Team, it’s a good thing none of you (except poor 1T) were exposed to my jack-assedness this morning trying to figure out what the hell time it was. Vaguely recalling that it was daylight savings time, I argued with 1T on the phone for 30 minutes on how it wasn’t really 1:40, it was 12:40. He couldn’t figure out why his clocks on his computer and phone weren’t updating.

Finally, I went online to prove that it was indeed daylight savings. I went to the following website:webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/b.html and found that it is, indeed daylight savings time, which, incidentally, occurs the first Sunday in April every year. Except that now I’ve figured this out, my good friend George Dubya has decided to actually change daylight savings time. That seems so godlike to me! But anyways.

So I go around the house and manually change all my clocks one hour behind, all aggravated because somehow they allweren’t working. Mhm. Then I sat down at my computer and re-read the article that says, “clocks are set ahead one hour in spring”. Yeah yeah, spring ahead, fall back. I’m a dork. I went back and changed all my clocks but now I’m worried that I lost some hours there somewhere and I’m going to be late to work tomorrow. I’m going to get up extra early just in case.

I found some interesting tidbits of information on daylight savings that I thought were interesting. Well the first is a quote that I liked, but the rest I thought were pretty cool. There’s a lot more if you go to the site.

“I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.” (Robertson Davies, The Diary of Samuel Marchbanks, 1947, XIX, Sunday.)

Patrons of bars that stay open past 2:00 a.m. lose one hour of drinking time on the day when Daylight Saving Time springs forward one hour. This has led to annual problems in numerous locations, and sometimes even to riots. For example, at a “time disturbance” in Athens, Ohio, site of Ohio University, over 1,000 students and other late night partiers chanted “Freedom,” as they threw liquor bottles at the police attempting to control the riot.

To keep to their published timetables, trains cannot leave a station before the scheduled time. So, when the clocks fall back one hour in October, all Amtrak trains in the U.S. that are running on time stop at 2:00 a.m. and wait one hour before resuming. Overnight passengers are often surprised to find their train at a dead stop and their travel time an hour longer than expected. At the spring Daylight Saving Time change, trains instantaneously become an hour behind schedule at 2:00 a.m., but they just keep going and do their best to make up the time.

On August 8, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This Act changed the time change dates for Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. Beginning in 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday of March and end the first Sunday of November. The Secretary of Energy will report the impact of this change to Congress. Congress retains the right to revert the Daylight Saving Time back to the 2005 time schedule once the Department of Energy study is complete.

In the U.S., restaurants and bars have various closing policies. In many states, liquor cannot be served after 2:00 a.m. But at 2:00 a.m. in the fall, the time switches back one hour. So, can they serve alcohol for that additional hour in October? The official answer is that the bars do not close at 2:00 a.m., but actually at 1:59 a.m. So, they are already closed when the time changes from Daylight Saving Time into Standard Time. In practice, however, many establishments stay open an extra hour in the fall.

PS: What kind of crap is that? Way to split hairs. George, while you were out there effing up the system, why not specify that it happens at midnight and not 2:00 AM so that at least at one point in the year we can stay an extra hour at the bar? And while you’re doing THAT, why not change it to happen on the first Saturday so that extra hour is actually useful?

PPS: I used an “s” in daylight savings time on purpose. According to the website, it’s really daylight saving time. I think that’s crap so I’m bucking the system.