6:25am DST
You know you’re a nut when you jump out of bed the morning daylight saving time begins and immediately change every clock in the house. Guilty as charged. I can put up with all sorts of disorder, but not when it comes to time.
After changing my watch and two clock radios it was off to tackle time central: the kitchen. Our kitchen has five clocks: on the radio, coffee maker, stove, microwave, and an analog clock on the wall. Getting them all to read the same time requires a little work, but who could focus on cooking when surrounded by chaos?
Of all these clocks the most annoying is on the microwave, which requires you to enter the date when you set the time. If someone could explain why the  microwave needs to know the date I’d sure like to hear it. Are you going to program it to start during another year?  To make some popcorn in 2011?
Note to GE, builders of jet engines, MRI devices, and wind turbines: the microwave needs to know the date like my dogs need a unicycle. Now excuse me, I have clocks to change.
I’m a software developer and technophile who generally tries to think of all kinds of future uses when designing a software project.
But for the life of me, I can’t think of any reason why the microwave needs to know the date.
James: I also posted this on the TU’s Bethlehem Blog, where someone left this interesting comment:
“Is the microwave a GE? The item is programmable so if you place a frozen meal in the oven at 11:00 PM on this date and want it to start cooking at 2:00 AM tomorrow so it will be ready at 06:00 AM tomorrow the machine must know the date or this feature wouldn’t work.”
That seems to make some sense. But not sure I want the microwave turning on in the middle of the night…