Spring Forward

Clocks that automatically set themselves forward: cellphone, computers (looks like, every one of them including the Sun Linux boxes), living room (atomic), GPS (also atomic). Probably several others I won’t notice.

Clocks that I didn’t set themselves: Bedroom alarm, car (I used to have a dashboard clock and a car radio clock, which didn’t keep in sync – I’m sure you can imagine how that annoyed me; the Pinz has no clock). The Swiss Army Land Rover watch that hangs from my bag has a dead battery. I stopped wearing a wristwatch years ago and rarely miss it. The clock on the stove that never keeps time properly anyway. Probably several others I won’t notice, for a while.

One reason I prefer Spring Forward to Fall Back: ~10 fewer keystrokes. Or 22. Or a somewhat shorter period of holding the button down and waiting, hoping to set it properly without having to roll all the way around again.

But at least no manual twisting, so far.

By the way, I’m not one of those people who sets clocks ahead so they get places on time; I tried that for a while but decided it was better to know and use the actual time properly and aim for getting places a little early. But for those people, should these automatic clocks have an option of “15 minutes ahead of standard time”? I’d think it would work better if it had them set themselves a random amount of time – say 5 to 30 minutes – ahead of standard so you could never be sure how early you were and you’d have to stay on your toes.

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