Sunday, November 07, 2010

Time change blues

I'm starting off by stating my official position on this business of time change...
I hate it.
I have never, ever gotten it right. Not once, not ever and this fall change just added the newest painful twist to my time change blues.

Back in the dark ages clocks were just clocks and they all had faces and numbers and an hour hand, a minute hand and some of them even had second hands. They ran because you wind them up, reset the weights, maybe plugged them in or even possibly changed a battery. If you wanted to change the time, you simply turned the appropriate dial until you had moved the minute hand enough times around the clock face to make the change. That was then.

In a time jump I really didn't want to talk about, 12 or maybe it was 15 years ago I was forced to move forward when my trusty bedside clock of 40+ years finally kicked the bucket.

This new clock still had a wonderful face with real numbers and three hands to tell me the hour, minute and second. It had a simply great alarm. Honest, instead of the usual nasty bonging bell or screeching whistle this one has a wonderful sounding chime. It actually plays the Westminster chimes and just slowly gets louder and louder until you shut it off. It came with a neat nightlight, a radio I never did learn how to use and a snooze button.

The down side to this clock was you had to be able to deal with setting a digital clock if you wanted the alarm part to work. Some of the time I would manage to get the alarm part set on my first try. Most of the time it would take me several tries over the space of several days just to figure out how to set the alarm once again.

And so when I got up this morning I started the business of resetting the clocks. Well, actually I only reset the "real" clocks. The clocks with faces and hands and neat little turn wheels on their backs. Which brings me back to the clock with two times.

I managed to set the "real" clock without a hitch. Then I started the painful business of setting the blasted digital part. No dice. I fiddled with it. I got frustrated and left it for a time. Went back and tried again. No dice. What was worse was the fact that all of a sudden the light went out and none of the buttons worked at all. Mind you the proper part of this clock continued to keep time just fine. Only the digital part had stopped working.

This evening Jesse went around setting all the digital clocks and in his clock checking he was kind enough to set my bed side clock. After he finished he came in the office to tell me they were all set. How nice, I guess.

You see, I was on the computer searching for a replacement for the dead bedside clock. Now here he is telling me it works just fine.

"So what was wrong with it, or dare I even ask?"

"Oh nothing. It was just unplugged and I plugged it back in. Reset it and it's just fine."

I did the only thing left to me...I started slowly banging my head against the desktop. Time change should never, ever have to happen. Besides, none of the dogs will acknowledge a change of time and so will be off for at least a week.