Order-out-of-chaos

Yesterday (Sunday, November 7, 2010) was the change back to Standard Time.
Both our computers get the NIST time-server (National Institute of Standards).
Doing this was shown to me years ago by the tech-maven at the Canandaigua Daily Messenger newspaper, from where I retired.
We synched my computer there to the NIST time-server, so I figured I could do the same with my computer here at home.
At that time I was driving Apple’s OS-8.1 operating-system. (I use an Apple Macintosh).
“Select time-server.”
Type in ”time-b.nist.gov.”
From then on my computer is getting the exact time as delivered over the Internet from NIST, the same time that’s on the atomic-clock in Boulder, CO.
That’s also the same time your cellphone gets via the satellite.
Satellite-time is also atomic-clock time.
Okay, reset all my clocks to the time on my computer.
Order-out-of-chaos.
Chaos being my 94-year-old mother-in-law’s time.
“That clock is five minutes fast, and that other clock is 15 minutes slow.”
Without knowing what is what, you don’t know what time it is in her presence.
Unless I consult my watch, which is computer (atomic-clock) time.
My loud-mouthed brother-in-Boston, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, says I’m being silly.
That synchronizing all my clocks to the atomic-clock is ridiculous.
But I can.
And doing so negates that madness at my wife’s mother.
Suppose I have to catch a plane from there.
I use my watch.
Use one of her clocks, and I might miss the plane.
My fault of course!
I was supposed to know that clock was slow.
A clock I might see once a year.
She knows it’s slow.
The fact I don’t means I’m uncaring, reprehensible and stupid.
We also set up my wife’s computer to get NIST time.
I drive an Apple Macintosh computer.
My wife drives a Dell Windoze PC.
Both our machines are portable battery laptops. We both can get wireless Internet in a hot-spot.
I fire up this ‘pyooter, and indeed the time has changed back.
It’s telling me the correct time; the time as delivered by NIST, which also set back.
“Aw man.....” I hear from the other room. “This thing is wrong again. It’s an hour off.”
Not the first time.
Every time-change my wife has to fiddle her PC to tell the correct time.
We think it’s local to her machine.
That her Windows-7 is doing something on-its-own.
I.e. NIST will change, and then her Windows 7 dickers that.
There is a Windows setting to not have the operating-system factor for Daylight-Savings; we’ve diddled that.
But every time-change I hear “Aw man.....” from the other room.
Yet my dreaded and of-the-Devil Tinker-Toy is telling me the correct time; without any fiddling.

• “Our/we” is me and my wife of almost 43 years, “Linda.”
• My mother-in-law lives in De Land, FL.
• “Windoze” is Microsoft Windows. The scuttlebutt among Apple-geeks is that Microsoft is inferior. My siblings all use Microsoft Windows computers, but since I use an Apple Macintosh, I’m stupid and of-the-Devil.
• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• RE: “Dreaded and of-the-Devil Tinker-Toy......” — Since I use an Apple Macintosh, I’m ”dreaded.” My blowhard brother-in-Boston has noisily declared that Macintosh computers are “Tinker-Toys.”