A variety of real life phenomena exhibit complex time-inhomogeneous nonlinear diffusive motion in the presence of an external harmonic force. In capturing the characteristics of such dynamics, the class of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes, with its physical time appropriately modulated, has long been regarded as the most relevant model on the basis of its mean reversion property. In this paper, we contrast two similar, yet definitely different, time-changing mechanisms in harmonic force fields by systematically deriving and presenting a variety of key properties all at once, that is, whether or not and how those time-changing mechanisms affect the characteristics of mean-reverting diffusion through sample path properties, the marginal probability density function, the asymptotic degeneracy of increments, the stationary law, the second-order structure, and the ensemble- and time-averaged mean square displacements. Some of those properties turn out rather counter-intuitive due to, or irrespective of, possible degeneracy of time-changing mechanisms in the long run. In light of those illustrative comparisons, we examine whether such time-changing operations are worth the additional operational cost, relative to physically relevant characteristics induced, and deduce practical implications and precautions from modeling and inference perspectives, for instance, on the experimental setup involving those anomalous diffusion processes, such as the observation start time and stepsize when measuring mean square displacements, so as to preclude potentially misleading results and paradoxical interpretations.