The Finch Formerly Known As Gold

29 October 2006

Time spent changing time

VCR: 0. (It's automatic.)
PCs: 0. (Ditto. Expect all these to fail next year when the DST schedule changes.)
Garage clock: 5 seconds.
Cell-phone clock: 6 seconds.
Living-room clock: 7 seconds.
Range-top clock: 8 seconds.
Alarm clock: 14 seconds.
Microwave-oven clock: 17 seconds.
Wrist watch: 26 seconds.
Automobile clock: 5 minutes, 45 seconds. (That's one seriously-stiff adjustment knob.)

Still unchanged: answering machine, fax machine.

Posted at 11:58 AM to General Disinterest


TiVo: 0.
PCs: 0.
Clock radio: 3.

Various battery-powered clocks: average 4 seconds each.

Cell-phone clock: 0, though it took the network a while to get around to the auto-reset

Wristwatch: still waiting -- the atomic clock seems to take longest of all.

Weblog: 2 seconds for the system default, another 2 seconds for my personal setting. Then I had to go through and uncheck the DST box for all my registered members.

Truck stereo clock: 3 seconds to make the change, ten minutes of trial and error to give up on the first try, another ten minutes to find the manual (including two searches of the glovebox).

When time comes to change the stereo in my wife's car, I'll probably take about 30 seconds of trial and error to stumble on the correct procedure. It's an Aiwa -- mine's a somewhat newer Sony.

Posted by: McGehee at 12:24 PM on 29 October 2006

T-Mobile's time signal around here is always about 80 seconds off for some reason, which is why I change the phone manually.

And there's a clock on my desk phone, but it's not settable at all: it waits for a call to come in and then swipes the time string from Caller ID.

Posted by: CGHill at 12:39 PM on 29 October 2006

So call home from your cell. That'll take care of the desk phone. :)

Posted by: unimpressed at 1:15 PM on 29 October 2006

As far as the PCs failing to automatically adjusting the time next year, MS will probably include that in one of their innumerable updates.

They'll probably get it wrong, though, requiring an additional update to correct the update.

Posted by: unimpressed at 1:19 PM on 29 October 2006

CGHill: And there's a clock on my desk phone, but it's not settable at all: it waits for a call to come in and then swipes the time string from Caller ID.

unimpressed: So call home from your cell. That'll take care of the desk phone. :)

My wife tried that a while ago, and for some reason it didn't work. She even answered the call before disconnecting, just in case. Which suggests AT&T, with whom, last I can recall, we have "local" landline phone service, hasn't reset their system clocks yet around here.

Posted by: McGehee at 4:22 PM on 29 October 2006

As for my watch, I finally gave up and set it manually -- and it's only off by about four seconds compared to my computer (which I didn't have handy at the time).

Posted by: McGehee at 4:43 PM on 29 October 2006

Still have not figured out how to set time of day and brew time on coffee pot. It apparently came on at 1:30 AM, brewed, and then shut itself off about 3:30 AM. Where the f%*#5^ did I put that manual that cryptically 'splains all this in 14 languages?

Posted by: Winston at 6:31 AM on 30 October 2006