I am a fiend about clock accuracy - my computers synch up with a time server on startup, and all the clocks in our house are synchronized to the second. And I notice almost immediately when any of this changes.
Last night, I was awake in bed and noticed that the clock by my bed said
4:28 when a downstairs windup clock was bonging 4:30. The windup clock isn't perfectly accurate, but when it slips by a minute, typically once a month, I just reset it and it's acceptable for another 30 days.When I woke up this morning, I noticed an interesting phenomenon: EVERY electric digital clock in the house (five in all, not counting VCR) was two minutes slow.
So my question: Could this somehow be related to the northeastern US power failure? Our house didn't lose power. But if the local utility was somehow "cycling down" its output as a conservation technique - I have no idea if such a thing is possible of course - could THAT have caused my clocks to all lose two minutes?
No other scenario is possible:
- Virtually every night, I notice if the bedside clock matches the windup clock. It did Wednesday night; it didn't Thursday.
- No one else in the house reset the clocks.
- The oldest digital clock has no battery or memory - cut power to it for a nanosecond, and it resets to 12:00 and starts flashing.
- My watch, the computer clocks, the windup clock, and the two battery-powered clocks in the house, along with the clocks in our cars, all had the same (correct) time, two minutes ahead of the one shown on the digital clocks.