I wrote the following about a year ago. Thought it could do with a wider audience:
Have I got an unusual house? We have 25 clocks to alter and several more that do it all by themselves. First, the heating. Important and easy but many more need a handbook (with a good index) and/or a torch plus a degree of patience. My cheap but complex digital watch requires a button push combination that is only done twice a year, so how an earth am I expected to remember the details? Two long-case clocks are simplicity itself in March, but in October have to be stopped for an hour and if you leave it longer it takes ages to manually wind through the strike as you go past the hour. Why does the telephone “calls” button have to be pressed twice in succession as part of its time/date process? (BT will automatically update the time if I pay them money. Perhaps I am a control freak). Thankfully my wife and I have identical mobiles so once one is mastered the second one is easy. I have set the menus to “update automatically” but they never do. The towel rail is electric and the timer (in the bedroom) needs careful adjustment so that my wife gets a warm towel and I don’t get woken by the click when it comes on. The bedside clock-radio ought to be easy but because it sits in a dark corner and is connected to loudspeaker and aerial cables the black raised lettering on the black plastic background has to be read upside down. A torch is useful here. To set the time on one car involves switching on its radio and rotating the tuning knob. The other car is simpler but wants to show me the date as well as the time. I know what the date is – just go away. Oh, the kitchen. The microwave oven has a clock that is easy to see when preparing food so it has to be set correctly and it is simple to do. However its mate, the oven, has a time setting button push combination that is the most unintuitive imaginable and is important to do correctly as I don’t want the oven to switch itself on at 3am. And it has to be synchronised with the microwave so it doesn’t matter which one you look at when switching on the radio to catch the weather forecast. Then there are three small hi-fi’s – in the lounge, office and workshop. One needs switching on and buttons pushing (for greater than 3 seconds) on its front panel. Another is adjusted when it is off, using its remote control. The third has to be switched on before the remote will do its job. It is easy to forget to do the cameras but important as holiday photos with an incorrect time setting will confuse you utterly when you look through them in a year’s time. Lots of other analogue clocks to make up the 25. A friend says that his satnav is an irritation to set. Only had one for a few months and never considered its clock. Just switched it on and (bless!) it did it all by itself.
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It's going to take you a lot of time to do all that...:-) Seconds out...:-)
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Blimey, Aretas, did anybody get beyond the third line? Too dense for me, I'm afraid.
But I was thinking about this matter earlier, when it occurred to me that there was a time - probably at a peak about ten years ago - when this was a major faff, device timers being the main culprits.
Now, I have to redo the clock on the microwave, and to press the Summer button on the bedside clock-radio, but that's it; the heating, the computers and all the entertainment devices correct themselves, as does one of my watches. That leaves my one hand-wound watch, the long-case clock and the digital clock in the Volvo. The LEC has a fussy analogue clock but it too knows when summer has arrived. If only someone would tell the weather.
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When we stay in my energetic and successful (but apparently deaf) sister-in-law's flat in London during one of her frequent absences, we are always rudely awakened well before my time if not herself's by the BBC dawn news coming on the SiL's trick alarm clock/wireless thingy at TOP GODDAM VOLUME and usually in mid-sentence. Gets us every time. We have to unplug the damn thing to shut it up.
As for the clocks, I am hoping that the mobile and computer will reset themselves. If they don't I'll soon be able to work out that something is wrong from all the dirty looks, diplomatic incidents, absent rendezvous partners and so on. There are no flies on me. The car's clock won't reset itself but I think I can remember how to reset it.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Wed 27 Mar 13 at 18:46
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I'd never counted but between alarm clocks, antique timepieces, electronic devices, heating system, cars etc I can think of around 30 to change/check.... but it seems to get done in a mad 20 mins.
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Came home from a tipsy night out once and SWMBO decided she'd help out by doing a few.
Took days to find those that hadn't, those that had and those that had been done twice.
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Central bleating
Oven
Both our watches
Lounge carriage clock
2 cheapo bedside clocks
I think she does her car clock, I don't bother with mine...I never look at it.
There's a clock on the bike as well but I never look at that either.
Possibly have to do my phone...didn't have it last March....easy peasy though.
Ted
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All the above, plus:
Cameras
TomTom sat-nav (for some obsure reason doesn't automatically change, all previous ones have)
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My TT updates the time once it gets a sat lock. I thought that ,as the whole system works on atomic clocks and timing to get positions, that the clock did this anywhere in the world
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Many years ago a work colleague had a spring-powered watch which he never used to put right ~ neither to compensate for its natural inaccuracy nor for when the "clocks changed". He just used to check it against the six o'clock "pips" on the wireless every morning and then made mental corrections throughout the day. As he used to say, there was no point in making any physical adjustments when all he needed to do was to excercise his brain
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Why not leave the clocks as they are this year, it'll be, um, winter again soon anyway.
:}
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Do those of you who reset your cameras adjust them when you travel as well? We quite often have photos taken the same day in different time zones, so it makes cataloguing easier to leave them all permanently set to UTC.
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Why bother changing the date and time on a camera - unless you want the 'crime scene' date and time stamp on them?
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Yes, cheers Dog, only 85 days and the nights start drawing in.
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Fraid so Cc, April in 3 days time, get May over with, and then best think about ordering some coal for the Winter.
^_^
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I think Spike Milligan had the right idea.
Make a note of the time on a piece of paper and carry it round with you.
0)
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>> I think Spike Milligan had the right idea. Make a note of the time on a piece of paper and carry it round with you.>>
It'll be right twice a day....:-)
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Do you think it would be possible to turn the global temperature up a bit?
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>> Do you think it would be possible to turn the global temperature up a bit?
>>
Sorry that message conflicts with Global Warming and the "mild winters" forecast by the Met Office.
You are shortly going to receive a visit and your email account and internet connection deleted.
Last edited by: madf on Thu 28 Mar 13 at 10:39
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I noticed yesterday that the three clocks in our bedroom (2 alarm clocks, 1 wall clock) all show different times across a range of 20 minutes. Might be an opportunity to correct this as well :-)
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I was only thinking that those with the tyre fetishes should be planning on when to get that winter rubber back on. Soon be Autumn and it can get chilly in September of an evening...
:-))
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There are only 4 timepieces I bother to change in spring and autumn in this household:
1. My wristwatch
2. The central heating timer.
3. The car.
4. The metamec electric wall clock.
All others are either automatic changers (DAB clock radio, mobile, computer) or not worth bothering with (microwave, which I leave on 00:00)
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Changing the clocks this weekend - Stuartli
