Bad Combos: Lawmakers, Technology, & DLS Time
If watching all 3 “Back To The Future” movies was supposed to teach us anything, it's that people shouldn't tinker with time. Nor should anyone modify DMC-12s without serious contemplation of the consequences, but perhaps attempting to treat time like a toy was perhaps the more serious message.
Apparently nobody got this message out to the good people in the U.S. Congress, and their 2005 change to the daylight savings system has caused all kinds of havoc. Thankfully nothing along the lines of Armageddon-esque/Y2K-horror story events seem to have happened, but rather plenty of small things seem to have gone wrong. Here are a few interesting stories about such events:
“At least from a quick survey of folks in the newsroom, minor glitches still seemed to abound. One of our editors got in her family's Mercedes C320 on Sunday and was surprised to find herself ahead of schedule. "We were startled," she said. "We thought we were suddenly an hour early."
Another co-worker had his Treo shift back to daylight saving time. As a result, he set all his clocks back an hour and strolled into work a bit late Monday, though looking quite well rested. He realized something was amiss when he noticed his neighbors leaving for work an hour earlier than normal. "The extra hour of sleep was awesome," he said. (For the record, Palm did post an update to its Web site some time ago to fix the issue.)
Yet another colleague was woken an hour early by his BlackBerry Curve, which he uses as an alarm clock. Other BlackBerry-toters also reported issues, though RIM has also been posting warnings on its Web site.“
Perhaps a new law needs to be made that requires lawmakers to plan changes to DLS several more years in advance, as apparently almost 2 years notice wasn't enough to avoid these troubles.
Did you experience any difficulties or even know about the change? Or do you think that perhaps it's about time we got rid of the whole daylight savings concept?
Apparently nobody got this message out to the good people in the U.S. Congress, and their 2005 change to the daylight savings system has caused all kinds of havoc. Thankfully nothing along the lines of Armageddon-esque/Y2K-horror story events seem to have happened, but rather plenty of small things seem to have gone wrong. Here are a few interesting stories about such events:
“At least from a quick survey of folks in the newsroom, minor glitches still seemed to abound. One of our editors got in her family's Mercedes C320 on Sunday and was surprised to find herself ahead of schedule. "We were startled," she said. "We thought we were suddenly an hour early."
Another co-worker had his Treo shift back to daylight saving time. As a result, he set all his clocks back an hour and strolled into work a bit late Monday, though looking quite well rested. He realized something was amiss when he noticed his neighbors leaving for work an hour earlier than normal. "The extra hour of sleep was awesome," he said. (For the record, Palm did post an update to its Web site some time ago to fix the issue.)
Yet another colleague was woken an hour early by his BlackBerry Curve, which he uses as an alarm clock. Other BlackBerry-toters also reported issues, though RIM has also been posting warnings on its Web site.“
Perhaps a new law needs to be made that requires lawmakers to plan changes to DLS several more years in advance, as apparently almost 2 years notice wasn't enough to avoid these troubles.
Did you experience any difficulties or even know about the change? Or do you think that perhaps it's about time we got rid of the whole daylight savings concept?
