appears in the 3/3 issue of The Glendale Star and the 3/4 issue of the Peoria Times Not long ago my wife called me from a friend’s house to help walk them through a pseudo-emergency. Our friend’s smoke alarm was losing battery power and was beeping intermittently, yet incessantly. I received the call not because I am a manly man, or because I am adept at diffusing such devices. Quite the opposite with regards to both, actually. I do, however, have major experience with beeping alarms of all varieties. Nevermind that my solutions to these beeping problems have been, for the most part, temporary and/or wrong. I mean, they had to call someone . My experience with beeping smoke alarms began when we still lived back east. Apparently, these devices lose battery power during extreme weather, so whenever the temperature outside dipped below a certain point and our heating system couldn’t keep up, the intermittent beeps would start. This always— always —happened around 3 a.m....

Note: This column appears in the 1/13 issue of The Glendale Star and the 1/14 issue of the Peoria Times Last week the alarm went off at my in-law’s house here in AZ. The alarm company called my father-in-law, who was back east, to inform him. Being that their house is in our development, he then called us, first to make sure we hadn’t set it off, then to ask if I wouldn’t mind going to check it out. The alarm had been deactivated and the police were on the way. Assuming it was nothing, I drove over there. It was a sunny Saturday in the middle of the afternoon, and that is when criminals sleep, I figured (I didn’t study Criminology in college, but I know someone who did). When I arrived at the house the police were not there yet, and I suddenly realized I had forgotten the keys. This was somewhat of a relief because during the three-minute drive my mind began to race with possibilities. What if someone really is robbing the house? What will I do? The only weapons I had available were ...