[time-nuts] US New Year countdown - accurate?

[Bruce Lane]

	I'm beginning to think this is not an uncommon thing. One of the local TV stations (KING 5) does "New Year's at the Needle" every year, and they always have an on-screen countdown to midnight.

	For as long as I've had GPS-referenced clocks, their count has been off. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow (this year, slow by about 12 seconds).

	You'd think a network broadcast station could afford a simple GPS clock. Apparently not...

	Happy ticking.

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 02-Jan-12 at 12:46 Jim Palfreyman wrote:

>Hi folks,
>
>Ignoring the travesty of a lyric change on John Lennon's classic song, did
>anyone check to see if the clock countdown in Times Square was actually
>accurate?
>
>In times gone past countdowns have been notoriously off (worst I saw was a
>tv personality using his own watch and it was 25 seconds out).
>
>Oh and why we're at it here is my worst time-nut story...
>
>Pulled up in a "Loading Zone 8-6pm" at 18:00:10. Got out, came back 4
>minutes later to find a parking officer giving me a ticket.
>
>Me: "Look at the time (showing my watch) - it's 6:04"
>
>Him: "Not by my watch" (which said 5:59 at that point).
>
>Me (massive sarcasm voice): "So. Let me get this straight. Despite
>worldwide time standards keeping clocks accurate to billionths of a second
>and costing millions of dollars, all that is now been binned and we now
>keep world official time by your watch. Is that right?".
>
>Him: "Bu..."
>
>Me (interrupting and pulling out mobile): "Let's listen to the national
>time standard shall we?" (I dial and put on speaker - his watch is a good
>solid 5 minutes slow).
>
>Him: Walks off screwing up ticket.
>
>The sheer arrogance of the "Not by my watch" comment irks me to this day.
>
>Jim
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy,
Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com
kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m
"Quid Malmborg in Plano..."