Kurt McKee

lessons learned in production

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Hey there! This article was written in 2005.

It might not have aged well for any number of reasons, so keep that in mind when reading (or clicking outgoing links!).

Alarm clocks have bugs?!

Posted 7 December 2005 in technology

Yesterday I rediscovered a bug in my alarm clock's programming. I knew it existed, but I hadn't encountered it for a while, so I thought it would be fun to document the bug here. The alarm clock is made by Brookstone (model

331702).

Under normal usage, you press and hold either the Alarm or Time button and then press either the Hour or Minute button to increment the time. Pressing and holding the Hour or Minute buttons has no effect on the current time nor the alarm time.

However, if you hold down the Hour button and only then press Alarm, the current time increases as well! The Minute button doesn't have the same effect, just the Hour button. Crazy, huh?

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