Is your clock on time?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

This occurred to me while reading a recent Pit thread. Does your clock show the correct time? If not, why not? By how much is it off? Are you chronically late or early, or always on time?

I have my cell phone, my microwave, laptop and my car clocks on the correct time. However, my bedroom alarm clock is set 8 minutes ahead. I’ve done this for years, since I was a teenager. I have absolutely **no idea ** why I do this, yet every time the power flicks out, or I unplug the clock and have to set it again, I always put it 8 minutes off. Yes, I factor this into my wake-up time, so if I have to get up at 7.15, I set it for 7.23.
I know this is odd, but I can’t be alone in this…

Likely this thread has been done before, but I am having no luck with the search.

#2

Ours are. I work at a radio station. My watch is set to the master clock, and at home all the clocks are set to my watch.

#3

The only one that’s right is the one on the cable box. I believe that one is set to a satellite or something. Everything else is a crap shoot. I start work on the latest one and quit on the earliest one. It just seems right.

#4

In our house, every clock is set to a different time. My husband keeps his alarm clock next to the bed set about 7 minutes fast. My own alarm clock is 5 minutes fast. The clock on the VCR is 11 minutes behind. The microwave clock is a few minutes fast. The clock in my car is 10 minutes fast. The clock in my husband’s work truck is 4 minutes fast. The one in his personal car is 5 minutes fast.

Whew! ::wipes moisture from brow::

When he asks me what time it is, I usually reply, “In which time zone of our house?”

#5

To within a few minutes everything is on time. Even the microwave. I have no idea how that happened. I certainly didn’t programme it!

#6

My watch is set to within a second of The Weather Channel’s time and then I adjust all the others, house, car, work, to it.

#7

Ours are all correct, except the one in the bedroom. That one is five minutes fast.
I don’t really know why; I’m not really fooling anyone, but I keep it five minutes fast.

#8

All the clocks in my house are set to the correct time (I think). Except for my bedroom alarm clock, that one is 20 minutes fast. (I lika da snooze) :wink: My car on the other hand I have no idea. All bank clocks in my town are different. Don’t ask me why. So, if I set it to one, it’s wrong when I drive by the next bank. :rolleyes: At work, I don’t know who is in charge of those, but they’re all different. The plants time clock is 10 minutes faster than maintenances clock. The computer clock is somewhere in between those two.

#9

When I lived by myself, my clocks were all off. Heck, the clock in my car is still off. To get the right time, you have to subtract 3 hrs and add 5 minutes. It’s been like this for almost a year now (except when it was subtract 4 hrs and add 5 min). When the power in my apartment would go out, I’d just leave the clocks as they were and calculate the real time from that.

My SO can’t stand it and since I’ve moved in with him, he’s taken control of the clocks. I’m not allowed to touch them at all. :slight_smile:

#10

My computer phones home every once in a while, and I set my watch from that. The ReplayTV periodically contacts the Mother Ship too, and while it’s transimitting all our detailed, sensitive viewing information, such as the fact that I watched 4 episodes of “COPS” last week, gets the correct time. If I’m home, and I’m not looking at my watch, I’m probably getting the time from the Replay.

I make sure the car clock matches my watch. Oh, and our alarm clock picks up the signal from the Atomic Clock in Boulder, and automagically sets itself to the right time, even if there’s a power failure, which makes is so freakin’ cool. That was the best wedding present we got.

My husband, who is Perpetually Early by nature, also has a watch that tends to run fast. We have a lot of conversations that go like this:

“We only have twelve minutes to get there!”
“What? It’s 4:45, we have fifteen minutes, and who the hell cares if we’re two minutes late?”
“I care, and it’s not 4:45, it’s 4:48. No, look, now it’s 4:49.”
“No it’s not. Your damn watch is always fast. My watch says 4:45.”
“Your watch is wrong.”
“No, it’s not. Look, my cell phone says 4:45, too.”
“But my watch says 4:49.”
“That’s because your damn watch is always fast. Look, the car says 4:45, too.”
“The clock in the car is always mumbldy mumble”
“What? What was that? Were you saying that the car clock is always right? That’s correct, because I set it to my watch, which I frequently check against reliable clocks, because unlike some people’s watches, my watch is not prepetually and for all eternity the ultimate unquestionable standard for the correct time, because it’s just a goddamn ten-dollar wristwatch!”
“[fuming]”
“[fuming]”
“My watch cost fifteen dollars.”

#11

My server theoretically updates from a level 2 timeserver, and my PCs from it.
I set my watch to the 11:00 time signal on CBC once a month, so it’s pretty accurate., and most other things I set by my watch except for my alarm clock, which I set a small random number of minutes forward so as to avoid the automatic compensation. I’m not sure if that part is working. :slight_smile:

#12

Ours are. I work at a radio station. My watch is set to the master clock, and at home all the clocks are set to my watch.

#13

Obviously, **fishbicycle’s ** clock is on snooze.

