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I’ve been calling it “Daylight Stupid Time” for years.

Back in the days when computers were powered by whale oil and steam (early 70s to be honest), we didn’t have fancy networked clocks, nor did the operating systems have a facility to keep track of Coordinated Universal Time or anything like it. In order to advance the clock the spring, we would power down these multi-million dollar machines (and a million dollars was real money 45 years ago), and change the clock first thing on power up. How stupid is that?

Well, I’ve got something even stupider. In the fall we’d power down the machines and then wait for an hour before turning them back on. That way no tasks would have a chance to end before they started. I am not making this up. Stupid time. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

By golly, lambs sure are cute!

My whole life I’ve been puzzled that most people are really affected by a time change of an hour. To be honest, it took a number of years before I actually believed it was real and not just whining or a psychosomatic effect. I don’t get jet lag, either. It’s probably because I’m just never sure what time it is, so officially changing the clock is just a mechanical change to me.

I remember having a temper tantrum and refusing to go to bed an hour earlier, I must have been around 5 or 6. The injustice still stings. It was one of the first inklings i ever had that I was not quite so important in the big scheme of things. Bastards.

Um. OT–and if you’ve covered this in a recent discussion forgive me, and feel free to point me there. I’ve been focused elsewhere and not able to visit.
What’s up with the “we recommend” thing at the bottom of the box that pops up when you hover over the number of votes on a comment? Those are old discussions they are recommending. But they recommend me the same three, no matter whose comment I’ve liked in what discussion (yeah, I went and liked something in another discussion). Dunno if it holds constant over time …

AliceH- when I lived in the south, I remember being amused that my northern cousins were so put out by the time changes. Living well north of the Mason-Dixon Line these days (Boston), I get my cousins’ angst. With the spring change, I get light in the morning (sunrise is around 4:30 in June) to light in the evening (sunset is close to 9pm). With the fall change, I get dark in the morning (sunrise approaches 7:30) while sunset is 4:30). The cycles would be less extreme if we picked a time and stayed with it, but the sudden shifts are quite jarring and disruptive to the psyche.

There’s noise here in CA to do away with the change, which I sincerely hope they do. But at least my car is finally correct again. 😜

I also wish they would get rid of the time change. I work from home these days, so it’s less of an annoyance, but it’s still a pointless irritant…the powers that be making us jump through hoops because they’re in charge and have a burning need to prove it to us twice a year.

I’d just as soon go to DST year-round, or split the difference and change it by 1/2 hour once and for all.

Even though I’m retired now, I don’t like them getting on my lawn and screwing with my circadian rhythm.

“My whole life I’ve been puzzled that most people are really affected by a time change of an hour. ”

Uncle Al -perhaps you’d be willing to undertake explaining to our house cat that getting his breakfast an hour late is really no big deal….

Thanks!

The change in time has not bothered me this year, but it sure is hard on Husband. He goes to bed at 9pm and gets up a 4a, and being jerked around by an obsolete and artificial “time” change makes him very grumpy.

The semi-annual switch is an unnecessary inconvenience. I wish we could stay on Daylight Saving Time permanently. During winter, nightfall is too early. I can handle going to work in the dark, but want some light at the end of the workday. What’s insane is that the bottom half of the state is on Mountain Time, while the top half is on Pacific. And our state legislature prefers it that way.

It has been 25 years since I was in Scotland, but I was there in the last week of March and first week of April. Oh rich green fields and playing lambs were everywhere. I saw a man walking through his flock of sheep with a tiny lamb across his shoulders, and it was so poignant I got downright misty. What really got to me was seeing herds of cattle grazing belly-deep in green grass. Poor Texas cows would go into shock at such a banquet (and founder).

Daylight Saving Crime . . . it’s supposed to (a) save power, and (b) make sure the kiddos have light when they go to and from school. A big BS to both of those rationales, say I. Sunlight in the summer falls on our houses an hour more in the day (relative to the period we are up and around), so our air conditioners have to work harder. That equates to more power used and more money out of our pockets.

As for (b), well, it was light in February at 6:00 am here, and not dark until 5:00. Plenty of time for the sprogs to be hustled onto their school buses and hauled back and forth. Then, with the change, it was dark until 6:45 or later. How’s that help? And it being light in the evening doesn’t matter, as they are all out of their holding pens (aka schools) at the close of May.

And parents are not supposed to let their kids play unsupervised, as we all did, so the sproglets probably are not outside until 7 or 8 pm. How’s this work again?

Uncle Al, next you’ll complain about loading the bootstrap commands in with toggle switches so you could run the tapes to reload the OS.

I do still enjoy telling the youngsters I helped cause the Y2k disasters though.
Fond memories of being a whippersnapper declaring NO ONE would still be running the code we were then writing when the clock rolled over from 1999 to 2000. Heh.

And back on topic, I’m not ALLOWED to complain about the time change, the lady in charge tells me to “cry her a river, build a bridge, and get over it”. this is because
she can’t turn her brain off, and wanders around thinking at all hours while “someone” is tryng to sleep.
Hehe – uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

I collect antique clocks. Don’t even get me started on DST. 37 clocks. In fall, I go around the house and stop them all, wait an hour, and start them back. Pain in the ass.

Oh, the fall back time change with a STRIKING clock, is the best, Janna! I have the Seth Thomas mantel clock that was my paternal grandfather’s gift to his bride over 90 years ago. There are two ways to set it back in the fall: stand there and advance the hands 1/2 hour (it chimes on hour and half hour) 22 times, waiting for it to finish striking each time before moving on, or wait 11 hours before resetting it. Neither of which is a particularly desirable solution.

I have been known to not change a clock when DST goes into/out of effect, or to get around to changing it a month or three later.

@durnedyankee – No, no toggle switch bootstrapping, but I did bootstrap from cards. The closest I came to the switches was operating an emulated 1401 under DOS/Power under VM. Whee! VM, DOS, 1401, OS/SVS, OS/MVT, MUSIC, and CMS all at the same time in the days before display consoles – it was all on paper.