- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
Ticked Off At Modern Technology
I caught the end of an episode of Antiques Roadshow on PBS not long ago. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it highlights unusual treasures that people bring to the show for free appraisals. The hour-long show usually culminates with some extra special treasure often worth tens of thousands of dollars.
This episode was true to form. The closing item was a watch that had been owned by the person's grandfather. It was a luxurious, feature-packed timepiece made by the Patek Phillipe company around 1914. The watch not only displayed the time, but the day, date, month and moon-phase as well. It even adjusted for leap year and was a stopwatch.
It was an amazing timepiece and it had an equally amazing value being appraised at a quarter of a million dollars.
I was thinking about this remarkable piece of machinery while recently setting the time on my Sony VCR. It was a nice VCR when we bought it several years ago.
But it can't keep time.
This baffles me.
Modern electronic equipment tells time by ticks where a tick is equivalent to 1 second. Or it is on most electronic equipment.
Apparently on our Sony VCR, a tick is equivalent to about .999976 of a second. That would be close enough for most things to be considered perfect. However, we are talking about a clock and timer and in the course of a month it will lose about a minute. That's not a good thing if you are trying to record a program.
Of course, I shouldn't have to worry about the accuracy of the ticks on our VCR since there are two options for setting the time -- manual and automatic. Theoretically, automatic pulls the correct time and date from the cable TV provider.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work on our VCR either.
I guess it would be one thing if this VCR were one of those off-off-brands like the ones you see for sale in grocery stores right before Christmas or at flea markets any time of the year and if the box it came in spelled Sony with two Ns rather than one.
If that had been the case, I could understand the timing mechanism not being perfect.
But it didn't. It came from a very reputable local big-box store and the box clearly spelled out Sony with one N.
This VCR is certainly making me consider replacing it with a DVR, one that hopefully comes with a timing mechanism crafted by Patek Phillipe.
For any trivia buffs, this is The Irony Of It All blog's second anniversary and the 299th episode.
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