Young hearts can go their way

The radio-controlled clock, after working all right for a day or two, froze at some randomly selected time. I swapped out the battery and pressed the button that was supposed to just advance it until I could stop it at the correct time. It ratcheted at full speed only while I was holding the button down, which is an okay way to advance things a little bit, but a rotten way to advance it anything significant. The auto-setting time sweeps something like twelve times normal clock speed, so, you see how long advancing it three hours (or whatever) would take.

I still suspect batteries, and set the one we had back on the charger. Last night after an extremely long pinball league night (report to follow) I set the battery back in and the thing started, eventually, looking for the time signal. Or it decided it was in ratchet ahead until I hit the button mode. There's no way of knowing. This morning I got up to find it was at the right time. So I set it on the wall for bunny_hugger's delight. Now, six hours later, it still has the right time, but I do not understand why or have any idea how long it's going to last.

Going to pause on the woodpecker photographs a moment, so I can share pictures from the last pinball league night. Not this week's, that of ... a month ago now. It's going to make some things easier for me is all.

The catastrophic malfunction that got Game Of Thrones out of action: the flipper button broke off. Whoops.

Press flipper to pay respect. The pinball machines are turned off, and pulled away from the wall, to avoid some leaks in the ceiling (with a warm-up and a lot of rain there was all the water in the world coming through the roof). But it accidentally looks like the games are paying tribute to Junk Yard, which is almost fitting since the game's designer Barry Oursler had just died.

And some post-game nonsense: I managed to get a pinball stuck on Ghostbusters, behind this little clip that holds some of the props on the playfield. Like, it shouldn't even be possible to get the ball here and yet there it was. Unfortunately RED had gone home for the night so we couldn't open the game to set it free. I had to pull the table up and shake it, tilting out. Had a decent game anyway, turns out.

Trivia: In 1813 the United States Congress authorized the Post Office to send mail by steamboat. Source: The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life, Wayne E Fuller.

Currently Reading: Across The Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings, Earl Swift.

PS: What I Wrote About In My Little 2021 Mathematics A to Z, a list of things I'd half forgotten I wrote about.