East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Last weekend, after I had already moved most of the clocks forward, there was a fun thunderstorm and a (1.5 hour or so) power-outage in this neighbourhood. This made me sit down and think about how many clocks we have around the house:

• Kitchen [2]: Stove (mechanical, no battery), microwave (no battery).
• Diningroom [1]: Digital alarm-clock (no battery).
• Livingroom [2]: VCR (with battery).
• Master bedroom [2]: Alarm clock (no battery), DVD/radio alarm (with short-term battery).
• A‘s bedroom [1]: Alarm clock (no battery).
• N‘s bedroom [1]: Alarm clock (no battery).
• Bathroom [1]: Alarm clock (no battery).
• Home office [5]: Coffee machine (no battery), mini-microwave (no battery), a 3-in-1 set of clocks (with battery).
• Wrist watches [2]: Two for the boys, us adults have started to rely on our cellphones for this.
• Cell phones [2]: Right. These have the option to sync with the cell-tower but those towers don’t always sync very nicely themselves, there can be several minutes from one tower to another. As a result I typically turn that feature off in mine.
• PDAs [2]: These sync with the PCs, see below.

Observations:

• Modern technology comes with a lot of fun, but it’s also a pain to adjust 19-20 clocks for daylightsaving twice a year.
• One word: Power-outage (ok, maybe 2-ish words)
• The kids have the nerve to complain that not all clocks are showing the same time at the same time!

Of course all of the (Linux and OS X running) servers and workstations are set up to sync using NTP and of course automatically do The Right Thing ™ every spring and fall so I can always rely on them.

I’m looking forward to the day that all these clocks automatically sync with a time-server. It doesn’t have to be some atomic clock in Colorado, since that doesn’t scale very well if you take your clocks to another continent, but I suppose it’s cheaper to implement than putting 802.11-something in them.

What’s the damage in your house if the power goes out?