Daylight Savings starts this Sunday!!!

[markinalpine]

I happened to notice this on one calender, and double checked another.
Yikes!
Daylight Savings starts this Sunday, 10 March 2013.
Who else thinks this is just too darned early?
Mark

[JerryB]

What is the object of starting so soon?

[Blaine]

I wish we could stay on DST all year.....

[wecsoger]

Heaven help me, please allow me to vent for a few.

We all know that Mr. B. Franklin had original idea on daylight savings time, or more accurately for his time, candle savings time.

Skip forward to now.

More 'n several years ago, (2007) some bright light (sarcasm fully intended!) decided if the original D.S.T. was a good idea, then extending it several weeks longer earlier and later was an even better idea.

Highest tech thing Ben had to deal with was a wagon wheel. Or a flintlock fire control group. None of these care a whit what time it is.

Today is much different - we have millions of devices that depend on or display the time. Many of these needed to be programmed to auto-reset on the *new* times. Tens of thousands of lines of code got changed, firmwares were reflashed, software patches written and released.

A lot of people got rich over the change. But studies made since have shown no real energy savings by starting two weeks earlier and ending two weeks later. Add in the cost of all the changes and it was a huge boondoggle.

And stuck in there is me. I support my company's phone and voice systems nationwide, a hundred plus locations. Many system will have to manually changed on site. Multiple system, I will have to go in Monday (I'm *not* remoting in on Sunday on my own time) and correct the times. And then two weeks from now, when the old D.S.T. changed, I will have to reset them again because these are old systems and can not be patched.

So as you can tell...first, I am not a big fan of the new daylight savings time. And second, I'm not even a fan of the concept in general. As far as I'm concerned let's be like Arizona. They said, 'screw it, we're leaving our clocks alone.'

[jeepnik]

I wish we'd just quit messing with the clocks and stay on standard time. DST may have had a valid reason to exist once, but today it's unneeded.

[Blaine]

Heaven help me, please allow me to vent for a few.

We all know that Mr. B. Franklin had original idea on daylight savings time, or more accurately for his time, candle savings time.

Skip forward to now.

More 'n several years ago, (2007) some bright light (sarcasm fully intended!) decided if the original D.S.T. was a good idea, then extending it several weeks longer earlier and later was an even better idea.

Highest tech thing Ben had to deal with was a wagon wheel. Or a flintlock fire control group. None of these care a whit what time it is.

Today is much different - we have millions of devices that depend on or display the time. Many of these needed to be programmed to auto-reset on the *new* times. Tens of thousands of lines of code got changed, firmwares were reflashed, software patches written and released.

A lot of people got rich over the change. But studies made since have shown no real energy savings by starting two weeks earlier and ending two weeks later. Add in the cost of all the changes and it was a huge boondoggle.

And stuck in there is me. I support my company's phone and voice systems nationwide, a hundred plus locations. Many system will have to manually changed on site. Multiple system, I will have to go in Monday (I'm *not* remoting in on Sunday on my own time) and correct the times. And then two weeks from now, when the old D.S.T. changed, I will have to reset them again because these are old systems and can not be patched.

So as you can tell...first, I am not a big fan of the new daylight savings time. And second, I'm not even a fan of the concept in general. As far as I'm concerned let's be like Arizona. They said, 'screw it, we're leaving our clocks alone.'

That's why they call it "work"

[Lastmohecken]

I hate the change. My internal clock was just getting used to the regular time. It just kills me in the spring, and then when the added daylight would actually be useful for feeding, my cattle, etc in the wintertime, we change it back. Some people have suggested we only move it up 30 minutes and leave it there, forever. I agree. I would gladly give up the 30 minutes of an evening in the summer, for 30 minutes extra in the winter.

I remember when we started doing this stuff when I was a kid and I have hated it ever since. However, it's not about saving energy, in fact it cost energy. What it does is stimulate the economy. People have more leisure time in the spring, summer and fall, for after work stuff like hobbies, so they buy the boat, play softball, golf, etc. A lot of money gets spent and raked in by big business, because we have a little more daylight to burn after work. The person who figured that out was a genius. And more energy not less gets used because we get out more, drive more, etc after work.

[nemhed]

When I moved from the central time zone to Indiana I really appreciated that we didn't participate in DST but that changed a couple years ago. I do like the additional daylight in the evening hours after I get home from work but I still feel it's not natural and it's not necessary, so why should it be dictated to us? It's great if you play golf though, like most politicians.

[Hobie]

Given the way lighting is managed today they should stick with standard time. Don't like the light, adjust your work schedule just as many who must use daylight do.

[AJMD429]

I wish we'd just quit messing with the clocks and stay on standard time. DST may have had a valid reason to exist once, but today it's unneeded.

The correct time should be based on when the sun is directly overhead (make that 'noon'), and if a business or school wants to have special 'summer hours' or 'winter hours' that is fine, but pretending to 'alter TIME' is just plain stupid.

