What the F*** is that noise???

It's been going on for days now.

A beep.

More involved than just a "beep", really.

A "deeedle-eeep".

A small sound. Occasional. Seemingly random. No set amount of time between each group of "deeedle-eeeps".

But it keeps happening.

And I can't, for the effing life of me figure out where it's coming from!!!

It's not my iPod.
It's not my PDA.
It's not my camera.
It's not my ancient PalmPilot.
It's not the company's ancient Palm ["deeedle-eeep"] Pilot which lives in my desk drawer.
It's not my cell phone.
It's not my PC.
It's not the Apple G4 next to me.
It's not the ancient Dell running Linux next to me.
It's not the "countdown to Bush's last day in office" clock that was given to me as a gift a while back.
It's not the AOL stopwatch. Another gift, of sorts.

All of these devices are piled up on my desk next to me. The sound seems to be coming from the other side of my tiny ["deeedle-eeep"] office. There is nothing else in here that could be the cause.

But then, I had a thought...

Ben.

This kind of treachery is right up his alley.

Hadn't I heard of a device which does almost exactly this? The ThinkGeek Annoy-a-tron. Ben must have bought one and stashed it in my office just before I moved offices last week. Ingenious! The tricky bastard. How could he have stood in my office not two hours ago chatting and not have betrayed his secret! He's is a master at this game.

So out of my office, and over to the other side of the building to confront him. He wasn't in his office, so I decided to see what our boss knew of the situation. I gave him my best Kojak "I'm on to you" look (complete with index finger pointing), but he claimed no knowledge. But then he offered a different theory...Perhaps it's the light switch.

We have these motion-sensor light switches which kill the lights in "empty" rooms. The switches have a series of dip-switches on them to configure all sorts of options. One option is the "warning beep before shutting off the lights". Evidently this option was enabled on half of the switches installed (my new office), and disabled on the other half of the switches (my old office). I haven't pulled the switch off the wall to confirm this theory, but at least I have something on which to focus now. The next time I hear the "deeedle-eeep", I'll pay attention to the state of my overhead lights.