Alarm clocks

I have had various alarm clocks over the years.  Currently I have a Bose Wave that usually works well.  It's one that I married into and it has numerous nice features, such as two different alarm settings.  That works well as my wife and I get up at different times.  It also sounds pretty good too, on the rare occasion we play CD's or the radio.

Another nice feature and one that I really appreciate, is the gradual ramping up of volume of the alarm, therefore not jarring one out of sound sleep and starting the day off badly.  The snooze time is adjustable as well, which is great, because I, to my wife's chagrin, am a snooze alarmer.  I sometimes think that I get the best sleep in between alarms.
As much as I like this alarm clock, I have noticed over the last few years that it occasionally decides not to work.  Most notably if the alarm is not turned off and then back on, it may not trip when it is due.  Something must have gone wrong in the sequence of the smoke circuits last night/ this morning because my wife woke me about and hour and a half after the alarm should have gone off.  Grrrrr.

So I sprang out of bed, dashed through my morning routine and headed down the road to work.
Usually I have a pretty flexible schedule because most times I work independently.  That is to say that there is no one watching when we come and go (typically) and there is no time clock to punch.  This morning was not one of those independent work days.  I had gotten sucked back into a prior project to help make some repairs to an item that failed.
Even though I was later getting to work than usual, I wasn't as late as I expected.  And that got me to a sad realization about my job and it's location.  I wasn't so much concerned about being late.  What annoyed me was that by being and hour and a half later than usual meant that I was going to be in much more traffic, which meant the increased odds of being at the whim of the consequences of some idiot's poor driving skills.
But fortunately my concerns never materialized and except for a considerable amount more traffic, I arrived at work with no incidents.  Glad this didn't happen yesterday when we had a bit of freezing rain.