old stuff

[cellio]

I think I am an abnormal consumer; I tend to hold on to stuff as long as it still works. For example, I'm perfectly happy with the car I bought new in 1989, and plan to drive it until it dies an expensive death. If I'm lucky, I can hold out long enough for the hybrids to get through beta testing. (Never buy version 1.0 of anything important.)

What brought this to mind is my watch. It's just a generic cheap Timex -- digital, alarm, backlight that stopped working a few years ago, etc. For a few years I've had to use something stronger and harder than my finger, like the back end of a pen, to push the buttons that set the time. But it's comfortable, and how often do you need to set the time anyway?

Twice a year, of course. And this morning I discovered that a critical button no longer works, and I was stuck in daylight-savings time. Worse than being one hour off, though, is being one hour and a minute or two off, and by the time I was done screwing with it, that was its state. (It could zero the seconds, but not change the minutes or hours.) So, off to the store.

What I really want doesn't seem to exist. I'd prefer a watch with a conventional face and hands, but I want an alarm. (I don't use an alarm often, but I occasionally need it.) Oh well. My new watch is a bit on the ugly side, so maybe I'll be less reluctant to replace it next time. I do not, however, intend to apply that logic to my next car. :-)

Comments

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

My particular ire awakens when I wear out a good product after a rewarding life, and then can't replace it. For example, I bought warm, comfortable, waterproof boots in 1993, and then the company stopped producing that model and then went out of business. I had the boots resoled and the uppers repaired, but eventually they had to be retired, and I can't find anything so nice.

[cellio]

Oh yeah, I hate it when that happens. It's happened to me with coats, shoes, and electronics. Particularly electronics, it seems -- I have yet to find a small, portable tape deck that has both recording quality and playback quality to match the one I bought almost twenty years ago (and that died several years ago). The world moved on to huge honking shoulder-mount boom boxes during the interim.