The of the amusing things running AltSpace has been the unexpected events that have occurred over the last six months. Over the Christmas/New Year break I reflected on what I think must have been one of the funniest voice mails I have ever received.

One morning in one of the warmer days in late November I had turned on both of the aircon units and left the smaller one on all night. The next morning when I arrived I found it was not working and thought it might be broken and just turned on the other unit. I did not think about this until later in the morning when I came back to AltSpace and found my notebook was off with no battery power. I then realised that the plug was not working. Checking around I released that about half the plugs were not working (all along that side of the office) and decide to look in the fuse box. It seems the aircon had blown the fuse which was easy to fix. My first attempt generated an interesting flash as the aircon was still plugged in. So I turned it off and unplugged and reset the fuse. 

Then the fun starts.

The alarm which was installed by a previous tenant that we had assumed did not work must have been on the same circuit. As the power was restored it activated. This alarm is about a metre from the door and where I was standing and so I instantly turned the fuse off. I pondered this for a moment and then rung the land lord. After explaining to them that the alarm going off when we restored power they replied ‘it’s your alarm, it’s your issue’. I then explained that it was not installed by us and that it was their alarm to which they replied ‘alarm, what alarm?’. I finally convinced them that it was the landlords by process of it being here before us and they sent around an electrician to cut the power to it.

The next day I get a phone call while in an off site meeting and it went to voice mail. I clear the message about an hour later. It is one of the AltSpace members calling saying the alarm is going off and they cant get it to stop even by turning the circuit off. In the message you can hear the alarm wailing in the background.

Then I see a txt message stating ‘all OK. alarm off!’. I go to AltSpace and it seems that when it was disconnected from the power it was drawing power from an internal battery. When this battery started to get low it triggered the alarm again. The member called the security company listed on the alarm and they said best way was to use the code. Great, we had no idea of the code, and then they said if we did not plan to use the alarm system to cut one of the wires connecting the speaker. Which he did and the noise stopped.

BTW, we do not use the second aircon unit anymore either