Ain’t technology wonderful?

The other night (Friday, June 4 into Saturday morning, June 5, 2010) a thunderstorm rolled through about 1 A.M.
As is customary out here in the country, it zapped our electricity.
Long enough for our standby generator to kick on.
Our standby is powered by natural gas, and ticks off 20 seconds before kicking on.
It also zapped all our clocks; the ones powered by house current, our microwave and the stove.
It’s that 20-second delay.
“Uh-oh,” I said as I sat down to eat breakfast.
“Looks like our VCR is dead. It’s not telling time.”
I eat at the same table our TV and VCR are on — actually it’s a combination DVR/VCR and DVD player.
I get my time from this here computer, which gets its time from the Nist time-server.
Nist time is something the computer-guru at the mighty Mezz showed me how to set up long ago.
We put Nist time on my work computer at the Messenger, and I thereafter put it on my home computer.
I could use Apple’s time-server, but it seems about 20 seconds ahead of Nist time.
Our cellphones get satellite time, which I think is Nist time.
Our bedroom clock is getting satellite time.
It updates automatically.
So what I do is set my digital watch per this computer, and then reset everything else.
So much for battery-backup of all my VCR settings, as promised by the salesman.
Maybe it only dumped the clock, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
VCR on, I reset the clock first, then looked at my recording program.
Nothing was in there.
I had previously set up the VCR to record from 5:58 until 7 P.M. every weekday, also Saturday and Sunday.
The TV news; all we ever watch.
I had to do everything again.
Next was a channel-scan; just in case.
The VCR scans the cable input for TV channels.
I had reset everything before, except the channel-scan, and it didn’t record anything.
The VCR is machine number five.
There have been four previous VCRs.
The first two apparently had battery backup, so if the electricity tanked, settings weren’t lost.
This machine, and the two previous, lose everything with the slightest power failure.
PROGRESS, I’m told.

• RE: “Out here in the country......” —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.
• The “mighty Mezz” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired over four years ago. Best job I ever had. (“Canandaigua” [“cannon-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city east of where we live. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 15 miles away.)
• RE: “Apple’s time-server........” —My computer is an Apple Macintosh “MacBook Pro” laptop. Previous computers were also Apple Macintosh. All came with Apple’s time-server; and I changed all to Nist.
• Our “cable input” is Time Warner; also our Internet.
• I think “Nist” stands for National Institute of Standards.