I’ve been listening to what sounds like a clock radio alarm sound in another apartment (fortunately not in my building) for the past half hour or so. It reminds me of the time in college when a similar thing happened in the dorm apartment RIGHT ABOVE MY ROOM.
Is there ANY reason manufacturers have a clock or car alarm that lasts more than two minutes or so? After such a period, wouldn’t its function become more and more moot, and more and more likely to do nothing but bother other people? What’s the POINT?!?
I’ve never found it to be truely annoying, but I know what you mean. I remember last year walking downstairs past the sound of an alarm clock, at a time of day when 99% of frosh were supossed to be in class, knowing that it had likely been going for at least an hour (unless it was set for after class started) and would likely go for at least another hour before someone got back to turn it off.
I understand the need for these alarms well. I sleep like the dead, and if my alarm only went off for 2 minutes I would just be getting around to hearing it by the time it stopped going off. I actually have 2 alarm clocks and need them both, often times sleeping 20 or 30 minutes past the time when they first go off. (I am never late to work or anything, I have learned to compensate for my weird sleeping habits) I always make sure they are all turned off before I leave the house though…I can’t imagine making my neighbors listen to more of that than necessary.
If you are deeply asleep, it can take that long for it to sink in that the alarm is going off. I don’t do this all the time, but I have also been known to sleep through fifteen minutes of the alarm before I register it and rouse enough to realize it is time to get up.
It is cheeper to make it just keep going. If they were to have it turn of in x minutes that means adding a circuit to cut it off. Added complexity = more cost.
Mom is very happy with whomever invented cellphone alarms.
Because it keeps ringing again every few minutes, she doesn’t need to kick Bro out of bed any more: he ends up getting out of bed on his very own and with no need for the cattle prod.
This also means that once he gets the key to his flat and moves out, she won’t be worrying herself (and boring me) halfaway to death over whether he’s getting out of bed. She’ll find other things, mind you :rolleyes: but ain’t that what Moms do?
Anyhoo, I had a roommate in college who was deaf in one ear so at least half the time she wouldn’t hear her alarm and I would go wake her up. I guess if no one else were there she would eventually turn over and hear a long-running alarm.
To be fair, there were a few instances where my clock radio would go off, and somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind I was aware of it, but I was so tired that my brain just incorporated it into the dream I was currently in. It took probably the length of the entire song before my left brain realized what my right brain was doing, smacked it upside the cerebellum and woke me up.
These days I have two alarms. Both mobile: My cell phone, and my PDA. I stagger the alarms so that even if I accidentally disable one, the other will still get me up.