Clock-a-doodle-doo (or don’t)

Oh, Apple.

At my place, I don’t really mind if the thermostat is off by a few degrees. Should my oven not heat evenly, I can adjust. Ditto my lights being wonky. However, I expect my clocks to work as clocks each and every second of the day, barring spent batteries or a power outage. iPhones aren’t very good at this.

If a broken clock is right twice a day, Apple’s is off twice a year these days — once each time Daylight Savings Time needs to be calculated in territories that depend on it.

Count me in the camp that didn’t adjust on the Sunday, so I set it manually, then it adjusted on the Monday when I tested it back on auto, then it set itself back sometime Monday night so I didn’t wake up when I wanted on Tuesday, and it’s still acting ridiculous now that it’s on manual again with alarms going off when they should not. I was to meet a friend last night at 7:30. I set my alarm for 7:02. It went off at 6:02. gg. Thankfully, I own two other clocks with alarms and merely relied on those to wake me up this morning. When I set the iPhone automatically now, it appears as the right time. Whether or not it remembers to hang on to that remains to be seen. Rogers is not blameless here, either, since other friends with other phones had DST issues as well. It’s twice a year, every year. You would think they’d have worked this out by now. At least it’s not as bad as Sony’s PS3 Leap Year fail. London appears to be having issues with their brand-spankin’-new Olympic Countdown Clock, too. I guess it’s a bad time for time all around.

Now, *gasp* , let’s talk about a game :)

Yes, that game again. I can’t really say that I’m playing it because it’s all about B-Spec, but the disc is in the system and the system is on. I put my 4 drivers online and let friends take them around town. I get free money and experience, they get to leave their systems on all day and do the work for me ;)

The online B-Spec actually works quite well. I experienced many bugs off the top with my drivers winning races, the game telling me I have credits, and then all those credits not appearing when I go to collect. It was annoying, but I kept putting them out there to help pad my friends’ rival driver stock. Mysteriously, the bug worked itself out. I never obtained the lost credits, but I didn’t put any effort towards them and don’t really care.

Lately my friends have been taunting me about my lack of a Red Bull X2010. My A-Spec level is high enough to do Vettel’s challenges, but I need at least a bronze in one or two more to unlock it that way. Not terribly in the mood for that. Another way to get one involves winning the B-Spec 24hr Le Mans. My guys can totally handle that. Or they could if my B level was 35. Grr. Pointless rivalry now has me running Suzuka (172 laps) over and over to maybe raise my 31 to 35 by the weekend. It’ll probably take longer since I hate leaving my system on all night and day. But then, oh, it will be mine.

What can I say? I love Red Bull Racing — c’mon Webber!! Make it happen this year ^_^ — and I have a thing for an Adrian Newey designed car that conforms to no racing spec and would kill the driver with Gs in the real world.