How to tell your neighbors to turn down the volume
When you live alone in an apartment, the first thing that comes to mind is noise trouble with your neighbors. There are various ways to deal with this, such as complaining directly to your neighbors or warning them through the management company, but software engineer Ibrahim Diallo teaches you 'How to tell your neighbors to turn down the volume' based on his past experience.
How I Taught My Neighbor to Keep the Volume Down
Diallo, who moved to a new apartment with his family in 2007, said that he decided to switch to the satellite broadcasting service Dish Network because his cable TV service was no longer available.
Diallo said Dish Network required the use of a set-top box and a digital video recorder, and because he had two TVs in his home, he received two set-top boxes and three remote controls: two infrared remotes and one radio frequency (RF) remote.
Diallo, who had previously used an infrared remote control, wrote that he was 'very surprised' that the RF remote worked even when he couldn't see the TV. However, he encountered another problem that he hadn't encountered with the previous infrared remote.
A few months after Diallo moved out, his loudest neighbor switched to Dish Network. He always left the TV on, sometimes leaving it at full volume when he left the house.
Diallo was watching TV in the living room when the channel suddenly changed. Thinking he'd pressed the wrong button, he used the remote to change the channel back, only to have the channel change again. Furthermore, the volume increased, so Diallo assumed his sister was using the RF remote to tease him. However, since the RF remote was in his possession, 'at first I thought it was some kind of malfunction,' Diallo wrote.
The channel continued to change automatically after that, so he removed the batteries, but it still changed automatically. After that, he disabled the RF remote control in the settings, and the channel change stopped.
One night, while his family was asleep and his neighbor was watching TV at full volume, Diallo was using his RF remote control. He pressed the power button and noticed that his neighbor's TV was turned off. After that, every time his neighbor turned on the TV, he pressed the power button and successfully turned it off. It was then that he realized that both his neighbor's and Diallo's RF remotes were operating on the same frequency.
Diallo didn't want to bother his neighbor any further, and planned to visit him in the morning and explain that the remote control was set to operate on the same frequency. However, when he visited his neighbor's house, he was turned away and told, 'What are you selling? I'm not buying it,' and he was unable to explain the remote control.
Later, while reading the manual, Diallo discovered that he could set the set-top box to a different radio frequency, but instead of changing the remote's radio frequency, he had his family use the infrared remote and used the RF remote himself to turn off his neighbor's TV when he found it too loud in his bedroom.
'I just kept turning off my neighbor's TV. I could hear his frustration and his attempts to solve the problem. I did it like a circus animal trainer, repeating the same thing over and over: if the volume went up to a certain point, I'd turn it off,' Diallo recalled. 'After a few weeks, this became a daily routine, even though there were some tough nights. I'd have to wrestle with my stubborn neighbor all night.'
Then one day, Diallo realized he hadn't touched the RF remote control. He opened the window and could faintly hear his neighbor's TV. After a long training period, it finally occurred to him that his neighbor had the volume turned up too loud.
Sometimes, when the neighbor had guests over, the TV would get too loud, so Diallo took out an RF remote control from his toolbox, turned off the neighbor's TV, and sent an unspoken message. Then, the neighbor and the guests remembered the unspoken rule and turned down the volume.
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in Note, Posted by logu_ii