My boss just blogged about something that I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while now: alarm clocks.

Why on earth do alarm clocks have to be so horrible? Surely there must be a really, truly good alarm clock out there, but I have yet to find it. Any alarm clock I’ve ever seen has had at least one, if not most, of the following annoyances:

The clock face uses green LEDs. We bought an alarm clock like this (green numbers on a black background) and quickly returned it. The green LEDs lit the whole bedroom. I shouldn’t be able to see reflected light off the wall from my alarm clock, nor should I see a green glow on the underside of my eyelids if I happen to be facing it. Red LEDs seem to be the trick here (red numbers on a black background), though they’re becoming harder to find. I haven’t tried a green LCD clock face (black numbers on a pale green background), so I can’t speak to that, but it sure seems like it would be too bright.

There are buttons on the top of the alarm clock besides Snooze. If I want to snooze for another nine minutes (why is it always nine, anyway?) the last thing I want to be doing is feeling around on the alarm clock for the Snooze button. My current alarm clock has a Sleep button that feels exactly like the Snooze button, and if I press it, all is lost. The radio stays on, but it is now in Sleep mode, not Alarm mode, and if I press the Snooze button, the radio goes off, but doesn’t come back on in nine minutes. It’s hard to imagine worse behavior. There should be only one button on the top of the alarm clock: a big Snooze button.

The alarm is too hard to turn off. Our alarm clock has a little switch with four modes: off, radio on, radio alarm set, and buzzer alarm set. This makes it a real pain to turn off the alarm in the morning when you wake up. Fortunately I have the (undocumented) Sleep button trick described above, which has the added benefit of leaving the alarm set for the next day.

The current time is too easy to change. Most alarm clocks have a mode that must be set or a button that must be held in order to change the current time (or the alarm time). Believe it or not, our previous alarm clock had buttons on top that unceremoniously changed the time whenever you pressed them. So I’d be fumbling for the Snooze button and accidentally set the clock ahead an hour or two. Very frustrating. Setting the time should not be that easy. (Though it can’t hurt to have a simple switch in the back for Daylight Savings Time.)

The radio reception is terrible. It’s depressing when you can’t wake to your favorite radio station simply because the broadcast station isn’t across the street.

The radio volume control is on the side of the alarm. Many alarm clocks have little dials on the side that change the volume; unfortunately, this means that the volume can be accidentally changed if something brushes against the alarm clock, which means that I have to check the alarm volume every night, just to be sure. Our previous alarm clock was especially bad – it had a large knob that was very easy to bump.

The radio volume can’t be lowered enough. Of course, the volume can be turned all the way down, so that you hear nothing. (Why do all volume controls support turning it all the way down? Wouldn’t the power button work if you didn’t want to hear it at all?) You slowly turn the volume up, and get nothing, nothing, nothing, and then it abruptly switches to a volume that’s louder than what you want. There’s simply no way to set the radio to soft. The whole point of the radio is to wake me up without a loud buzzing; I don’t want loud music, either.

The backup battery isn’t much of a backup. Standard battery backup behavior is to preserve the time and alarm settings when the power goes out, but the clock doesn’t actually work while there’s no power. That’s certainly better than nothing; if the power goes out briefly, it’s nice to not lose your time and alarm settings. But does an alarm clock really drain so much power that it can’t simply work normally and sound the alarm even if the power is still out?

The AM/PM indicator and the active alarm indicator are indistinguishable little lights. Worse still, alarm clocks can’t seem to agree on whether the AM/PM light should indicate AM or PM; our last alarm clock thought it should be used for PM, but our current alarm clock uses it for AM. This makes figuring out whether the alarm is set basically impossible. Couldn’t the clock simply use letters for AM and PM?

The alarm time can’t be set in the dark. I can’t say that I mind pushing buttons to set the alarm time that much, but it is certainly annoying when it can’t be done in the dark, and when the controls are little buttons with labels, there’s not much chance of getting it right if you can’t read them.

The radio can’t be tuned in the dark. If the radio tuner isn’t digital, and the analog panel isn’t backlit, there’s not much hope of finding a radio station without ample light and a lot of patience.

There are countless other features that could make a good alarm clock great, but I’d just settle for good. If you know of an alarm clock that doesn’t suffer from any of these problems, I’d love to hear about it.

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.

For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep.

Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Behold, I tell you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

If God is for us, who can be against us?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is at the right hand of God, who maketh intercession for us.

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.
Blessing, and honour, glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.

Amen!

O, precious is the flow
  That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
  Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

The age of the pickup has ended. My 1987 Nissan Pickup limped along bravely after the accident, even after being declared a total loss (i.e. “totaled”) by the insurance company – until the battery light came on. Still, I held out hope that I’d just have to replace the battery, and all would be well. This past Friday, I decided to pay a visit to the Department of Licensing, since I hadn’t heard anything from them yet, and I knew that they were supposed to contact me about sending them my title, since the truck had been declared totaled. After waiting for 30 minutes, I was told that I had to go to the vehicle licensing office, not the driver licensing office – so I made my way there, waited in a much shorter line, and I found out that I’d been driving illegally all along. Apparently you can’t drive a totaled vehicle until you get an inspection by the state patrol, unless you get a 60-day temporary license pending your inspection, or a 1-day temporary license for the day of the inspection. I did the latter, since it was much cheaper, and I already had an appointment for an inspection this Thursday.

On my way home from work on Friday, I noticed that all was not well with the truck. There was definitely something battery-related going on. When I got close to home, the truck just about died, but it held on until I approached my street. Fortunately I drive downhill to get home, because the truck died as I was turning onto my street. I was able to coast down the road and halfway up my driveway. I tried to start it again, but got nothing. I thanked God that I wasn’t stuck somewhere and walked into my house. I was able to start the car again later that evening, which made me realize that the problem is probably more serious than a simple battery replacement. I started rethinking my options.

I decided to do a little car shopping on Saturday. I roamed around I-5 Auto World for a little while, talking to one salesperson and even going for a test drive. Mostly I was simply reminded why I hate shopping for cars. Furthermore, car dealers aren’t all that interested in someone looking for a really good deal on a really used car. I returned home empty-handed, but soon got a call back from Lee Hornbeck at Blade Chevrolet, who sold us our minivan last year. He actually had a car that sounded interesting, so I drove over there, checked it out, and ultimately bought it.

The car is a burgundy 1999 Ford Escort LX. Its purpose is to get me to and from the office for as many months (dare I hope for years?) as possible, hopefully consuming less fuel than my pickup did. It has a 5-speed manual transmission, 90,000 miles under its belt, a couple of air bags, etc. It has a “rebuilt” title, which means that it has been totaled and repaired – and it shows. I won’t bore you with the back story, but Lee claimed to know the family, etc. Anyway, it was listed for almost $3,000, but Lee had already made it clear that they were very flexible with the price, and I ended up getting it for $1,800. A sweet deal if it fulfills its purpose. Here’s a picture out in the rain:

Did I mention that I got almost $2,000 for my truck as part of the insurance claim? That was considerably more than I expected to get, to be quite honest. Now all that’s left to do is get it to the salvage yard and hope to get $100 for the parts. I hope I can get it there on its own power…

I neglected to mention that I completed our taxes a few weeks ago and got our refund lickety-split. I'll not talk about the fact that our federal tax burden is down around 1% this year; I talked enough about that last year. A friend of mine reminded me that I'm still paying lots of money to Social Security and Medicare, though, so I shouldn't feel too unburdened...

If you haven't done your taxes yet, be sure to do and submit them online, for free! Just go to http://www.irs.gov/, click “Free File”, “Start Now!”, and then click on your favorite provider. Mine was TurboTax – they've been doing online taxes for years now, and it's free for everyone through the IRS link, even if you itemize. That's how I did my taxes this year, and it worked out wonderfully.

I just finished watching the last of the five movies in Babylon 5: The Movie Collection, which brings me to the end of my second viewing of the entire Babylon 5 series. Neither season five nor the movies come very close to the quality of the first four seasons, but it was still fun to watch the whole series again. Hopefully I'll have the opportunity to watch them all again some day; maybe I'll have the chance to bring someone new along for the ride. Maybe even one of my daughters? I guess I should start getting them into science fiction now!

I've been either too busy or too lazy lately to blog, but I wanted to reassure my many readers without any other way of knowing (ha!) that our family is fine, if still off-and-on sick. All of my girls have a cough of varying severity; I seem to be largely spared, for now. We're hoping that spring will bring renewed health and happiness.

I leave you with a direct quote from Bethany: “I never sleep. I just stay in bed for a long time.” She's something else.