![\"Alarm](\"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20181105-ClockControls.jpg\")
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Here in North America, this weekend was \u201cfall back\u201d time for the clocks. Everyone does the dance of joy because there\u2019s an opportunity for an extra hour\u2019s sleep\u2026 and then stays up extra late because they can sleep in. But what should<\/em> we do with that hour that we\u2019re borrowing from spring? Sleep? Work? Relax? <\/p>\n Do we even really have that hour to toy with?<\/p>\n In our house, we have at least twenty devices that keep track of time. Fortunately, half of them look after themselves (computers, laptops, tablet, phones), but that still leaves at least ten that need attention.<\/p>\n And most of them work differently.<\/p>\n Some of them are not intuitive.<\/p>\n And the memory (mine, not the devices\u2019) can\u2019t be guaranteed to recall how to do them because like doing taxes and having one\u2019s prostate checked, clocks only get put back once a year. (Although in the case of the prostate, participation is passive\u2014roll on side, draw knees up, think of the empire\u2026) So \u201cputting the clocks back\u201d becomes a time-stealer.<\/p>\n Take the microwave, for example. Ours has a \u201cTimer\/Clock\u201d button. Press it and the screen goes blank. Press it again and there\u2019s a colon in the middle, its blinking putting me in mind of a dog sitting in front of me, tail gently wagging, but unable to tell me what it\u2019s waiting for. What next\u2014find the manual? Look it up online? Either works, because who would\u2019ve guessed<\/em> that the colon was inviting me to enter a time?<\/p>\n One of our alarm clocks is of the \u201crelaxing sounds\u201d kind; it can wake you up with ocean waves or rainfall (designed, no doubt, to draw one\u2019s attention to one\u2019s full bladder) and has an array of sliders and buttons that would bewilder the average jumbo jet pilot. Because it looked so complex, I studied<\/em> the manual in detail<\/em> soon after we got the clock, and I remember that I have to slide the \u201cLock\u201d button to the \u201cTime\u201d position and then use the \u201crev\u201d and \u201cfwd\u201d buttons to set the time. Oh\u2026 and then I have to move the slider back to \u201cLock\u201d. Intuitive it\u2019s not, but for some reason it is memorable.<\/p>\n That\u2019s five or ten minutes spent on just two clocks, and that hour I\u2019m borrowing from spring is now down to fifty minutes.<\/p>\n Now we move onto my wrist watch. It\u2019s a Timex Indiglo (yeah\u2014I\u2019m a classy guy!) and it\u2019s \u201ca few years old\u201d now. The labelling for the four buttons is long-gone and I have no clue what each one does anymore. On top of that, the buttons themselves are like my muscles and joints\u2014stiff\u2014and I never know if I pressed a button hard enough or just pressed the wrong one. Good job I kept the user guide; if only I could remember where I keep it. This is going to be a fifteen-minute search and reset operation, for sure.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in the car, the clock\u2019s still set to daylight savings time. I only remember that fact when I\u2019m driving, and although it\u2019s not specifically mentioned in the appropriate legislation, I\u2019m pretty sure that setting your clock back one hour (or in the case of my car, forward eleven hours) would be considered distracted driving, so I\u2019m going to have take a special trip out to the garage to do the deed. Thing is, like most people, we keep all kinds of other stuff in the garage, and in order to make the most of the trip Itake some tin cans and cardboard boxes with me, put them in the recycle box\u2026 and forget I\u2019d gone out there to change the clock in the car. This happens two or three times before out of frustration I dedicate a garage trip to clock-changing only.<\/p>\n Now multiply that by two\u2014we have two cars with clocks\u2026 (You don\u2019t think I\u2019m smart enough to remember to change both cars\u2019 clocks in one trip, do you?)<\/p>\n But wait; we\u2019re not done yet. Our heating\u2019s coming on and going off an hour later than it should. Aaaaaghh! One button changes the time and<\/em> the heating schedule; let\u2019s hope it\u2019s clear which mode it\u2019s in!<\/p>\n There\u2019s still five more devices to go, and by now I\u2019ve used up nearly forty minutes of that borrowed hour. If you look upon it as \u201cinterest\u201d on the borrowed time, that kind of interest rate would make even a loan shark blush.<\/p>\n Fortunately, two of the remaining clocks are old-school, analogue devices. They might not keep perfect time, but they don\u2019t take forever to adjust. Plus, because they don\u2019t keep perfect time, we get more practice adjusting them.<\/p>\n Okay, so if you add all that adjusting time together, they probably take as much time out of our lives as the \u201cone button for twenty-three different functions\u201d devices. But unless you rely exclusively on so-called \u201csmart\u201d devices for your timekeeping, you\u2019re going to have to spend at least some time changing your clocks. And if your house is like ours, that time adds up.<\/p>\n The bad news is that when we spring forward, not only do we pay back that hour, we also have to go through the whole remembering and setting thing again. These once-per-year tasks are a \u201cuse it or lose it\u201d thing for the memory, especially when your life clock is reading somewhere around 8:45pm. Now there\u2019s a clock I wouldn\u2019t mind putting back, and probably more than one<\/em> hour.<\/p>\n So, I ask again\u2026What should<\/em> we do with that hour that we borrow from spring? Sleep? Work? Relax? Spend most of it changing our clocks?<\/p>\n I slept.<\/p>\n I wonder if Cher would offer a \u201cturn back time\u201d service each fall?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here in North America, this weekend was \u201cfall back\u201d time for the clocks. Everyone does the dance of joy because there\u2019s an opportunity for an extra hour\u2019s sleep\u2026 and then stays up extra late because they can sleep in. But what should we do with that hour that we\u2019re borrowing from spring? Sleep? Work? Relax? Do we even really have… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[488],"tags":[629,628],"class_list":["post-1392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bbs","tag-clocks","tag-fall-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1392"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1409,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions\/1409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}