Mystery

I had pretty much reached the conclusion, last night, that my brain cells had reached the asynchronous point where stupidity had won the upper hand. The thing is, I’m still not sure.

Remember that atomic clock the lad received for Christmas? It came with a manual the size of a telephone book. The easy part was plugging it in. Suddenly all the little gizmos on the screen sprang to life and it caught the signal from Colorado. Presto! The time and date and day set themselves perfectly. But so did the outside temperature.

Wait, I thought. Isn’t the remote device supposed to set the outside temperature? Well, maybe it was. There were batteries in it. But it wasn’t doing anything. Just sat there with nothing on the LCD screen.

I watched the outside temperature on the clock’s screen decrease another 2/10ths of a degree.

I unscrewed the back cover of the remote temperature signal sending device and took out the batteries. The clock decreased another 1/10th of a degree.

I put new batteries in the remote temperature signal sending device. It registered 68.7 degrees. The clock screen registered 21.4 degrees. But, suddenly, the inside temperature reading on the clock snapped to 68.7 degrees.

Something wasn’t right. Obviously.

Well, I would like to say that I solved the mystery. But I didn’t.

The batteries still sit on the desk beside the remote temperature signal sending device. And the clock is still registering a very accurate outside temperature. It appears to be registering an accurate inside temperature, too.

Which leads me to believe that it’s picking up a signal from someplace else. From where, I have no idea. Nor do I have any idea why it refuses to pick up the signal from the remote temperature signal sending device that came with the clock.

But...I guess the clock is doing what it’s supposed to do. Somehow.