Alarm clock blues

Why is it so hard to get an alarm clock that just works? I had the perfect alarm clock for years, but I don't ask for much in an alarm clock. Two alarm settings (one for 5:20 for a normal day and one for 4:55 for a hockey morning), ease of setting, an FM radio - that's about it. My old alarm clock worked great. It even had something I've never seen on another clock, and that is a number pad, which meant setting times was a snap. Have you ever noticed that when you need to set a time, you always have to go 12 hours from the current time? So you hold down the forward button and wait. And wait. And wait. With my now deceased alarm clock, you just punched in the number you wanted and you were done. But unfortunately, I spilled, smacked and dropped my old one just once too many, so it went to that alarm clock graveyard.

My new alarm clock has some nice features. The coolest one is the fact it is self-setting. From somewhere in the ether, it grabs the current time and just sets itself. This is a very handy feature, as the outlet it is plugged into is a switched one and sometimes the switch gets turned off. Turn it back on, and it immediately sets itself to the correct time. Really cool!

But it has a horrible user interface. There are these nearly identical looking buttons along the side that turn on and off the alarms, so it is well nigh impossible to remember which one turns on alarm 1, which one for alarm 2, while ignoring the other identical switches that change the dimmer and toggle AM/FM. To turn off an alarm, you have to hit one of the middle buttons in a bank of about 7 identical buttons. You can't change how long it "snoozes" for; it is set for 9 minutes, but I prefer a much shorter snooze, like maybe 4 minutes. To me, 9 minutes is way too long, because after just a couple of those you're about 20 minutes late! To even toggle the snooze, you have to find a contoured button, albeit it is big enough any way.

So, the short of it is that I missed hockey this morning. Not sure what wrong button I hit, but I was awakened by the sound of my cell phone ringing. It was the backup goalie calling to see if I was going to make it. Seeing as face off time was in about 10 minutes, the answer was a groggy "No". I hate starting my day that way.