My VCR is confused

Leap day weirdness? I've always heard "spring forward, fall back" as the saying to remind folks which way to adjust clocks when daylight saving time kicks in or out. I've never heard any corollaries urging me to "leap" in any particular direction time-wise, however...

I always do weekly tapings of favorite shows (even if I plan on watching them in real time) because you never know when the phone will ring or some other interruption may occur. So if something comes up I don't have to worry about missing a good/key episode or, worse, possibly being rude to someone because I want to get back to what I was watching. (BTW, no need to inform me about Tivo and other such new-fangled options. As I've mentioned on many occasions, I'm not exactly on the forefront of the technological curve when it comes to my TV viewing.)

Usually I manage to catch things when they're aired, but last night I wasn't feeling that great due to a slight head cold so my scheduled taping came in handy as I just didn't worry about catching my thursday night shows, Lost and Eli Stone. There's nothing I watch fridays these days, so I figured I'd watch the tape tonight.

You're probably thinking I'm going to say that the VCR didn't tape the shows, right? Wrong. It recorded them fine. I have the VCR set to record ABC thursdays 9-11 PM. It's been that way since Eli Stone started up several weeks ago and I found I liked it a lot. I mention this only to underscore the point that my weekly taping schedule for thursday night has been in place for a while and I haven't adjusted it lately.

So tonight I was catching up on what I'd missed and was about three quarters of the way through Eli Stone when the VCR's on-screen display starts flashing the warning that a timer recording is set to begin soon (in five minutes), so I should turn the VCR off for it to record properly. The time was 8:55. I was baffled because I knew I didn't have anything scheduled to tape on a friday night.

I quickly fast forwarded the tape to beyond the end of last night's Eli Stone and then shut the VCR off (thus engaging the timer) so it could start to record whatever it was apparently going to record tonight. I just wanted to see what channel it would be taping. Turns out it was ABC, but of course it wasn't anything I was interested in, so I cancelled the recording and then looked into things further.

My VCR thinks that today is THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28th again! Weird. Obviously last night was thursday because it recorded the shows I was in the middle of watching. And yet the day is apparently repeating itself. (Hey, it's Leap Day, not Groundhog Day! Is this how the deja vu thing started for Bill Murray?)

The broadcast time signal must be in error for some reason, though I can't imagine why since I would think it would be automated. I even unplugged/replugged the VCR, thus letting the auto-clock feature grab the time from the local broadcast signal again, but it still thinks today is thursday, February 28th. I seem to recall having noticed similar time/date issues in the past when beginning or ending daylight saving time, but any such discrepancies were corrected within maybe a half day or so.

I'm curious to see what day the VCR thinks it is tomorrow (soon). If this problem is due to an issue with the broadcast clock signal, I hope it's corrected by monday when I'm scheduled to record the season finale of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. If I must I can always turn the VCR's auto-clock feature off and just set the date and time manually. But for now it's not a major issue and I'm optimistic that the problem, whatever the cause, will magically and quickly resolve itself.

Ironically, the last couple of Lost episodes—and particularly last night's!—are beginning to delve into matters of physics and some sort of time distortion/perception effects. Hmmm...

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Quick update: I posted this not too long before midnight, so I'm waiting now to check what day the VCR thinks it is once midnight rolls around, aaaaand... it's showing FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 29th even though it's now saturday, March 1st.

And in other late-breaking time-related distortions, now I'm really, really, really confused for I just checked the date on my watch and it's showing today as March 2nd! What?!?! (Granted, it's just a cheap-o digital from Wal-Mart, but still...)

Yeah, I'm beginning to think the Lost time distortion effect is indeed propagating into my reality. But on the bright side my VCR and wristwatch are at least averaging out to the correct date!

I just tried Googling for some background info on how the auto-clock feature works and I came across this interesting item, "Does anybody really know what time it is?," detailing some similar confusion and frustration with the process. The article also briefly mentions how it's supposed to work.

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Final update, 2:30 AM: I just had a thought based on my reading up on the subject that I could go into my VCR settings and tell the auto-clock feature to try to get the info from a specific PBS channel. Well, since I don't usually go into that area of the menu settings, I had a little difficulty figuring what buttons to push to navigate the settings. I ended up in a mode where it thought I was manually setting the time myself. I then figured out how to turn the auto-clock feature back on and just left it to search for the signal on any channel for a first try. It didn't take long before it had the time displayed and a quick check of the date shows it as SATURDAY, MARCH 1st. Yay!

So problem solved. I'll probably never know why it was messed up for a day, only that it definitely was messed up. I'm thinking it's no coincidence that it seems to have been triggered by Leap Day, though I have no idea why that should matter.