Watch out, it's getting worse
Monday, June 30th, 2025 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flwydLast year I noticed that almost all the velcro hooks on my Timex Expedition watch band had been torn out. This wasn't entirely surprising; I've been taking the watch off every night and putting it on every morning for more than a decade. At one point I thought the battery had died, so I unscrewed the back to find out what coin cell number it had; when I reassembled it I discovered that merely repositioning the battery gave it several years more life.
I checked the Timex website, which has product listings for dozens of straps, almost all of which were marked as unavailable. I entered my email to be notified when the strap was back in stock, but six months later the velcro had become dangerously un-clingy and still no luck, so I bought a new watch of the same model. I think it cost $50, and I'm pretty sure I paid about $20 for the original in the early 2010s, so there's an inflation datum for you.
The new watch works the same, except I noticed the Indiglo feature wasn't very helpful: it illuminated the LCD, but just as a big glowing rectangle: no digits were visible. Still, a functional watch in daytime or dusk.
Earlier this month I attended a pagan event in the California redwoods. Wanting to check the time while singing songs around the campfire, I hit the Indiglo button on my year-old watch, but this time it erased most of the LCD segments on the face, leaving behind something resembling an inverted L|. Fortunately, I kept the non-clingy watch in my ham radio bag, with time set to UTC. I was able to switch watches for the remainder of the trip, careful to ensure that disconnecting velcro didn't come off my arm entirely.
Back at home, I unscrewed the back of the new watch. I removed the battery, which has a significantly more complicated placement than the previous decade's model. It also requires shorting the battery to the rest of the watch, which I've yet to successfully do, so I've now got a non-functional watch. But fortunately, this meant I had a new watchband I could put on my perfectly-functional old-watch. Still waiting for an email on Timex about the ability to do this the easy way…
I checked the Timex website, which has product listings for dozens of straps, almost all of which were marked as unavailable. I entered my email to be notified when the strap was back in stock, but six months later the velcro had become dangerously un-clingy and still no luck, so I bought a new watch of the same model. I think it cost $50, and I'm pretty sure I paid about $20 for the original in the early 2010s, so there's an inflation datum for you.
The new watch works the same, except I noticed the Indiglo feature wasn't very helpful: it illuminated the LCD, but just as a big glowing rectangle: no digits were visible. Still, a functional watch in daytime or dusk.
Earlier this month I attended a pagan event in the California redwoods. Wanting to check the time while singing songs around the campfire, I hit the Indiglo button on my year-old watch, but this time it erased most of the LCD segments on the face, leaving behind something resembling an inverted L|. Fortunately, I kept the non-clingy watch in my ham radio bag, with time set to UTC. I was able to switch watches for the remainder of the trip, careful to ensure that disconnecting velcro didn't come off my arm entirely.
Back at home, I unscrewed the back of the new watch. I removed the battery, which has a significantly more complicated placement than the previous decade's model. It also requires shorting the battery to the rest of the watch, which I've yet to successfully do, so I've now got a non-functional watch. But fortunately, this meant I had a new watchband I could put on my perfectly-functional old-watch. Still waiting for an email on Timex about the ability to do this the easy way…
