Towards a new definition of sub-optimal
May. 28th, 2013 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceY'all will certainly remember (for I know that you have no concerns, none, other than the minutiae of my life and how I moan about them) that I kept burning things on account of having no kitchen timer, a while back. You will not have forgotten my endless rhapsodic laments over the timer I apparently left behind in the UK, a model of efficiency and design.
My wife eventually got tired of listening to my complaints - and possibly tired also of burned-black dinners - and dug around the internets until she found and bought me a substitute.
It looks much the same, it's the same size, it has pretty much the same functions. Obviously it couldn't be quite as good as the last one - you never forget your first, and according to me nothing here in the US is ever as good as what I've left behind; apparently my former life was perfect in every way; who knew? - but still. It did everything I asked of it, cheerfully and efficiently - except.
The magnet on the back, that holds it to the fridge door? Is the weakest, most pathetic magnet I find it possible to imagine. The least contact, the least knock, the least touch or vibration is enough to knock the thing loose. This is the fridge door, people; it attracts quite a lot of contact, of knocks and touches and vibrations.
The timer has spent much of its time here falling to the floor. Every time I pick it up, I expect it to have cracked, broken, shattered beyond repair. It continues to surprise me, every time - except.
I didn't notice, the last time I picked it up; I didn't notice until I went to set it, to time the loaf that's currently in the oven.
It, um, doesn't beep any more.
I have the world's first mute kitchen timer.
It still keeps perfect time, on four separate projects at once; but, um. It chimes not, neither does it alert me when the time is up.
A cabbage would be almost as much use. A cat, considerably more. Cats are both time-conscious and vocal; all I need to do is make them programmable. Hmm...
My wife eventually got tired of listening to my complaints - and possibly tired also of burned-black dinners - and dug around the internets until she found and bought me a substitute.
It looks much the same, it's the same size, it has pretty much the same functions. Obviously it couldn't be quite as good as the last one - you never forget your first, and according to me nothing here in the US is ever as good as what I've left behind; apparently my former life was perfect in every way; who knew? - but still. It did everything I asked of it, cheerfully and efficiently - except.
The magnet on the back, that holds it to the fridge door? Is the weakest, most pathetic magnet I find it possible to imagine. The least contact, the least knock, the least touch or vibration is enough to knock the thing loose. This is the fridge door, people; it attracts quite a lot of contact, of knocks and touches and vibrations.
The timer has spent much of its time here falling to the floor. Every time I pick it up, I expect it to have cracked, broken, shattered beyond repair. It continues to surprise me, every time - except.
I didn't notice, the last time I picked it up; I didn't notice until I went to set it, to time the loaf that's currently in the oven.
It, um, doesn't beep any more.
I have the world's first mute kitchen timer.
It still keeps perfect time, on four separate projects at once; but, um. It chimes not, neither does it alert me when the time is up.
A cabbage would be almost as much use. A cat, considerably more. Cats are both time-conscious and vocal; all I need to do is make them programmable. Hmm...