Tag Archives: iPhone

For a while now, I’ve been wanting one of those alarm clocks that you set your iPod in and wakes you to your music.  My current alarm clock is spiffy and all, but the radio reception is limited to a Spanish station and Santa Rosa’s The Mix 104.9, featuring Bob & Sheri in the morning. 

0450 hours is not really the best time for me to fully appreciate the overly cheerful sounds of mariachi, so Bob & Sheri it is. They’re okay. It is the local traffic reporter that chimes in every 10 minutes that shocks my system. 

There is something inherently evil about the morning show producer for 104.9fm.  Or perhaps the station manager, although I haven’t noticed the problem during other times of the day, so it’s probably the morning show producer.  Either he or she is evil or insane.  The station has gone through at least three different morning traffic reporters, which isn’t really that bad considering the diabolical plan the producer/manager has in store for them.  They all start out with a pleasant, professional sounding radio voice…but as the weeks progress, they begin to cause me to hyperventilate. 

Honestly, my chest begins to hurt just thinking about it.  The reporters go from speaking normally one week to what I can only describe as sounding like they are inhaling the final word of each sentence.  Not only inhaling it, but actually gulping it and ending that gulp in an uplifted, squeaky protest of the ridiculously unnatural speaking mannerism being thrust upon them by someone with power over them.  If it only happened with one particular reporter, I would have never noticed there was evil afoot.  But once the second and third reporter came on who originally sounded normal but began slowly morphing into up-speaking, word gulping radio robotrons, it became clear.  There is an evil overlord in power over at that station toying with his minions.  And toying  with by proxy all of the listeners whose own breathing becomes affected by empathetic, subconscious mimicry. And I can no longer be a party to it.

So this brings us back to my quest for one of those iPhone/iPod alarm clocks.  While shopping at Costco, I thought I’d take a walk down that aisle to see what they had in that arena. 

Rule #1 of Costco- Lists are silly. Budgets are silly. Sticking to the list or budget is futile.  You must always leave with more than you intended.

Of course Costco had them.  I bought two, one for each of us.  Being the lower model of the ones offered, it is supposed to be simple.  SUPPOSED to be simple.  But some buttons will do one thing one way and then another thing another way depending on the sequence of buttons pressed before hand. Sometimes the iPhone icon lights up when my phone is docked, sometimes it doesn’t.  I can’t figure out why.

It’s been two nights with my new iHome P11 Alarm clock and we just haven’t bonded.  Mutual trust has not yet been established.  It’s hard to fully trust something you haven’t fully figured out yet.   This lack of trust is preventing me from getting any kind of quality sleep, since I have to constantly check the alarm clock throughout the night.  Which is the exact opposite of what the alarm clock’s sole purpose in life is.  While it hasn’t let me down, part of its job is to be reassuring, right?  

It doesn’t help that my other alarm clock is sitting in the Goodwill bag ”tsk-tsking” and “I told you so“-ing me.

Has anyone been through this with their alarm clock?  Do you have any experience with the iHome P11 alarm clock?  And for the love of all things radio, will someone conquer that evil overlord at The Mix 104.9 in Santa Rosa and free the mouths & lungs of the traffic reporters (and by proxy, the listeners)?  What is up with that?

That is all.