Why did the previous owner ever remove the card in the first place if they knew it broke things?

“No worries, I’ll hit HN’s front page instead” - much more fun!

Nice writeup. But IIUC you can change it so that it automatically updates the time every 6 months?

I started using an "engineering notebook" for things like that. They are called other things in other lines of work or school (lab notebook, captain's log, ...). In an actual engineering notebook, you would use a sewn binding where you can't add or remove pages, the pages are numbered, you have an index in the front, entries are made in strictly chronological order, you'd have someone else witness and sign pages, draw a diagonal line across empty areas so you can't remove things, only cross things out with a single line, etc. All that because you might need to prove you invented something and other legal CYA reasons. Most of these requirements, you don't need for personal projects, though. But the things that are useful: keeping track of projects, what settings you've tried, what the results were, and so on. That way you don't have to reproduce it from scratch again later. "What settings did I need use to create the gerber files in kicad for manufacturing? How did I set ___ in the oscilloscope? What parts did I use to make that thing? What things did I wish I had checked last time? Where did I put those files?" You can also print things out and tape them in for reference.

MEMORY.md is your friend.

This question was certainly asked during a meeting 30 years ago and the answer was "don't worry about it".

My very technical and hands on father used to have us set the VCR clock, the controls were in a tiny compartment under a flap that required either small fingers, or very careful manipulation with the point of a protractor or something.

We went from difficult to manipulate buttons through to multi-function buttons where controls get hidden through some incomprehensible maze of menu options, to now where it sometimes feels lucky if you even get an option to manually set the time at all.

I'm reminded of an old commercial depicting kids taunting another kid by asking "What time is it at Billy's house? 12 O'Clock! 12 O'Clock! 12 O'Clock!" Might have been a Blockbuster commercial? I can't remember.

I was told by our school electrician that long ago the clocks were adjusted by the power company. So around 2am DST they would either send power at 59Hz* to fall back or 61Hz* to spring forward. This was from the era when power grids were separate and analog. With newer national grid-tie it might not even be possible to do now.

It's crazy they didn't have a centralized clock system in a facility like that. What a thing to scrimp on.

I worked in a Network Operations Center in the early 1990s, and there was a large projection display with four other monitors around it. Across the top were four round analog clocks, representing the time zones of the United States. I was one of four operators, all in our 20s.

So, Daylight Savings Time ended, and the early-morning operator had all the clocks set by the time I arrived, and the third operator came in, looked at them, and said "Great! So, did you take all four of them down and adjust the time individually?" "Yeah" "Didn't think about taking one off the end, adjusting it, and moving the others down the row?" *facepalm*