#14

Both of my watches are set to match the Metrolink train schedule, which is about the most important dictator of time in my life.

My car clock is off by about two minutes, which isn’t important enough for me to fix since I’m aware of it.

The clock on the shower radio used to be about 43 minutes slow, which again, wasn’t important enough for me to fix. I always knew what time I got in the shower, so approximations were good enough. But I think my wife covertly fixed it…sort of. I think she may have just advanced it an hour. I was confused for a while, but I think it’s something like 12 minutes fast now.

The clock on the bathroom wall is behind by about 45 minutes. This is not intentional, but again, haven’t cared enough to fix it.

My wife’s nightstand clock runs VERY fast. She resets it about once a week, but by the end of that week, it’s about 10 minutes fast.

Then there’s the clock on my nightstand. I’ve owned it since I was 13 (I’m 30 now), and it was handed down to me by my uncle even then. It still keeps pretty steady time. Over the years, it would get ahead by a couple of minutes, and I’d get used to that, so whenever there was a power outage, I’d reset it to be just as much off as it had been before the outage. It went from a couple of minutes to ten minutes to fifteen to…well, for the last ten years or so, I’ve had it ahead by 40 minutes. I don’t know why this is comforting to me. I am very paranoid about running late, so I’m always on time, and I don’t use an alarm because I’m a morning person, so it’s not a snooze button issue either. I just like it 40 minutes ahead. Maybe I enjoy doing the mental math – who knows?

#15

Sorry, we had a net outage at work, and when it came back, my post sent itself again. Could someone please flag down a mod to delete the extra one?

#16

Every time the clocks change, I reset them all as accurately as possible, within 2 or 3 seconds (have one of those clocks that receive the time signal from Colorado, to use as a standard). I got picky about this years ago, when I first got a VCR. Ya want your show taped properly, ya gotta have an accurate clock. Bought a large wall clock a coupla years ago for the bathroom, girlfriend thought I was nuts. Now, she sees the wisdom: you can relax in the tub, confident in the knowledge that you won’t miss a favorite tv show. I might get a little sloppy with the clock on the stove and/or the microwave. Otherwise, I shoot for accuracy.

#17

I keep my alarm clock 20 minutes fast. This occasionally causes visitors to my dorm room to panic; “Oh crap, it’s 7:50!” Nope, 7:30. I also hit the snooze button at least twice, usually more, which amazingly doesn’t bother my roommate.
All other clocks are on time.

#18

I use my cellphone as a pocket-watch & wake-up alarm. The cell system keeps it accurate to within a ew seconds. So why would I own another time keeping device?

I wish there was an option to turn off the clocks on all the electronic devices which have them as additional “features” mostly to keep the display busy when you’re not using it.

I keep the car clock synced to to my phone, and update it when I notice it off by a couple minutes. The rest of the clocks I’m stuck owning (VCR, microwave, etc) get reset every 6 months at DST changeover & ignored the rest of the time.

I really, REALLY cannnot understand people who deliberately mis-set clocks & then compensate for the offset. If you really fooled yourself I could understand it, if not agree with it. But to set the clock early, and then get up when it says late so yuo actually get up at the right time just boggles me.

#19

I used to have my watch (and any other clocks) set as close as possible to the exact time. I knew people who set theirs to be 3 and a half minutes early, “so I’m always 3.5 minutes early for work”. This used to make me angry (quite excessively so) - “just leave 3.5 minutes earlier, doofus!”.

Now, I am one of those people. I set all my timepieces to the same time, but they’re all ~4mins fast. Why? Because my old mobile phone (which I used as an alarm) used to keep shocking time, and every month would gain about 10 minutes - so I’d set it back, but then I would end up being late for work because I’d been used to taking 10 minutes longer to get ready once my alarm went off.

Now, my clocks are fast not because I think I’m fooling myself that I can get up later - I would happily set them to the correct time and set my alarm 4 minutes earlier. What it does is help me psychologically - when I’m driving to work and I glance at the clock - “damn, it’s 5 to 9, I’m never going to make it” - shortly followed by “hold on, that means I’ll be there about 1 minute past… which, according to the clock at work is 3 minutes to - jackpot!”.

Even this practice would’ve made me angry 10 years ago. My girlfriend says I’m a freak. She might be right.

#20

My bedroom clock is 20 minutes fast, intentionally. The clock on this computer is a few minutes fast, which makes no sense at all since it is supposed to get the time from somewhere official, right? The chiming clock in the living room is fast, because I haven’t felt like fiddling with it yet. The microwave, VCR’s and the atomic clock on the kitchen wall are all accurate, because otherwise I wouldn’t get anything taped on time. But occasionally the atomic clock takes a day or two to update for Daylight Savings time, and that stresses Grandma out. Fortunately that hasn’t happened the last two time changes.

My $5 wristwatch is accurate, but the clock at work on the computer there isn’t (again, a puzzle as to why) so I have to remember to add five minutes if I don’t want to be late.