Metropolitan Diary: Correct Time, and Parking Time I rarely if ever wear a wristwatch. When I am walking with friends I often ask what the time is, to my friends" great annoyance. New York City, however, has come to my rescue with the installation of the Muni-Meters. These wonderful boxes appear on every block and contain a window with the current time. Recently, walking up Madison Avenue around East 76th, across the street from the Carlyle Hotel, I looked at the time and it read 2:09. Even without a watch, I knew that this could not be correct, for my internal clock said it should be between 12 and 1 o'clock. I approached the Muni-Meter on the next block and it said 1:13. Again, I knew this could not be correct, and it was troubling to me that the two Muni-Meters, just one block apart, could be so wrong and so different. I had always assumed that these wonderful devices were connected somewhere with WiFi, or how else could they process credit cards? And thus a time reset would be a simple matter, just as it is on my home computer. And now with these obviously incorrect times, I thought of the poor souls who I had just watched get parking receipts out of both meters and place them in their cars. They most likely never looked at the times printed and would be very upset to return and find a parking ticket for having overstayed the time limit. As I was having these thoughts, and still staring at the screen showing 1:13, right before my eyes it changed to 12:29. Now I guess I was correct and they do use WiFi to update the clock. But with such inaccurate clocks in the machines, maybe they should be resetting the time more frequently.