One thing that has really amazed me about working at Bentley is just how spread out my company is. Not just in terms of branch offices, but even the various staff members that make up a single team are spread in different cities, even countries and continents. Shortly after my first conference call between myself, the West Coast of the U.S. and the East Coast of India; I realized that being able to quickly know the time in different time zones was going to be a good idea.
Of course, the first thing I think of is those wall clocks over a 60’s news anchor’s shoulder labeled: New York, Los Angeles, London, etc. I thought: I wonder if there’s a desk-sized version of such a thing? Well, there is and to make a long story short: they’re all very expensive. So I figured I’d get crafty and make my own time zone wall clock array.
My wall clock board — made for about $35 (batteries not included).
There’s absolutely nothing fancy about this. I found some 8″, white plastic wall clocks at Office Depot for about $4 each. I’m pretty sure the clerk thought I was crazy when I bought the entire stock of six of them. Anyway, I found a fairly nice corkboard at Hobby Lobby to put them all on. The cork is too thin on the board, but it’s otherwise a nice one that can easily be used for — well, anything else a corkboard can be used for — should the time come when I don’t want the clocks anymore.
Close up detail of the tags. Time Zone highlight maps are taken from the Time & Date preference pane from Mac OS X 10.5.
I mention not wanting the clocks anymore for a good reason. You see, there’s one thing with cheap clocks. It’s not that they don’t keep decent time (they do okay). It’s that they’re noisy. Our office now has a constant “ka-chung-da-da-chunk, ka-chunk-da-da-chunk.” that is getting more than a little annoying.
I knew that was going to be an issue all along, so we’ll see how long it takes to make me go mad. In the meantime, at least I know that I can call Kolkata, India right now without waking anyone up.
especially if the “ka-chunk-da-da-chunk, ka-chunk-da-da-chunk.†is not synchronized — that’d drive me insane. at least to the point of wearing loud headphones all the time. reminds me of that annoying intro to Pink Floyd’s Time; not good, by the way, if you’re listening to Dark Side Of The Moon at night to fall asleep to.