My Absence: No, I'm Not Dead....

Yeah. I have been away from this board for a long time. In fact, I have only made about two or three posts in 2018; and the New Year was almost five months ago, and I primarily haven’t been active since about September or October 2017. So, some of you are probably wondering: Why have I been gone so long?

Well, there is several reasons for this, one being that during the middle of the school year, I had to juggle sports in, and swimming is a very dedicated sport. You have to be very committed to do it, and if you don’t put in the effort, you are doing about as much as just not showing up to practices and meets. During our season which is 4 months long (yes, it is a long time), most of my Saturdays were at meets in addition to having one in the week every Tuesday or Wednesday as well. Although swimming ended in February, we almost immediately had finals afterward and were right into third trimester, the last of the school year. I have 5 academic classes this tri (we have 5 periods a day, each 72 minutes long; and all of them this tri are core academic classes). We had so many snow days this winter that we were hardly prepared to enter the last trimester of the school year, and to add on to all that, our last day of school this year is relatively early; with us getting out on May 31. So essentially I haven’t had much of any time to do anything, and with all of my hard course loads this tri, I am pretty much up to not doing a whole lot on the weekends, and I am just naturally a person who procrastinates about things anyways, so I just haven’t gotten around to working on my fire alarm system. The last week in March was Spring Break, and every day we visited colleges, and I was very impressed with a couple of the schools we visited as they had a good engineering program. So I didn’t have a whole lot of time to work on anything, and I am just generally lazy and haven’t gotten around to doing a whole lot of anything with my fire alarms. I have gotten a few new devices (more than a few, actually) and I’m sad to admit that most of them are still sitting brand new in their original boxes; I simply just haven’t felt like working on them.

I’ve also gotten a little more into sirens and outdoor warning systems to be quite honest, and I’ve been a lot more active on The Siren Board than I have been on here. Reason being is I don’t have to do a whole lot to make content for that other than having an open schedule when a siren test is being conducted and just driving to wherever I want to film. All I have to do is get my camera set up on a tripod and focused and take a few photos and the video, and then drive home and edit the video and upload it. I don’t have to worry about wiring anything or having a problem with anything unless the siren doesn’t go off or fails for some reason, which is kind of a bummer sometimes, but not something I have to deal with. And the second reason is that someone who goes to the same school district as I and we live in the same city and we are both interested in sirens, so I just have more of a connection there if that makes any sense. I have gotten a lot more interested lately in sirens than I have been in fire alarms.

But does this mean I’m suddenly uninterested in fire alarms or that I am selling anything or just not doing any of that anymore? Of course not, and I certainly don’t plan on selling anything. I’ve just been very busy with other things and have been more interested in another interest of mine lately that is easier to go out and film and whatnot and I have a friend who lives in the same town and goes to the same school district as I do, and I have kind of a more of a connection and in some instances easier access and ability to do that than this. I am certainly still very much so interested in fire alarms and it is still a hobby and I still collect alarms and have a demo system. It is simply a lot of work that I’ve chosen not to do since I am just lazy lately and doing siren stuff instead. But I will still be doing fire alarm related stuff and content, but just not as frequent as I did when I first started out my channel in 2016 and 2017 since I didn’t have a second interest at that time, and I also didn’t have a demo system with a wall-mounted board and devices and I’ll be honest, it is a lot of work to work on stuff like that on a weekly basis. Plus, I have a TON of system tests and things from months ago that I just haven’t gotten onto my computer from my phone and I haven’t edited the entire video and then had time to upload the final product yet, so I’ll get there when I get there. Once summer starts I hope to be able to be releasing a lot more siren related content as well as fairly regular fire alarm related content as well in the future when I get the motivation to stop being lazy. Lol :lol:

That’s explains a lot…

Also, check the PM I’ve sent you.

Felt like reposting instead of making a new topic.
Well, I feel like sharing with you all something I thought I never would:
I’ve pretty much moved on from fire alarm stuff.

It’s still interesting and all, and yes I still have my system and mess around with it from time to time, but I just haven’t had the motivation to do anything with is. There’s also changes going on in my life at the moment (recently my father got a new job and we… well my parents at least… will soon be moving down to the Dayton area and I will be off to college, I am attending Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio (in Mahoning County). I plan on majoring in Mechanical engineering technology with the hope of one day designing and building my own sirens.

But anyways in the meantime I’ve moved on. Very soon I will be assisting my local community in refurbishing and donating to them refurbed and overhauled outdoor warning sirens which were recently removed after another community did a siren upgrade project. Given there’s nothing wrong with the sirens themselves and the township that removed them would rather give them away than scrap them, I went for it. I also have friend of mine who is into sirens as well and I am blessed that he lives in the same community I do (that’s something you don’t see everyday). Besides a summer job working on park maintenance at a local metro park, that’s pretty much my life right now. I graduate high school in 15 school days. I am working hard to keep my grades up before graduation. I’ve been blessed to be a part of this community for nearly four years and have loved every minute of doing so. I’ll still be on here from time to time, but it’ll probably be kind of like my activity on here as of late.

I plan on releasing some new FA videos soon but I can’t guarantee when that will happen (my computer only has so much memory left with all the siren recordings I’ve been doing lately).

If you wanna check me out and what I do siren wise, feel free to wander over to The Siren Board as I’m on there a lot, I also run an instagram page from my YouTube stuff under the same username as my YouTube channel where I’ll post siren and fire alarm pictures and whatnot.

Just thought I’d update you all on where I’ve been and what I’ll be doing going forward. It’s amazing to see how much has gone on in my absence on here, on ARS it’s pretty dead so it’s nice to see another forum still alive and well. Can’t guarantee when I’ll log on again, but it’s nice checking back in again!

So is that why you haven’t been posting fire alarm videos or recording them lately?