I have several timeclocks in my life which turn on lighting for security and convenience. They are a pain to maintain because they are always needing to be changed. I don't know if it occurs to the casual observer, but as the seasons change, we go from sunset at around 5 to 5:30 in Winter, all the way to sunset at around 9:00 to 9:30 in the summer. That is over three hours of change, in six months. That's a half-hour each month, actually a little more. Which means that I have to adjust timeclocks about fifteen minutes every two weeks. Or I can bump them a little under ten minutes every single week of the year.
They are very basic mechanical devices, so it isn't really possible to set them in exact increments, so trying to get 7 or 8 minutes of adjustment is not really possible. I just move them a little and hope for the best.
I also have some security lighting which is controlled by photocell. A photocell is a great little device with detects ambient light and switches things on and off based on that. So they never need to be adjusted, as long as you want the lighting to turn on a dusk and off at dawn, you're good. You may have to be sure that the thing is not aimed right at some other source of light, or it can be fooled, but once it is set up and properly adjusted, it just does it's job without further care.
I like that. Something in my life which does it's job without input from me. Something which 'looks around,' adjusts to the changing situation all by itself, and goes right on doing a perfect job. I could use more things like that.
I could stand to be a person like that, as well.
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