Changing The Clocks And Watches

As I said yesterday way more briefly than I intended to (I meant to go back and add a lot more Saturday evening) I love Daylight Saving Time.  It was nice yesterday to still have it being daylight a 7 PM.  The Mews can't tell anything happened; they like on suntime, not clocktime.

But the first day is always annoying with all the clock adjustments.  I'm kind of clock-obsessed.  I wear a wristwatch.  Every room has at least one wall clock.  The kitchen has 2 wall clocks, an oven clock, a M/W clock, and the basement has 2 wall clocks.  And the car has a clock.  In fact, I discovered that even my thermostat has a clock!

Fortunately, a few years ago, I bought a bunch of radio-signal controlled wall clocks.  Those automatically adjust daily as well as for DST.  A couple others have buttons to change for DST/EST.  The clocks on the oven, M/W, and car are easy enough to change (just press an "hour" button).

The hard part is the wristwatch.  It does too many things to make the DST change easy.  Time of course, but alarms, hourly chimes, stopwatch (upcount), timer (downcount), time-zone change adjustment, and something called "split-time", etc!

And it has 4 buttons to control various features in different sequences.  Utterly maddening.  And the pamphlet print is tiny, so I have to wear my headband magnifier to read it.  

I actually had less trouble this year.  I'm good with instructions, but these instructions are foreign-written, so of course some of the sentences aren't very well-written.  There is no automatic DST sequence, so I have to change the time as a "correction".  

It took several tries to manage that (even though it seemed to me I ta the exact same thing the first couple of times.  But I got it moved 1 hour ahead.  😀

And with that success, I decided to try a few other corrections.  It beeps at me for a full minute at midnight as some kind of alarm setting.  I think the watch came with that setting.  I learned a few weeks ago that pressing the D button shuts it off for that day, but it does it again the next.  So, I tried the instructions for shutting the feature off entirely.  I'll find out if that worked later tonight.

But now it goes "beep-beep" on each hour.  Not horribly annoying, but I would like to shut that off too.  I'll have to pull out the instruction pamphlet again later today.

When my previous replacement watch died after about 10 years, I tried to replace it with another that was equally simple.  No matter how cheap a watch I looked at, they all come filled with features and buttons I din't want to deal with.  I only want 2 things from a watch.  First that it keep accurate time.  Second that I can read it in sunlight.  OK, one additional simple DST/non-DST button would be nice too.

I bought my current watch because it didn't mention all those timer/alarm features, but it had them anyway.  😖

I sure miss the digital Phasar wristwatch my Dad bought me when I was about 16.  It kept perfect time, only told me the time/day/date, and had a great clear display.  It lasted 40 years!  OK, it needed a new battery every 3 or 4 years and a jeweler had to replace a chip twice.  But sadly there came a day when he couldn't find the chip anymore.  😢

So I've been suffering with these stupid over-complicated watches ever since!

Well, at least it will be 8 months before I have to go through this AGAIN...

Daylight Saving Time

 I have battery-powered clocks all around the house.  No matter how carefully I set them, none ever quite agreed. Maddening.  And the change from Standard to Daylight Saving time was maddening. 

So I bought some clocks with radio signals built in.  They were cheap, so I wasn't expecting much.  But they worked great!  Every one automatically changed.  

Seriously, even the send hands all match up!  A true joy.

A link if you are interested...  I don't get anything from it.

Still had to do the wristwatch, car, oven, microwave, and fancy old one, but half is better than all...  ;)

Daylight Saving Time

Saturday night as I went to bed, I moved the bedroom clock up an hour.  That makes it easier to adjust to Daylight Saving Time.  It's easier to think of going to bed late than to suddenly lose an hour the next day.  There is sometimes benefits to playing tricks with one's own mind, LOL!

In the morning Sunday, I just got up and dealt with the time.  Since I don't keep regular hours going to bed or getting up, it isn't hard.  In fact, I got up at a generally "regular" time,  so neither mind nor body objected.

The annoying part is all the other clocks in the morning.  I have an unusual number of them.  There are 4 in the kitchen alone; the oven, the M/W  and 2 analog wall clocks on opposite walls. 

There are 5 in the TV room.  One a radio signal one that tells time, month/day/date, year, inside temperature, outside temperature, and inside humidity.  It a fun item, but mostly it is always accurate with the radio signal update and serves as the basis for setting all the other clocks.    Aside from that one there is the cordless phone, the cable box one, the VCR one, and an analog wall clock.  I don't bother with the VCR one, I put electric tape over the display a decade ago.  I know HOW to change it, I just don't need it.  I'd do the same with the cable box, but it also shows the channel sometimes.

