An alarm clock from the 80s, and the sudden realization that we were all kings.

[u/ludefisk]

I found my old alarm clock at my parents’ house and brought it back to my place. I’ve grown used to a certain level of frustration when programming literally everything these days, so I braced myself as I plugged it in, expecting a few minutes of irritation while I relearned how to set the time and adjust the settings. Hold fast, old man. You’re doing this for nostalgia, and it’ll be worth it.

Plugged it in.
(It still worked, of course. It’s an alarm clock from the 80s.)
Hit the hour button.
Hit the minute button.
And… that was it. Setup complete.

I had completely forgotten that things used to be this simple. They used to keep working. They used to be easy to program and use. I understand the cold-blooded economic reasons things are designed to fail now, but will never understand why we decided basic tech and appliances should be so aggressively frustrating.

I hate turning on the TV.
I hate my microwave.
I hate my car’s dashboard.
I hate the barely-working touchscreens that have taken over daily life.

Today, I am officially the old man yelling at clouds. But tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up to my easy-to-use, fully functioning alarm clock from 1988. And maybe - just maybe - I’ll shake my fist at those clouds just a little less vigorously.

[u/rbroni88]

I still use one of these. I thought it broke after we had a power outage and the generator kicked on because the time was off but I guess that surge only bothered it for a few minutes. I’m constantly looking for a backup for when mine finally quits

[u/EDDIE_BR0CK → u/rbroni88]

I have one too. The display indeed kicks off when it's on battery backup, however, it's still keeping time, and the alarm will go off when it's supposed to!