Wondering about noise.

The other evening when the lights went out (no electricity) it got so very quiet in my home. It made me stop and think of all the noise that we put up with 24 hours a day. Yes, even in the middle of the night there is plenty of noise coming from my house. It is no wonder that I now have to wear hearing aids; couldn’t be that I am just getting old (grin).


I decided to think about the noise. What is the biggest culprit? The TV has to be right up there on top of the list. Sometimes there are two TV’s on at the same time and my satellite radio playing blue-grass music and my wife’s satellite radio playing old radio shows (you know, like the Green Hornet, etc.). Next would have to be my computer system. When the UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) is running, it makes a lot of noise. It takes a lot of fans to cool a supply that big, it weighs somewhere between 200 and 300 pounds and can run all my computers and floor lamps and the TV for hours. The fans in my tower computers also seem to get louder the older they get.

Then you have things like the refrigerator, AC system, ceiling fans, coffee maker, and a whole lot of other things that you didn’t think made any noise. Our generation has grown up during a time when the ambient noise was increasing exponentially. Back when I was a small boy, it was a lot more quiet; less traffic on the roads, no “boom-boxes”, no i-pods, no TV and a lot less hassle. As technology advanced, so did the decibels.

When I first moved on this piece of property, the quiet was one of the things that I enjoyed. No, it wasn’t real quiet, but what noises you could hear where almost 90% from nature. You know, frogs, birds, insects, animals, wind, etc. Now, the traffic from the highway (which is located a mile away to the south) is deafening. A new Latino nightclub out on the main highway vibrates the air with a boom, boom, boom, as does a few vehicles that drive down our street with loud music coming from huge speakers. Dang, I hate them. Did you ever sit at a red light and your car was being rocked by the boom, boom, boom coming from the speakers of the car sitting near you? How’s come loud mufflers are illegal in a lot of areas and amplifiers are not?
OK, don’t want to get my blood pressure up, so enough of that. You all have a good weekend, you hear? We are off to the flea market. . .