Halon/Hochuli

So I'm sitting at work around 2015 last night when the fire alarm bell goes off. No reason to panic, I don't see any flames. The rest of the people in the office and I check the rest of the building and the only alarm going off is the bells on our wing on our floor. The horn and the flashing alarm lights aren't going off, just this fucking annoying bell.

After about 5 minutes I just say "Fuck it" and get back to work. I still have fifteen people I have to nursemaid before I can head home. That doesn't mean I don't pack up my laptop, iPod, and Blackberry and get ready to roll out if the midden hits the windmill.

We get the building's super to come in and check out what is happening. By now the alarm has been going off a half hour and I have a splitting headache from the goddamn alarm. I'm down to about four "children" left when I hear a loud BOOM!

I turn around and see all the people from the back half of the room running and look over the partition to the glass walled server room to see the Halon system going off. It was pretty fucking cool. Just a cloud of gas turning the room opaque. And now the entire fire alarm system was going off; the flashing lights, the booming horn, the midget on the Shriner car sized fire truck was released from his cage (well, not really that but wouldn't that be the awesome?).

I shoot off a quick message to my guys that I will be incommunicado because the district office might be burning down and to call onsite management if they have any problems. I grab my shit and hit the doors. Good thing we are on the ground floor.

The only people in the building are my department and the call center upstairs and we congregate in the parking deck. Lucky motherfuckers from the call center just head home while my department just huddles up and goes of how much fun that was. I also got to explain what Halon was to my coworkers, who thought it was smoke in the server room.

The fire department shows up 10 minutes later and after they have been in the building (sans gear) for about another 10 minutes we decide to go back in. Shit, I had to close down my gmail so none of the daytime fuckers I work with could prowl through my personal life.

I come back in to the fire department personnel walking out of the server room saying "The good news is, I don't know what caused this. The bad news is, I don't know what caused this." I shut down all the personal shit on my work comp, checked to make sure all the rest of my kids were done, called onsite management to let them know what was going on, and got the fuck on home.

Good times, good times. I look forward to the next false alarm where I can see the Halon system popping off. I'm just disappointed that I actually have to be at work today and they won't be replacing our horribly outdated workstations.

--

Now for my prognostications. You heard it here first people. Next year on Law & Order there will be an episode ripped from the headlines about this Ed Hochuli mess. I'm not sure what the twist will be. Either a law partner, wife, mistress, estranged gardner, or pet will try to make it look like and outraged fan/bookie did the deed.

If I was a writer who had an in on that show, talent, and actually knew how to write an hour long cop drama I would have banged that shit out in six hours and had it in a studio execs hands first thing Monday morning.

If you don't know what I'm talking about here, you're obviously not a golfer.