The advantage of my 8 day to charge setup is it's impossible to harm
the batteries. I'll always have fully charged batteries on hand. The
price of the setup is ridiculously low.

When you said a person who set his timer for 2 hours a day would always
have a fresh set of batteries, I assumed you meant to keep them fresh by
charging every day.

Two hours a day, every day.

Well, if a smart charger is smart enough to go into trickle charge,
and stay there, then just how is it that my trickle charger which
trickles considerably less can somehow become dumb and harm
the battery?

How do you decide when to recharge? Did it work before hybrids were
available?

It actually was/is more useful with batteries that have a high self
discharge rate. The batteries are topped off each day.

Panasonic says heat won't hurt NiMH until they reach a temperature where
they vent. I've never seen them nearly that hot. Panasonic says the
cumulative effect of overcharging will damage cells. That's why I like
a charger that senses the voltage drop when a cell is charged.

Again, all this is only pertaining to chargers that charge at a higher
rate. Chargers less than C/10 don't apply. Mine is C/15 at absolute
max, but in reality is more like C/50 once charged.

Eleven years ago I spent about $25 for a fast charger and four AA cells
from the Thompson Company, already mentioned in this thread. I have had
no trouble with those cells or the others I've added to my collection.

I found the mechanical timer at garage sale for 50 cents. The dumb
slow chargers were given to me by not so smart people that discarded
them when they made what they thought was a smart purchase. The
purchase of an expensive smart charger.