Keeping Time With the New and Old

We have been swamped in the last several days with new technology at my house.

Ken has been researching the latest versions of the Sony Cybershot ultra-compact cameras. He decided on the DSC-TX1, which was new in September, to replace the camera I smashed when I fell off the rock pile. The secret is in the Carl Zeiss lens, which is the reason he bought our original digital camera in 2006. Then, as now, he had done his research and knew what he wanted. He was working out of town last week and actually found the camera in a big box store. It has lots of new bells and whistles, but we are slowly learning how to use it. Already I notice that photos are clearer.

Ken has also been looking for a solution to our "two-channels of TV" situation. He found a website with new versions of digital antennas. We decided to order one, which could be returned if it didn't work.

So it was down with the old ~

and up with the new ~

which didn't work that much better until an amplifier (the black box about a quarter of the way up the pole) was added outside and plugged into the TV. Even then it took hours to troubleshoot why we still didn't get the best reception. The problem was the radios that were plugged into the cable; the amplifier does not like FM. Now we have good reception for CBS, in addition to PBS and the local Fox network, and sometimes we can get NBC. I don't blame Ken for wanting CBS, which carries many of the football games ~ the Patriots are having a good year.

By Monday this week I had had it with technology: cars that needed complicated repairs, cameras with new-fangled gadgets, antennas that wouldn't cooperate...and a clock that came back from the clockmaker still not working right. It has been more than three years, and four trips to the clock shop, since our Seth Thomas clock has worked properly. I picked it up from the shop two weeks ago. Ken wound it and started it on Sunday, and the time still did not match the chimes. When I got home from class on Tuesday, Ken was already home. I went about putting things away and starting dinner. He said, "Oh, I fixed the clock." Really? I asked him what the problem was. Ken had taken a moment to study the face as the clock chimed, and he realized that the hour and minute hands were reversed. Finally, a simple fix...for an antique timepiece. That's fitting.