The clock struck 6:20 AM. I awakened to the sound of frantic beeping. I had a busy day ahead of me, but I wanted to sleep a little longer - this was not an alarm clock.

I stumbled out of bed, searching for the source of this peculiar sound. I thought that maybe a wayward app on my phone had decided to turn itself on, or maybe my laptop's battery had decided to go on strike again. But no, that's not where this noise was coming from.

It seemed to be coming from my favorite junk drawer, a place that's gone a few years without a thorough inspection. I dug through a few strata, including a protractor, some fake bugs, a foam gavel from a defunct law school I never attended, and my work ID. Eventually, I discovered the source of the beeping - a handheld Yahtzee game that my older brother got for Christmas in 1997.

Later that day, I removed the ancient Eckerd (!) AAA battery, scraped out the battery goo, and popped in a new battery, and found that this Yahtzee game worked as good as new. (I failed to score a single Yahtzee last night, though!)

I've got this APC power supply thing with a backup battery. When I first got it, there was a power outage that caused it to lose power briefly. It started beeping as a result, so it took me a few minutes to figure out what the hell the noise was