13 October 2008

fell asleep on tuesday woke up monday afternoon

Sadly I'm not done ranting about alarm clocks. I found a model that looked like it was almost done properly so I decided to get it. You care to guess what store it was at? Best Buy? Target? Nope. Toys 'R Us. I could see going there if I wanted a pirate alarm clock, but why are they the only ones who sell decent normal ones as well?

So I get this thing home and plug it in. It says it has Indiglo. But of course it hasn't been done properly. Instead of lighting up when you hit the button, like in a proper alarm clock, it does an always-on and the button just sets the brightness. Fortunately one of the settings is off. But now if I want to check the time during the night, I have to hit the button four times instead of one. Outstanding work.

I then went to set the time. Pretty standard stuff. Except that it asks for the year as well. I don't need to know what year it is! I just need to know when to get my ass out of bed!!

Fortunately the new alarm clock doesn't seem to have any other stupid functions built in - no temperature or atomics - so I may be able to get some use out of it yet. For the record this is like the fourth time I've tried to replace my old one.

(I can just imagine an Apple alarm clock. Requires AT&T service and WiFi connection, charges you for a $10 firmware update to tell hours in addition to minutes, daily alarm downloads from iTunes store are DRM-enabled.)

While we're on the subject of badly designed things, it turns out that under New Facebook the posted items app won't actually let you post items. It's just for sorting things already posted. Way to put functions where nobody will find them, New Facebook.

The one bright spot in my badly designed day was that more Genesis Coupe news has come to light. It has gone on sale in SK, where the first review sounded pretty good, and a very well put together ad appeared on YouTube. Which is what I was trying to post.

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