Tech support Wednesday: when your atomic clock is off by an hour and 5-6 minutes

My atomic clock is a really old SkyScan model, and it sucks. It's missing the battery case cover, and I've had trouble changing the time zone from PST to MDT. After DST, it got stuck an hour behind, but then again, it's always been stuck on Pacific time. 

I wake up a lot in the middle of the night naturally, and I also set intentions to do so in order to assist with DEILD/WBTB and phasing attempts. I like to know what time it is when I wake up and put it in my dream journal, but my outlet is at the foot of my bed. So I have the atomic clock on my nightstand. 

After dealing with these issues for a few months, I finally reset it myself manually, which was apparently a mistake, because it chimped out. I manually changed it because I was tired of doing subtraction in my head at 2 AM or whatever to check what the time was. Two nights ago, I thought it was 4:15 AM, but it was actually 5:15 AM. So I was falling back into a peaceful sleep and then my alarm went off. 

Thought I fixed it by adjusting it manually again. It worked right for the whole day. 

Last night I woke up and checked the time. 12:32. Nice...plenty of time left to sleep, eh? 

No. I checked my phone and it was 3:26 AM. The clock's busted. It wasn't off by an hour anymore; it was off by an hour and multiple minutes. 

This is an atomic clock...I nearly threw it across the room in frustration because I was so tired. Thankfully, I didn't. But I definitely wanted to. After that, I couldn't get back to sleep because I started stressing over how much less time I had to sleep. Laid there for an hour. At 4:30 AM I said screw it, got up, and went to the gym. My caffeinated Crystal Lite will get me through the day, and maybe I'll get some nice REM rebound tonight to make up for it. 

It appears to have both of the issues listed here. 

Sometimes, for a tech major with both coding and tech support experience, I get frustrated when I have roadblocks like this. As in, I know tech; this shouldn't be happening, at least not to me. But resolving these issues takes time. Over the next day or two max, I'll figure out whether I'm going to invest time in fixing this, or just get a new clock. Thing is, I don't like middle-of-the-night surprises. So if I can rig a fix, I'll use my Kindle for a clock for the next few days, then see if my fix actually worked. But most likely, I'm just going to get a new one. And today, hopefully I manage to stay awake. 

Ideas:
  • I don't think it's an issue with improper reception because it was working fine before; it was just on the wrong time zone. The 5 minutes off, though, is concerning. 
  • It may need new batteries. 
  • I really should figure out how to change the time zone. 
  • I can also try just taking out the old batteries and then putting them back in. But new batteries probably wouldn't hurt. 
  • If I run these fixes and it still is off-sync, it's effectively a brick. Time (ha ha, so punny) for a new clock. 

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