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flemmings ([personal profile] flemmings) wrote2019-06-22 10:30 pm

Surfacing

Horrible week of four before 7 a.m. wakings and an inspection by the Protocol Police leads to apocalypsosis. Am decompressing now, and may even feel human tomorrow, but summer has begun and humanity is dependent on humidexes and suchlike.

Managed to knock my little travel clock off the table once too often, and now the hands are forever still. But ahah! I have another one sitting in a drawer because I never throw things away. Put battery in and- the hands don't move. And the time adjustment wheel is broken as well. You'd think I might throw out a broken clock. But ahah! I have a *third* one sitting in a drawer because I never etc etc. Put battery in and the second hand begins its journey around the clock face. Silently, alas. I miss the steady ticking of my old friend. Check on it some time later. It's several hours slow, though the second hand still revolves. Put in a new battery and hope for the best. So far it seems to be keeping time.

The hardware store doesn't sell battery operated clocks anymore because people evidently use their phones to check the time in the middle of the night. But my phone is recharging on a table six feet away, and anyway the last thing I need in the middle of the night (or the early hours of the morning, more like) is the blinding brightness of a phone screen, which guarantees that, 5 a.m. or not, I am awake and won't go back to sleep.

On a happier note, the parents of one of our kids had their second child recently. On inquiring of Papa, was told it's a boy and they've called him Alan. "After Alan Turing." How charmingly geeky, I think. And only much, much later suddenly realize why their first child is called Ada.

[identity profile] heliopausa.livejournal.com 2019-06-24 10:48 am (UTC)(link)
O tempora! o mores! Or if not the mores, the times, anyway, when we are being expected to be so phone-linked that things like battery-operated clocks are drifting out of easy availability. Similarly, from my life, I have realised why it is that I'm having trouble finding a decent up-to-date bus map - because of course who now would want to look at a paper map to see where a bus will go? :(

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2019-06-24 12:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Mind, they'll sell you plug-in clocks happily. But this is summer in my corner of the world, where momentary blackouts are commonplace (one yesterday, one today- barely a minute each time but still one must reset all plug in digital clocks.)

Phones and their damnable tiny screens have been the death of many a poor boy uhh useful thing, like Wordtanks. 'We all use an app for that!' But the app is never as good. As for following a bus route on one- a world of nope. I want to see the whole, not the part.