Thursday, March 1, 2007

Project #5 - New Weather Station/Clock

Project #5 - New Weather Station/Clock

This project was actually caused by me finding a gift a customer gave to me a number of years ago.

She was an interesting, but very sweet, old lady who used to visit my checkstand all the time and ask my advice for just about anything. She'd also take the time to tell me about her day, and her views of the degredation of the neighborhood that our store was located in.

Well, one day she gave me a clock that she had gotten as a christmas present. She had come in many times before asking my help on how to set it up, and I had shown her how to do it a number of times. This time, she had gotten fed up with it and decided to just give it to me. I said that it was her present and that she should keep it, it was a very nice clock. She insisted and after about 30 minutes of discussion I wound up with the clock, I couldn't talk my way out of it.

Well, I kept the clock for a number of years, since I had no real use for it at home, tucked away in a paper bag in the closet.

Well, the camper happened, and I had still hadn't thought about the clock, till one day, I came in to work and found out by the usual method that news of this nature seems to make its way to me, that the sweet old lady had become ill and had passed away.

I got to thinking about how I was going to miss her and thought back on some of the odder conversations we had over the years, and then I remembered the clock.

On the way home that evening, I picked up some AA batteries and dug out the clock. The old mercury thermometer setup the camper had come with for interior/exterior temperatures had died shortly after the camper's first trip out to Odell Lake, so I figured this would be a good replacement.

Well, I had forgotten how the clock worked by this time, and the manual was the one thing the sweet old lady had forgotten to supply me with. So, I popped online and did a search for the operations manual.



Well, turns out the lady had given me a $120 clock! The damned thing does just about everything! From telling me the interior/exterior temp, realtive humidity, day of the week, what the date is, what the moon phase is, plus it updates itself from the broadcast signal coming from Ft. Collins Colorado's Atomic clocks.

So, now, I have a very nice weather station for my camper, and when I go to read the time, I always think back to the little old lady who always made my ****ty days at work just a little bit nicer.

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