My clock says 8:50 and my computer says 7:55. D’ya think?
I don’t think the DST change can account for the five minutes. 😉
I really don’t mind it at all. Up here in the northern latitudes, with greatly diminished daylight, it gets to where, by winter solstice, you feel as if you’re living in a narrow band of light between a whole lot of dark. Sunset by 4:30…but getting me up so I can actually see the sun rise rather than sleeping through the morning light is a good thing. It makes sure I get up with the sun.
But ‘fall back’ [setting the clock back] is more yawn-producing than ‘spring forward’ when you get the sleep back. In the days when I taught school, that was always a lovely morning, the forward bit.
The difficult sell is convincing the cats that food comes on a different schedule. When they travel with us, they adapt to Central time real easily, and fuss at us when we get home.
Not as bad as Linux gets when you set the clock back! 😉 So first thing I did on the three boxen here on the desktop was go into the BIOS immediately and change the clock there for each.
I suspect the inducement of yawns is psychological: it’s in fall we get an extra hour of sleep, not in spring—the clock took two hour to get from 1AM to 2AM last night.
My two cats were in cahoots just now, faking a spat to convince me they needed to be fed ~right now~. Never mind that they have plenty of dry food, except on the rarest occasions I don’t top it off every day or two. I didn’t clue in they were tag-teaming me until I’d fussed at the two for arguing. Heh. Gotta admire the sneaky little so-and-so’s for being able to fake me out, though. — They were quite happy that supper was “finally” served. (I’m about to eat supper too.) They (and I) will have to adjust a little over the next few days. But the extra time to sleep was most welcome.
——
I haven’t reset my watches yet, but will tomorrow morning.
Now, I can understand how watches can speed up or slow down, even digital watches, which I presume are independent of moving parts.
But I admit to being puzzled how clocks in fixed positions can gain or lose time beyond the 30 seconds or so in setting them.
I will, however, claim it’s due to the slight variations in their timekeeping mechanisms, which might vary over time. Rather than, say, the more exotic and unsettling possiblity of localized micro-dimensional pockets of temporal whatsits.
But I suppose there’s nothing to say such a thing can’t happen, and more the possibility that it could, like foam in the bubble bath of the universe…. (Hmm, cosmic bubble bath? Hope the kid doesn’t overflow the tub, eh…?)
A little pocket of slow time? Then we get Rip Van Wynkel, high-tech style?
A little pocket of fast time? Then, hmm, that could explain how time seems to “fly” when you’re busy or having fun.
I’m with Janeway on it. Temporal mechanics would give me a headache.
I’m not sure I’d know how to tell my younger self what he’d need to hear to convince him to do differently, if I could somehow step back in time. I suspect the persuasion, and the actual changes, would be more difficult than I’d guess. — But since I haven’t run into myself yet, I suppose it’s not so likely.
Supper time! Then a little reading, curled up with the cats. — Finally, some actual cool weather here!
AC electric clocks are very accurate because the power companies accurately alternate their power 50 or 60 times a second. Most eletronic clocks use a crystal to tell time, usually as cheap of one as they can find. But computers and cell phones “call in” to correct their clocks regularly. A day is 1440 minutes long, so half a minute, 0.035% error, isn’t too bad. Unless a mechanical clock uses a pendulum, it’s usually not too accurate and varies with temperature and movement.
Consider the time before clocks: you can only vaguely approximate a few times: daybreak, sunrise, about noon, sunset, or nightfall. And weather fuzzes things up, especially in the morning, so many religous holidays starting at sundown, the one somewhat precise time.
For a nice Connections-like discussion, see How We Got to Now: Time
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365347263/
The whole series is good and dissappears in about ten days.
A Pendulum clock will go off if the disk on the pendulum is not in the right spot on its rod. My grandfather clock needs some tinkering with the changes of the season as the temperature change means that the metal expands or contracts just that critical little bit. Clocks with old fashioned springs are equally sensitive to temperature fluctuations.
In cases (no pun intended) 😉 it is intended to be an accurate pendulum clock, the shaft of the pendulum will be made of a sandwich of dissimilar metals with different coefficients of expansion. 🙂
Yes, the weight has to be adjusted to keep the pendulum the right ‘length’. It does depend on the clock, though: some have different designs that are less in need of adjustment.
I have a one-day cuckoo clock that so far, I haven’t been able to get the pendulum weight just right…..when I do, I plan to leave that room open and drive the cats crazy with the cuckoo…..
And then there’s battery powered clocks, like the two I have in the front part of the apartment (one of them has a black cat on it with its tail as a pendulum http://www.pinterest.com/pin/38773246762097940/ ). They are both powered by a AA battery. Then I’ve got a chiming clock that’s powered by a D battery. In the spring, I just set it up an hour, no problem, but I have to set it ahead 23 hours when we fall back or the chime gets confused. (it has a setting where it doesn’t chime between 10 pm and 7 am, which my upstairs neighbors appreciate.)
Speaking about time – isn’t it about time to update the front page of Cherryh.com – the last time was in 2012.
PRobably. I have to dust off my copy of Namo and figure out the FTP again or I’ll blow us all up.
Well, that’s something you don’t see everyday: “Utah police justified in shooting dead man carrying sword – official report”
and now there’ll be a call to ban swords, just like in Australia….never mind that as a martial artist, I have need for a sword for certain aspects of the art…..well, we’ll just have to see…
No problem banning deadmen carrying swords around for me! 😉
It’s gotten silly. Several years back at Halloween, DH and I along with friends (the same ones we take out to dinner annually on Halloween — this is one of the reasons why) went to an enormous block party. We were all dressed up as our D&D characters. The police were patrolling for people behaving stupidly, and wanted to confiscate DH’s hand and a half sword, locked into the back scabbard with a padlock and peace cords. They ignored the 2 of us carrying quarterstaffs, and incidentally any number of drunken people (DH doesn’t drink). At least they let us put the sword back in the car, rather than taking it outright.
Run for your lives! It’s the zombie apocalypse!!!
At last we can break out our shovel and cricket bat!
Anyone who tries to prank our gaming group has probably bitten off more than they can chew. Most of us are SCA or have martial arts training, and there is a basket of bokken and other practice swords by the front door for people who want to go outside and spar. The zombie incursion won’t be televised, but they will be nursing a lot of damage.
May I suggest: “Utah police justified in shooting dead, man carrying sword – official report”?
So, the police can shoot zombies any time they want in Utah, and an official reported a man carrying a sword?
Gotta love ambiguous headlines…
Didn’t one of the Congresscritters, or someone of that ilk, mention something about the ZA? I don’t follow them that well. I’m just glad I won’t be getting up off the couch to answer/hangup on robo-phonecalls all evening. That’s more than enough zombie busyness for me! 🙁