Installing door locks and repairing our so-called "space clock" were both necessary activities before I could get back to building the earthbag walls of our new home to be. The foundation-mounted doors had been originally set up without lock or latch, and the satellite-capable kitchen clock had several buttons go on strike as November 1, 2009, rolled around.

The door locks were worth mentioning primarily because Kwikset had come up with some different design features, the most prominent (and important) being in the way their deadbolt hits the door frame recess to lock home inhabitants in safely at night. I've been installing deadbolts in doors for a lot of years but had never before seen the current arrangement. For those of you who may tell me it's been around for the past umpteen years, well, admittedly it's been a little while since I did one...at least one that had been newly purchased. It was only last July (or thereabouts) when the new camp trailer door was built and a Brinks deadbolt lock installed, but that Brinks had been floating around in our "stuff" for years, so....

Anyway, here are the key points regarding Kwikset's admittedly awesome design:

1. The striker plate receiving the deadbolt is no longer just a striker plate; it's an entire "bolt cup" made to house the extended portion of the bolt in a complete metal casing. It doesn't look like a home intruder would have the slightest chance of breaking through that casing; the only possibility would be to rip the framing wood so that the entire bolt and receiver burst through into the dwelling space.

2. To strengthen the arrangement and make that wood-bursting more difficult if not impossible, the receiver is mounted with not two but three screws...and those screws are long buggers. Additionally, the "third screw" seats not at the striker plate but in the deepest face of the metal housing, anchoring the installation quite nicely and then some. In fact, even the two screws beginning at the striker face were more than long enough to penetrate both the door frame itself plus the 2" x 12" casement planking.

Summary: If anybody tackles these locks hard enough to bust into our house, they're some serious folks--serious enough that more than mere passive defense will be required. We're impressed.

When our space clock refused to reset properly, my wife was upset. She relies on this thing. Sure, she's got a cell phone, but those are little numbers and who knows where she last left her glasses? The trouble began when November 1 rolled around: According to the timepiece, it was October 1, and the year was wrong as well. Go figure.

After I'd messed with it for a while and (of course) had no more success than Pam, it was time to get out a screwdriver and tear the thing apart. Sure, it came from Wal-Mart a few years ago. They no doubt have something similar today. So? We're just plain too old to toss 'em if we can fix 'em, disposable society or not.

It wasn't really by design that our "work table" turned out to be a copy of Glenn Beck's new book,Arguing With Idiots. Just happened that way. Pretty hard to catch me without one book or another close at hand. The Gathering Storm, the latest volume by Robert Jordan (via Brandon Sanderson) even made it partway into one photo.

Anyway...

The first obvious thing was discovering the source of the rattling noise that shouldn't have been there: A loose piece of green plastic with no visible reason whatsoever for showing up inside a clock casing. Bonus from the manufacturer.

Then the real reason for our problems jumped right out at us: Behind the buttons there is a "backing board" which holds all of the contact points for the four set-the-clock buttons...but it was no longer contained by its four little plastic retainer clips. We'd already tried replacing the batteries to no effect, yet they may have begun the troubles, after which one (or both) of us had no doubt pushed the buttons so hard (trying to make the fleepin' things work, ya know) that we'd literally popped the board out of the retainers.

Or maybe not. Those clips seemed to hold that thing pretty securely after it was snapped back into place. Could the board have been installed incorrectly at the factory, one or more corner not quite fully snapped into its clip?

We'll never know...nor do we care. The reassembled clock works as advertised, each button smoothly making the changes it is designed to make.

Bonus: With the new batteries installed and the clock back on the wall, the numerals seem much brighter, easier to read. Guess the old batteries really did need changing.

Downside: No more excuses. Bag to shoveling dirt into bags...:D