Cottleston Pie

I've disliked my bedside alarm clock radio for a long time. I think it was in early high school, but maybe even before that, one Christmas everyone in the family got Sony "Dream Machine" bedside dual-alarm clock radios. They were fine except that the clock or alarm time could only be set in the forward direction, so to set an alarm five or ten minutes earlier, one had to cycle all the way around.

Also, when setting an alarm, if I mistakenly let up the button that had to be held down while setting it—it had to be pressed relatively hard—it would change the clock time! (despite your not holding down the button that needs to be held down to change the clock time). When this would happen, I might have to go look at what time it is in another room if I hadn't noted it, and then wait while both hours and minutes cycled to the correct time again. If I didn't notice the time had changed, which has happened as I'm usually setting my alarm at bedtime when I'm tired and ready to sleep, then the alarm naturally won't go off when expected, which can be bad.

I was in Target a few days ago, so I decided to check out the alarm clocks and low-and-behold they had a suitable replacement and it is another Sony "Dream Machine." I'll leave off the laundry list of features: suffice it to say that a decade has apparently been enough time to make lots of significant improvements. Including being able to cycle both ways to set hours and minutes. It's smaller and better looking too.

One thing that strikes me as really funny is that the instruction manual says it is an "FM/AM PLL Synthesized Clock Radio." Yes. PLL. Phase-locked loop. The feature list spells out the acronym. Who who is not an electrical or computer engineer would know or care what a PLL is? Even then, many EEs and CEs might not know. I happen to because we studied them as part of a class I took and as a project I implemented a specific type. Very weird.