Two years ago, when my last cheap Timex watch gave up the
ghost (it just needed a new battery, but the cost of a new battery and
installing said battery exceeded the cost of a new watch), I went looking at my
favorite jewelry stand in Wal-Mart. I came to a stand of watches and, lo and behold, most of the watches had a new feature. The time was set by that magical, invisible satellite in the sky. I thought to myself, “I’ve gotta check this out. It sounds pretty high-tech and fool-proof.”
I found one that I liked and bought it for $30.00. I didn’t even try to haggle for a better
price. After the deal was completed, I looked around and found another display of radio watches for $20.00. But I stuck with my original purchase. I got it home, compared the time on the watch to my cell-phone. They were exactly the same time, but my watch was better. It even gave me the seconds where the cell-phone only told the hour and minutes.
But when it came for the next minute to roll around, they both changed at the exact same moment. I then noticed that the time on my COMCAST box was late changing over by about 20 seconds. Even the times showing on the TV programs were off according to my new $30.00 radio-controlled watch. How can this be? You would think that everyone would be connected to the same radio waves and that the time would be universal.
Now when it came time to change all your clocks to Daylight Savings Time, my COMCAST box changed okay, as did my two PC’s. But my watch stayed on the old time. When Monday rolled around the watch finally got the message. So, apparently there’s a human being working 9-5, Monday through Friday that actually has to tell a faceless computer to upload the correct time to the faceless satellite. You would think a freshman programming student should be able to add 3 lines of code to fix this problem. Maybe this problem doesn’t happen on the $50.00 watches.
All of this leads up to the problem I’m having today. It’s Saturday, the 1st day of the
Memorial Day week-end. I decided to go out and have breakfast at a full service restaurant since I’m a veteran and this is one of the holidays that we are celebrated. I was watching a lot of WW II movies on TMC before I left and I’ve never been able to set the time at all on this old TV set. All I have is a series of dashes. I’m away from home so I don’t
have COMCAST with the time staring at me.
Wheeling has a half-marathon race on this day every year. But according to my watch, we
should miss most of the participants since the race started at 8:00 am and my
watch told me it was 10:00.
I never glanced at the clock in my car, but as we were driving to the restaurant, I noticed a lot of runners still 4 miles from the FINISH line. I thought this was strange.
Then I look at the clock on the wall in the restaurant. I almost asked the waitress why their clock was an hour off. My watch read 10:30 when the clock on the wall read 9:30. I
checked my ever-present cell phone and it had 9:30. Every other watch I saw was an hour off from my watch.
So how did this happen? I can set the time zone, but it’s set for NYC time. Is there another time zone that would get me back on track? Or do I keep subtracting an hour from my watch’s reading until Tuesday rolls around and the mysterious person fixes the time on the satellite feed?
Oh, one other thing. This TV set I mentioned earlier that wouldn’t show any time. Well, tonight it shows May 28 which is the right date. But it shows 7:52 am while
my watch has 11:23 pm and the real time is 10:23 pm. And my TV menu still won’t let me adjust the time.
I GIVE UP!!!
Bill26003's Blog 