The Living room has only one digital clock, but it is a very useful one.  It shows the day of the week in LARGE LETTERS; something very useful if you are retired and so don't have the kind of schedule that forces you to normally keep track of that.  And it is the first room I walk into in the morning, so that's the best place for it.  Don't laugh TOO hard, but sometimes after I get up and am dressed and about the house, I notice it is "Thursday" when I thought it was "Wednesday".  Its not like it may sound;  mostly I just need to know "weekday" from "weekend" (because I never do shopping on weekends).   Too crowded...

The Bedroom has 3 clocks.  The old digital clock/radio/alarm that I only use as "clock" these days.  The radio part was always awful, the alarm annoying to set.  So I just use a kitchen timer as an alarm clock.  Whenever I go to bed, I just set the timer to 9 hours (so easy).  If I wake up before it goes off and feel rested, I get up.  If it goes off and I don't feel rested, I just set it for another hour.  As I said, my hours are very flexible.

The 2nd Bedroom "clock" is only an analog day clock.  All it does is show the day of the week.  The face is divided into days and that is ALL it tells you.  If you looked at it carefully, you could judge early morning, late morning, etc.  But if you need that level of help, you probably NEED some other kinds of help, LOL!  I only have it because I hadn't found that Living room digital one at the time.

The 3rd Bedroom clock is equally not mainly for telling time but it does have a clock on it.  It is really a digital indoor/outdoor thermometer that tells me the minimum and maximum temperatures and the click of a button.  It's for gardening information but of course they just HAD to but a time display on it.  I will say, that since it is in the Bedroom and battery powered, it the electricity fails (so the clock radio blinks at me, it is easier to tell the time than finding my eyeglasses to read my wristwatch to tell what time it is. 

The Computer room has 3 clocks in it.  Two are on the computers.  One computer is online, so it automatically updated.  The other computer is standalone (for games but also security; I keep my passwords and asset trends on a spreadsheet there.  The clock there doesn't actually matter, but it can being confusing if I want to make sure I stop playing a game by a certain planned bedtime.  And I'll be darned, THAT'S the one I forgot to change today (doing it now).  The 3rd is a digital wall clock.  Well, just because I don't always wake up the computer when I walk into the room...

The Basement has 2 analog clocks.  One is a cool/unusual.  It is a woodworking equipment company brand one.  I was buying something and one of those exhibition shows and knew they were selling the item at a discount.  But I was negotiating.  I was asking for more than the demonstrator was willing to give and noticed he had a 12" analog clock showing the company (which I liked).  So I said "Throw in the clock and you have a deal".  He looked back at the clock and said "You have to be kidding".  But I now have the bench planer and the clock (which has kept perfect time for 20 years, is easy to read [large black hands on a yellow face], and gets comments.  The other clock is a standard cheap analog type for where I can't see the large.  I actually need clocks in the basement.  Otherwise, I stay down there too late...

The Cat room has no clocks in it.  Well, there IS one, but I keep the battery out.  It ticks loudly.  Same for a pendulum wall clock in the Computer room, BTW.  I sleep lightly

That leaves 2 clocks.  One is my wristwatch.  I hate my wristwatch.  I can set it, but it takes work and experimentation.  The buttons aren't labeled, not are they intuitive.  And with buttons sticking out of it, I am constantly accidentally changing it to 24 hour time or timer or alarm.  And it has a black display over a grey background.  But other ones were more complicated or gaudy.

My previous wristwatch was a Sears Phasar with an easily readable black display on a white background.  My Dad gave it to me when I left for college in 1968.  It kept perfect time.  The replacement battery was inexpensive.  The settings buttons were recessed (which meant that you needed a paperclip on old pen to depress them, but you couldn't change things by accident. 

The last clock is in the car.  Easy to change.  Dedicated hour and minute buttons, so today it was just one push and I was done. 

The Fall changeback takes longer.  Digital clocks beed to be advanced forward 23 hours, not 1 forward.  Many analog clocks get messed up being turned backwards, so you have to manually turn a slow button on the back 23 hours. 

But I love Daylight Saving Time.  Same TV schedule, but an hour later of light.  And since I never get up at dawn, I personally DO get an extra hour of light each day.  I spent my extra hour today deciding where to transplant some specimen tree saplings to in the area I chopped out the brambles in the far back yard, snipping out old growth on perennials, and cutting out some small briars and brambles from around flowerbeds preparing for new growth.