Frazz by Jef Mallett for June 10, 2024

Watches on a long hike is golden!

Playing video games on your cellphone is different?

Bah, you had to turn your wrist. The watch wouldn’t wind hanging from the kangaroo tail.

I still wear a watch… to know the time and date… but I’m one of a shrinking group who don’t use their phones for that. One of the clues: Watch straps that are utilitarian are becoming harder and harder to find.

Mind you, some folks wear phone-like-watches instead of carrying a phone. And some folks wear ’em for decoration… or power trip type reasons. And watches that check your blood pressure etc.

I figure that in about a dozen years, all things going as they are, most folks will have them glued on somewhere and they’ll attach us to our AI masters rain or shine, day or night, will or nil. But I firmly expect to avoid that one way or another. Considering my age and state of health.

I still wear a watch… Not a smart watch either.

Does anyone really know what time it is?

“A man with a watch always knows the time. A man with two watches is never certain.”

Still wear a watch. Quicker to turn my wrist than pull the phone out of my pocket, open the cover and press a button to get the screen out of sleep mode.

I have a solar powered watch: no winding, no charging and set automatically by radio. Pretty boring really….

Anyone remember how we used to think that “Dick Tracy’s” wrist/watch radio, or whatever it used to be called seemed so futuristic?

I don’t have a phone. I have a multifunctional pocket watch that in addition to telling me the time tells me the weather, allows me to watch or record videos, and provides me the ability to communicate to others through talking, writing, or even video communication.

I’m going back to using sun hours.

Never wore a watch. Couldn’t stand the feeling of something on my wrists all the time. Thankfully I never had to be handcuffed. (So far.)

Still is a thing, kid. Now, get off my lawn.

Three generations back people didn’t look at wristwatches, either. They had pocket watches…

My fitness watch functions as a watch as well, and I find it more convenient than looking at my phone for the time.

Neighbor wears a modern version of ‘Dick Tracy’ watch. It beeped when she got a text on her phone. It evidently has lots of other pc type functions. Trouble is, it’s only about an inch in diameter and I have no clue how it works or how she even can see the ‘screen.’ Just know I won’t ever want one.

“[In] the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this [is a] little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” Back in 1979.

Arrrgh, go ahead, make me feel like I belong in a museum. -——————————— I love museums!

The other day, I wished I’d thought to wear a watch. It would’ve let the phlebotomist put tape on something other than my hairy arm.

I love my automatic watch. It looks classy, and it will keep running for a full day if I’m not wearing it. My desire for a smart watch remains at zero.

Some watches are more specialized: >

Do “kids today” even know how to read an analog clock?

The whole family vacationed in Branson (yeah, it’s lame, but it was close). We had to keep track of when the shows were happening so when we had visited to a point where we needed to check the time, everyone grabbed for their pockets, purses to get their phone. My 94 year old Aunt, however, made this unnecessary. She had this cute little bracelet that had a clock built into it, so she didn’t need to do anything but lift her arm to find out what time it was. Neat invention.

As long as my self-winding watch is running I know I am too.

Why would you want to carry a phone when you just need to know the time?

Speaking about things …. How about when you worked at a place for 25 years and received a gold one as a thank you gift?

I carry an iPhone SE, but also wear a watch (cheapest Casio LCD digital) so I can get the time conveniently. (Remember the days of LED digital watches? To preserve battery life one had to press a button using the other hand to light up the display.)

I have a friend who collects watches and has a motorized 4-watch holder that tumbles them every minute or so to keep them wound.

When we met, my ex mocked the fact that I didn’t wear a watch. “How do you figure out what time it is?” Well, I was at a point in my life where I DGAF about what time it is, my schedule is set by the routine of school and work.

Now that I’ve had 10+ years of carrying a cell phone around, I can’t help but notice how much I check the time throughout the day. It’s all a conspiracy controlled by Big Time, I just know it.

My wifey bought me a Selfwinding Rolex for our engagement decades ago. I never liked it much, for a variety of reasons. Before I had about 1/2 dozen watches that I would wear interchangeably with whatever my outfit was. If you didn’t wear theRolex it would die. The little battery powered winding things were stupid. If you need a battery to keep your watch running, buy a battery powered watch and cut out the middleman. During tough times I had to hock it for cash. Easiest decision to make.

Not much has changed in that when I looked to see what time it was I became distracted and forgot immediately why I was looking for my watch.. I’m allergic to metal ant watches come to die on my wrist.

Now we can do both! That’s progress!

I think…..

Way back in the earlier days of civilization, it was discovered that pendulums were highly reliable indicators of passing time. Reliability was proportional to the length of the arm and the weight on the end, leading to grandfather clocks that were nice furniture as well as being useful. So pendulum clocks have been around for a long (ahem) time. But they were crap on sailing ships, where the tossing and turning of the waves threw off their regular motions. Enter the spring mechanism. Like the pendulum (which required the occasional push), coiled springs needed periodic human intervention to recoil them.

And so we continue on our journey of technological improvement, along the way incorporating such fine tunings as the second (the unit of time) being defined as the time it takes for the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine Cesium-133 frequency to oscillate 9,192,631,770 times and the need to periodically add a leap second to a year to account for the slowing rotation of the Earth.

I used to wind a watch. I still wear one.

My watch, it stopped at 4 till 2!

I remember ads for those watches. I’m old.

I don’t like wearing watches. Until I got a cell phone, I never knew what time it was.