I'm kind of a time geek. Craig, on your new linux box, here's another idea. Run a time server that constantly syncs with some atomic clock timer servers. Then all the windows/mac machines in your house can set their windows clocks off of the time server which would be accurate to the second.
http://www.linuxho...4_:_The_NTP_Server Then you go set the VCR, oven, coffee pot, alarm clock, watch, etc to the time. Having the whole house synced is pretty nice.