This morning I was awakened at too-damn-early by a strange alarm. Apparently, my new phone is tied not only to the weather alerts, but the whole damn WEA - Wireless Emergency Alert system. It was an Amber Alert - which is cool, except it was an alert for St. Louis County... specifically St. Louis the city... which is 300-ish miles from here. If that dude who took the kid was looking to hide, there is no way in hell he would head here. He'd stick out like an infected toe.
You know, they really need to work on some rational method of releasing alerts. I get alerts for St. Louis, but not for the cities in Arkansas which are way closer and far more likely for me to be able to do anything about them. Take a weather alert. I get alerts and sure, they're all for my county, but I'm in the extreme corner of the county and most of the alerts are for locations 30-45 minutes away from here. But I don't get alerts for the counties to the southwest or south of here because those are in a different state. Unfortunately, more often than not, the weather is coming from that direction and headed our way.
I know I'm asking a lot when I ask for rational methods and reasonable ways to address things. Especially when the government is involved. But this really shouldn't be that difficult. The damn phone system sends an alert from the towers. It can't be based on phone number, because my cell phone number is still CO and I don't get alerts for CO. Maybe if they sent an alert out only through those towers most likely to be in the area of the actual problem... Then I would be more likely to receive all the alerts I actually need rather than alerts for places I have no damn connection to.
Of course, all this seems to be handled by FEMA and we all know what a good job they do. :eyeroll: These days anything that has 'federal' in its name is a crapshoot. Oh, who am I kidding? Any government or governing acronym is iffy.
Anyway, I'm tired and I'm cranky. At least I don't have it as bad as a local friend of mine who, after being awakened by the same alert, shut her phone off and then ended up oversleeping, giving her 10 minutes to get her kids ready for school before the bus arrived.
Oh, and the reason for the Amber Alert was found safe with family members twenty minutes after the alert woke us up. I feel so much better about being awakened for that alert now. Not.
I have two weather apps on my phone. One is the NWS and I can designate what areas I want alerts from, and what kind of alerts. The other is from the local TV channel that I watch--mainly for the weather. It lets me set up locations too, so I have home and the Kids' house pinned. The radar is pretty accurate and I can expand or contract.
ReplyDeleteI think there's a way to turn off the Amber Alerts in the settings. And no, there is no way to set from where you want those alerts.
Sometimes, we need to be smarter than the smart phones and that's not always easy.
Glad the kiddo was found.
I hit Wallyworld this morning. It was mostly painless. Except they're still out of rosemary. Why!?!?!?!
Got a couple of chapters written this week. Yay. Favorite food tomorrow. Yay. Is it nap time yet?
Have a great weekend.