UMTravels

As you all know, I travel a bit.

About three years ago, I was on a quest to find a world clock with the ability to display four time zones at a glance to help with my ever-present travel bug.

I’m too cheap to pay the $750 to $1000 on the vinyl lettered one:

And REALLY too cheap to spend the $1700 to $2000 for the ones with LED cities:

 

So, down the rabbit hole I go.

VERSION ONE: Four matching analog clocks.

Pros:

• Easy to read at a glance

Cons:

• Tags too small to read the city
• No clue if that’s AM or PM
• No clue what day it is
• No automatic adjustment for daylight savings time

If you were wondering why one of the clocks is half an hour off from the others—say hello to India. Just to make it fun, Nepal is fifteen minutes off of India.

VERSION TWO: Four matching digital alarm clocks.

Pros:

• Shows AM/PM
• Shows date
• Shows day of the week

Cons:

• Doesn’t show city
• Limited viewing angle (like only when I’m sitting on the couch looking directly at it)
• Doesn’t automatically adjust for daylight savings time

Eventually moved to next to my desk and added city tags.

VERSION THREE: Three mismatched laptop and tablets resting in the garage (was testing proof of concept before I fired up another on)

Pros:

• Shows city
• Show AMPM
• Shows day of the week
• Automatically adjusted for daylight savings time

Cons:

• Day of the week too small to read at a distance
• They seem to want to keep updating themselves
• Not sure if the fourth one will fit up there

VERSION FOUR: electro-steampunk esthetic Windows 10 stick computer and some custom programming by my buddy Dan.

And the back side with more details:

And, I got the touch screen working on the screen, so you can scroll down to see the day of the week, the weather in each of the cities, and a ticker with commodities prices, which is an homage to my dear confidant and his families business.

In its early construction phase:

And in its final home:

And yes, the 31-line 1A2 phone works., including working lights, flashing when you put someone on hold. A little overkill for a VOIP (voice over internet protocol) phone.

As does the limited-edition Fischer-Price Bluetooth Chatter phone. Yes, the eyes go up and down when it rolls. The rotary dial works by spinning and includes the # and * keys! Even has a speakerphone button on it. It was $60 plus tax when I bought it last November. They did one run of these. Now $166 is the current high bid on eBay for a new in box. $300 plus $12 shipping if you want one immediately. I purposely threw out all the “apple-quality” packaging to resist the temptation to resell it.

So, long story about my world clock fetish. At least the latest version adjusts for daylight savings time, and I can reprogram the cities (well, Dan can reprogram the cities).

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