Back to Standard-Time

Last night at 2 a.m. (Sunday, November 4th, 2012): back to Standard-Time.
Fulfillment of the old “Fall-back” waazoo.
This was how my wife knew I’d had a traumatic brain-injury when I had my stroke.
I couldn’t reset my digital watch back to Standard-Time — my stroke was October 26th, 19 years ago.
Shortly after we got married we goofed the time-change.
My wife and I were doing bank-teller training, and showed up an hour late.
Marital-bliss, they surmised.
Some people don’t like Daylight-Savings. In eastern Indiana they don’t change.
Doing so would have it still dark at 7 a.m. and later.
“Tampering with God’s time,” they call it.
I object! “God’s time” is what your sundial reports.
The time-zones are compliments of the railroads. They were tired of different times in different cities, often only 10-20 minutes apart.
Scheduling trains through those cities was near impossible.
Noon on your sundial is probably not noon in your time-zone.
The time-change means the end of walking my dog about supper-time. It will be dark by then.
In order to avoid some possible hairballs, I reset various clocks.
First I synchronized my watch with this here ‘pyooter, which apparently gets its time from the atomic-clock in Boulder, CO via the Internet.
My wife’s computer did that too, but every time-change it would muck up the time. She always had to fiddle.
So now I wonder if my niece had the same problem. She inherited my wife’s computer.
Thus synchronized my watch would be the standard.
First I reset my clock-radio, so it wouldn’t be waking me an hour early.
Then I reset the clock in my DVD recorder, so I wouldn’t be auto-recording an hour early. (I record the news.)
I then reset the clocks in my cars, thereby avoiding what happened in the past, which was to not reset them until weeks later.
I can be precise with the CR-V, but not the Sienna.
All I can do with the Sienna is make its read-out agree with my watch.
The CR-V I can activate at the precise second.
The CR-V I can synchronize with the atomic-clock. The Sienna is only ballpark.
I have been pilloried for synchronizing all my clocks.
It’s true. Precise timing doesn’t matter that much.
But I can; so therefore I do.
It’s also a reflection of the madness I got with my wife’s mother, where all her clocks were different, and I was of-the-Devil for not knowing which way.
One was fast, and one was slow. Five different clocks all displaying different times. One was moderately fast, another was really fast, and yet another was slow.
And what a stupid idiot I was for not knowing what time it was — or more precisely, which was fast, and which was slow.
Another factor was timeliness at Regional Transit Service, where we went by the Mickey-Mouse on the wall.
That wall-clock might not agree with the atomic-clock, but it was our gold-standard.
Our watches had to agree with it, lest we get in trouble, or (gasp!) show up a few seconds late for work.
I then reset the clock on my programmable furnace thermostat, so it wouldn’t kick on my furnace an hour early, or set it back for the night an hour early.
This doesn’t make much difference in a superinsulated house. It might take all night for the inside temperature to drop back to 62 degrees.
Otherwise it’s set for 68. It triggers up at 5:30 a.m. I didn’t want it triggering up at 4:30; the bed becomes warmish.
I then reset the two electronic clocks in my kitchen, the stove and the microwave.
They aren’t that important, but I don’t want them fooling me in my midnight stupor when I let the dog out.
One clock was left, my bedside alarm, which resets itself per the satellite time-signal, the same time-signal cellphones go by.
I wouldn’t reset that; it would reset itself, I hoped.
When I changed the batteries in it about a month ago, it took a long time to get that time-signal. I had to keep moving it.
When I got up to let out the dog about 2:30, it had reset itself.

• “‘Pyooter” is computer.
• RE: “Inherited my wife’s computer.....” — My beloved wife of over 44 years died of cancer April 17th of this year. I miss her dearly. When she died, my niece in Rochester (NY) inherited her computer.
• The “CR-V” is my 2003 Honda CR-V SUV. The “Sienna” is my 2005 Toyota Sienna minivan.
• RE: “Regional Transit Service.....” —For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.