Posted by Instagrate to WordPress
September 2012
The Standard Electric Time Company.
Originally posted on my Google+ stream.
Today I added a new clock to my master-slave clock collection in the house. This one is from 1940. All of the clocks in the collection were made by The Standard Electric Time Company. The are minute impulse clocks, so the make that click-click sound once a minute that was common in American schools in the 20th century. They run on 24VDC and are controlled by a relay board connected to a Pentium II 233Mhz running Debian Linux. The program used to advanced the clocks was written in BASIC by me a couple of years ago and compiled using FreeBASIC. Uptime on the server right now is 340 days.
This particular clock hangs on the wall in my office, replacing a bigger version of one from the same era. It is a smaller, 9-inch model, which would usually found in small offices scattered through a school. Most classrooms had a 12-inch clock hanging on the wall. Gymnasiums, auditoriums, cafeterias, etc tended to have the 15-inch version.
I started collecting these clocks in the mid 1990s. I became fascinated with these clocks on my first day of kindergarten back in 1973.
Withdrawal.
So I know that I’m nearly two years behind the curve on this but I am suffering from withdrawal symptoms after successfully completing the only season of “The Event.” The fact that this show was canceled tells me that the American television viewing public is basically becoming stupid. The show was well written, the acting was decent to great, the action was believable and while they’re are always gaps here and there in a storyline, they kept the plot believable within the universe that was built for this show.
The last scene of the show was a mighty cliffhanger that will now most likely never be resolved. And yes, I know that people were talking about this a year or so ago when the show was canceled but it’s my blog and I can talk about anything I want to talk about.
Flipping through Sirius/XM yesterday I heard some sort of entertainment drivel about all the new shows that are coming out this season and every. single. show. they. mentioned. was some sort of “reality” show. “The Voice”. “American Idol”. “Dancing With The Stars”. If I want to watch Charo do the cha cha I’ll fire up an old episode of “The Love Boat” and watch her contort and growl out the theme song in a lounge that looks like the Holiday Inn under her guise of “April Lopez.”
I am going to state right here and now that if we win the lottery within the next year, I will make a serious investment wherever we need to invest so that we can at least have a miniseries conclusion to “The Event”. I don’t know why someone in Hollywood doesn’t already have the intelligence to do this. Actually I do know why; Hollywood is dumb and it’s trying to entertain the lowest common denominator, the folks that win a “participation award” at a soccer game because they just showed up.
I think I’m bordering on a rant now, so I’m going to keep it real and tell you, probably not for the last time, if you’re into SciFi and you want to see something good with a heaping helping of action, watch “The Event” on Netflix.
