There was a fire at Xobni HQ yesterday.  It wasn’t in our apartment; it was in the apartment below us.  Our friend and colleague Bryan Kennedy (from LikeBetter.com and MobMov.org) was working on his laptop at our kitchen table when he noticed that “something smells like burnt toast.”  We looked out the window and saw smoke billowing - yes billowing - from the apartment below us.  I ran downstairs and banged on the door.  No one answered.  I tried opening the door. It’s locked.  The smoke alarm was going off, but no one appeared to be home. I ran back upstairs to tell Adam, Bryan, and Julia that it was looking serious.  Julia called 911, Bryan pulled the fire alarm, and Adam started packing up our development computers and servers. Wow, now that is commitment to Xobni!

I grabbed a fire extinguisher, put on my shoes in preparation for kicking in the neighbor’s apartment door, and returned downstairs to bang on the door of the smoke-filled apartment.  This time someone answered, only to release a cloud of black smoke into the hallway.  “I fell asleep, you woke me up, and my beans are on fire.”  Our overworked neighbor, a student of Harvard Business School, had fallen asleep and was not woken by the smell of smoke or the ear piercing sound of the smoke detector!  We put out the fire and moved the charred and smoking amalgamation of beans, oil, and steel to the porch.  The Cambridge fire department arrived within minutes.  Good job guys.  They showed up with 3 tanker trucks, a paramedic, and 2 police units.  Woops, false alarm.