My family had quite a scare when I was a little kid in Ohio. My parents and I found members of our family unconscious in the house due to carbon monoxide poisoning (there were no audible alarm carbon monoxide detectors back then). My family was lucky, after a long hospital stay my peeps walked away with a second chance at living long and happy lives.
With all of the fantastic gadgets we have now, we have a long list of sweet solutions to choose from when it comes to safety. In the mix of cool technology, I worry some of the electronic solutions are being ignored because of the large volume of false positives we hear every day with things like car alarms going off in parking lots and I also worry that very reliable older solutions are falling by the wayside, solutions like animals. Please consider mixing electronics (like audible detectors) with animal solutions in your safety plan for a solid defense against unexpected dangers – especially dangers that can occur when you are sleeping.
We hear so many stories in the news of families claiming pets saved their lives during events like house fires in the middle of the night and in my many years of raising dogs, cats and bunnies, I have found that all three animals are very good at alerting the family to perceived threats via loud behavior (bunnies thump their back feet – it is so loud it sounds like someone is pounding on a door, dogs bark and cats cry or pounce on you).
Pets are a big responsibility. They can be annoying, loud, mean, crazy, weird, and selfish – you know, basically all of the things we are on rare occasion – but consider getting one anyway. Pets often want to make you happy and keep you safe since they think you are a giant food machine that doles out love and delicious meals in the form of limitless crunchy pellets in a fancy bowl on the kitchen floor.
Coding Under the Stars 