Besides, I'm too lazy to change all the clocks...

[Old Ironsights]

I wish we'd just quit messing with the clocks and stay on standard time. DST may have had a valid reason to exist once, but today it's unneeded.

+1000!E1000

[pshort]

Howdy,
I see it this way; Out where I live, we get up with the sun, eat lunch sometime around "high noon", and go to bed around dark or so.. Don't even need to wear a watch! (Well, that's the way it used to be on the farm!) I don't care for DST either!

Paul

[COSteve]

Done

[wecsoger]

That's why they call it "work"

You're right, but what a waste of my time and thousands of other technicians across the U.S.A. (well, except maybe for Arizona!) who have to maintain old systems.

Energy savings are hard to quantify, but I'm starting to be one of the crowd with no use for the changes. And the changes upon the changes. It's a heckuva different world than it was even twenty years ago.

My previous job was an airline, it was a shipping logistics company. Had a hundred some locations across the U.S. and also several international. Yet we were always having issues with getting some things done on time due to the different time zones. I wanted to see all departments go to "Zulu" time and then let the local people make the conversion. That never worked out.

My current company also has systems in over a hundred locations across the U.S. HQ and where I am, is eastern. It's always a stretch in dealing with our CA locations as we have to wait until ten to eleven in the morning for the main office staff to show up out there.

Bad enough to deal with four time zones, then take on four time changes (old and new DST rules) every year and you can see my crankiness.

So daylight savings time? Meh. I can do without.

[Blaine]

I'm not a computer programmer, but, I built and maintained an ACCESS Data Base. I could "change" any fact or entry on every item with a one minute set up, and a click of the mouse. If I knew what I was doing, I could have written a small program that would have done all that for me at any given time or date. Seriously, educate me why this is not a simple process for all concerned?

[GoatGuy]

Another issue with it staying in effect later in the year is that the kids end up walking to school in dark for a few weeks until it ends.

Kids WALK to school? You're serious, really? That's hilarious. Oh, I get it now. Good one Steve, ...you're quite the comedian.

[1894cfan]

I wish we could stay on DST all year.....

+1

[Chuck 100 yd]

+2

[wecsoger]

I'm not a computer programmer, but, I built and maintained an ACCESS Data Base. I could "change" any fact or entry on every item with a one minute set up, and a click of the mouse. If I knew what I was doing, I could have written a small program that would have done all that for me at any given time or date. Seriously, educate me why this is not a simple process for all concerned?

It's as simple as you say, and harder than you think.

Example. Older Avaya phone systems, Definity G350, G700 and a small herd S8100's. These guys have the DST rules embedded in the operating system. All well and good, but they are the *old* DST rules, not the extended DST system we're using now.

For these systems, they went end of life for Avaya in the mid to late 2000's, and no more software support thereafter. So being able to upgrade my systems ain't happenin'. And Avaya wants everyone off these old systems anyway so there's no incentive anyway for support. Obviously they want you to buy new. (by the way, that's why we're installing Cisco phones now)

It's the older industrial systems with the time rules built into the firmware that these issues really affect.

We could tell the users just to ignore the time display on their phones but we have schedules that run to control call flow. So twice in the spring and twice in the fall I'd have customer calls going to the wrong places for an hour at a time every year if we didn't reset them. (the management types get all tore up over stuff like that)

[Blaine]

I'm not a computer programmer, but, I built and maintained an ACCESS Data Base. I could "change" any fact or entry on every item with a one minute set up, and a click of the mouse. If I knew what I was doing, I could have written a small program that would have done all that for me at any given time or date. Seriously, educate me why this is not a simple process for all concerned?

It's as simple as you say, and harder than you think.

Example. Older Avaya phone systems, Definity G350, G700 and a small herd S8100's. These guys have the DST rules embedded in the operating system. All well and good, but they are the *old* DST rules, not the extended DST system we're using now.

For these systems, they went end of life for Avaya in the mid to late 2000's, and no more software support thereafter. So being able to upgrade my systems ain't happenin'. And Avaya wants everyone off these old systems anyway so there's no incentive anyway for support. Obviously they want you to buy new. (by the way, that's why we're installing Cisco phones now)

It's the older industrial systems with the time rules built into the firmware that these issues really affect.

We could tell the users just to ignore the time display on their phones but we have schedules that run to control call flow. So twice in the spring and twice in the fall I'd have customer calls going to the wrong places for an hour at a time every year if we didn't reset them. (the management types get all tore up over stuff like that)

Gotcha

[tom deinek]

Not all AZ remains on standard time.

[Lastmohecken]

When I was a kid, my parents milked cows and sold to Kraft Foods. But they also had jobs. So, my dad always milked cows of morning before he drove the school bus. And I can tell the cows didn't like the time change either. I wonder if that didn't play into why we switched to beef cattle a couple of years later. We worked a whole lot harder and longer back then to make a living.