When Congress decided to move Daylight Saving Time to three weeks earlier, they were hoping that having it stay light later might save millions of dollars in fuel costs.
Never mind that some businesses stand to gain as well. People who make money from the sort of golf stand to make $150 million (about $200 million/month) in golf equipment and greens fees, and the barbecue people will sell about $75 million more in equipment and fuel.
But did they think it through? This early change is already being blamed for the fact that my Outlook calendar at work shows a meeting time time an hour off from the time in the subject heading of the email asking me if I can make the meeting. I wonder how many millions in screwed-up meetings this will cost over three weeks. Not just mine, I mean.
In addition to resetting all your clocks and appliances, unless you have a brand new computer, you may have to reset the clock on the computer, your cell phone, and any other electronic gadgets you have with clocks on them. Then you may have to remember to reset them again in three weeks, when your computer decides to do a time change on its own.
So not only will you lose an hour of weekend at 2 AM Sunday, you'll likely waste another hour trying to find the manual telling you how to reset your Blackberry. Not to mention actually doing it.
Other time-sensitive things like online trading or banking, or (gasp) setting your Tivo will be affected as well.
May as well just shut yourself in a sensory-deprivation chamber for three weeks.
Cheers.
[Image via Andrew Vanden Huevel's Astronomy Pictures]
i just lost my hour right before reading this.
but your sparkling prose made me feel the time had flown by all the faster.
Posted by: lisa | March 11, 2007 at 03:57 AM
.. Americans, you always want to be different ;) We still have a week and a half to go before clock-changing time :)
Posted by: Scholiast | March 14, 2007 at 05:08 AM