We had a power outage the other day.
That may not sound like a big deal, but whenever there is a power bump it seems like it takes days to reset all the clocks in the house. Even the one with battery backups.
Making maters worse, I like to have all the clocks reading the same time. And changing over within seconds of each other! I always feel a little weird when I'm in someone's house and it seems as if every room is in a different time zone. If you are going to have a clock, it should have the correct time - that is after all it's function.
I think my appreciation for correct time comes from working in radio, where one of my jobs was to connect to a national network news feed, on time, every hour. Nothing like a hard deadline, every hour, to make you aware of how on schedule you are!
To be fair, most clocks I have to reset keep good time, except when the power goes out. If it loses all time then, I'm ok with that. The ones that irk me are the ones with battery backup. Because it seems adding a battery is an afterthought, the clocks become wildly inaccurate when on battery power. I believe that they are regulated by the AC power for accuracy, but not regulated when on battery power. Those clocks seem to end up with roughly the right time, but nowhere near the correct time. And the longer they are off, the worse it becomes.
The trickiest part for me is trying to set them that the minute changes just as the second hand of my watch passes 12. So, setting each clock can take several minutes, mostly spent waiting for the second hand to reach 12.
There is something deeply satisfying in having the clocks change in unison.
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