Daylight Saving(s) Time begins tomorrow (03-09-08)

Remember to set your clocks forward one hour early tomorrow morning (those states which observe DST); setting them ahead tonight just before going to bed is quite acceptable too.



{this is a screen I made for my BBS in the mid-1990s}

Thanks for the reminder even though it relates to my last post I totally forgot. Must be all the snow shoveling I did this afternoon. :shakehead :shakehead :shakehead

I wish we'd just pick one time and stick with it. There's clocks everywhere these days. What a pain.

Geoff

Flying Turtle said:

I wish we'd just pick one time and stick with it. There's clocks everywhere these days. What a pain.

Geoff

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Daylight Savings Time was instituted to reduce energy use, which it does.

I think 80% of the clocks that we use in our house automatically adjust for daylight savings, it's quite convenient...

LukeA said:

Daylight Savings Time was instituted to reduce energy use, which it does.

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Not up north. It's not even 7 yet and sun is almost down, so much for saving energy.

LukeA said:

Daylight Savings Time was instituted to reduce energy use, which it does.

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Actually there's at least one study that shows that Daylights Savings Time actually wastes energy:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/green-homes/eco-friendly/daylight-savings-time-energy-460308

But the thing that strikes me as odd is how we use the names "Standard Time" and "Daylight Savings Time". Daylight Savings Time actually takes up the bulk of the calendar year. Standard Time, thanks to DST being extended, now lasts only from the first week of November to the first week of March.

I feel weird today. It always takes a week to adjust. In the fall after it ends, I don't reset my bedside alarm clock for a week so it feels like I'm sleeping in for an hour. Of course tomorrow it will feel like I have to get up an hour early.

This is why I hate it whenever the clocks change...It's 3 am here in CA and I still can't sleep. :thumbsdow

One thing I have never understood about losing and gaining the hour, is how does this get resolved with various things where timestamping is crucial. I see it as more of a problem in the fall...when you have an hour of timestamped activity that is being tracked, then the hour repeats itself with the same times. Did something happen at the first 1:30am or the 2nd 1:30am ? It seems for certain activities that knowing which was which would be crucial....like logging in the arrival of a flight of nuclear tipped cruise missiles at an airport. LOL! Plus it's not observed in Hawaii, U.S. Virgin Islands and several other U.S. Territories....what's up with that?

I lost an hour off my weekend. :sigh:

At least with modern technology, I only had to set my mom's cellphone ahead an hour and still have to set my analog Timex watch too.... Everything else with a clock, they set themselves ahead an hour.

Yup, appliances are one step closer to no longer needing people to run them properly.

LukeA said:

Daylight Savings Time was instituted to reduce energy use, which it does.

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It was instituted to save money on candles. Back in the day, way back in the day, when folks had to work by one of these :candle:; it was a pragmatic idea.

You gained an hour of daylight, thus enabling you to get more work done and using less candles.

When lightbulbs came out, and then became reliable, and then became cheap enough that even poor people could afford to use them.... no one decided to abandon the horribly out of date practice.

A couple of years ago, America convinced Mexico to adopt the practice of daylight savings time. Mexican families were asking why they had to send their children off to school, before the Sun came up. Gee, good question.

Monocrom said:

It was instituted to save money on candles. Back in the day, way back in the day, when folks had to work by one of these :candle:; it was a pragmatic idea.

You gained an hour of daylight, thus enabling you to get more work done and using less candles.

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I hear this over and over... "you gained an hour of daylight", but I don't understand where we got extra daylight. The sun and the earth haven't changed their positions any. We just changed when we get up and go to bed. Any daylight that I gained in the evening was lost in the morning.

For instance, I had to have my lights turned on this morning while getting ready for work, whereas I didn't have to last week.

Maybe my attitude was formed while living in Arizona. Arizona doesn't use DST, and it was just fine. My employer, the USMC, just changed our work hours. Very simple.

It's fine to change work hours, but it drives me nuts when people imply that there is actually more daylight.

Steve K.

Steve K said:

It's fine to change work hours, but it drives me nuts when people imply that there is actually more daylight.

Steve K.

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In this case, "gain" means that you have an hour more of it at the end of the day, than you had before. But as you and I both mentioned, that means getting up before the Sun; at the start of your day.

kinda like burning the candle at the other end.....

I thought you're just "gaining" the hour that you "lose" later on in October.

LukeA said:

Daylight Savings Time was instituted to reduce energy use, which it does.

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It was, but it doesn't.

This was created and made sense in Ben Franklin's day. And worked great through the World wars. Things have changed a bit since then, however... and now it simply benefits retail... BBQ, golf and some others.

Was just thrilled trying to wake my daughter up an hour earlier for shool, and then walking there in the dark. Neat.

If needing more light at one end of the day or another is important... then change your schedule... not everybody's dang clock. Yesterday a patrolman fell asleep at the wheel of his cruiser and killed two bicyclists on the OTHER side of the road. Don't know if we can blame that on DST - but we all know that it screws up our sleep.

Sorry... a bit grumpy this morning. I hate the time changes. I don't care where you set the clocks. Just leave them there all year.

LuxLuthor said:

Plus it's not observed in Hawaii, U.S. Virgin Islands and several other U.S. Territories....what's up with that?

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They're just smarter than the rest of us. :shrug:

If I recall correctly, Indiana doesn't observe it either. They switch from Eastern and Central time zones every time this ridiculous-in-the-modern-age practice is observed by every state around them.

Monocrom said:

If I recall correctly, Indiana doesn't observe it either. They switch from Eastern and Central time zones every time this ridiculous-in-the-modern-age practice is observed by every state around them.

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Actually, the funny thing about Indiana is that some counties observe it, but some don't. That's how they were able to do that study that was mentioned by FrogsInWinter...they compared the households side-by-side with their neighbors or something like that.