So here’s a puzzler.
About six months or so ago, we bought a very snazzy alarum clock/white noise machine at Brookstone (an expensive gadgety kind of store, if you don’t have one near you). I know it’s silly, but I fell hopelessly in love with this clock. Not only did it allow you your choice of something like eight different sounds, with various delta waves or some psuedo-sciencey stuff blended in with them, but it would only allow you to hit Snooze twice! Very handy, as we are notorious Snooze-addicts.
Abruptly, about two or three months ago, clock stops working. Really impressively stops working, like the screen is covered in jibberish and won’t light up, and no amount of outlet-switching or battery-trying will make it do anything. We took it back to Brookstone and begged our case, and they gave us a new one. Tested it out at the store and it worked fine, took it home and it continued to work fine. About a month and 1/2 later, we moved into our first house. And the first night we plugged in our clock - dead. Again, jibberish, not lighting up.
At this point, without a receipt and not believing that Brookstone will give us our money back, and not wanting to risk getting the same, obviously defective, clock again when we both have such tight schedules, I spotted a much less fancy but similar model clock at Bed, Bath & Beyond (about $50 less, as well). White noise, clock face projected in soft blue light into the ceiling, fabulous. Last week, while getting into bed, I notice that the bottom line of LED lights on the clock face appear to not work any longer. 2’s look like 7’s, etc. The weird thing is, the projected clock face on the ceiling still works fine, so we can muddle by for the moment, but seriously…WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? It’s not the electrical, as we’ve changed addresses. We’re not moving them around a lot, or plugging and unplugging or abusing the wires or beating the shit out them or pouring liquids over them.
Does anyone have ANY idea what would cause this, and how to stop it? At this point we’re considering just going back to the godawful BUZZBUZZ alarum clock, but I love the white noise machine. I need my ocean noise!