Great Moments in Time

Yesterday, as I write this, we’re in the throes of time change.  I always have to look it up since we lose an hour to gain more daylight and we call it Daylight Savings Time.  The logic of doing so is logical when you work your way through it but the clumping of the terms of lose, gain, and save all at once don’t seem intuitive to me.  Thankfully, it’s done on the weekend so there’s at least a day to get used to everything.

I’m always curious as to how television stations handle the time change and last evening, I went through the guide and there didn’t appear to be any adjustment in time on their schedule.  But, there had to be somewhere.

It’s a day of time challenges around here.  As you know if you’re a regular reader, my written posts are scheduled to go live at 5am.  Those posts that are automated happen when they happen.  I’ve long since forgotten when I scheduled them; I just go to the blog and skim through them if I feel the need.  So, I’m awake at 4am wondering what the heck and then I remember, two days ago, it was 5am.  That’s my normal time to get moving and now I’m lying in bed working out the logistics and implications of getting up now which will still be 4am tomorrow and I’ll probably need a nap this afternoon.  The NASCAR race this week is in Nevada so there’s the difference in time zones as well.  My nap has to be planned carefully.  It believe that it’s 3pm ET.  I’ve given up understanding and using EST and EDT.

The television channels had done their thing and my favourite morning news show was on at the right time, even though I was still working out my personal logistics.  The dog was having trouble too.  Either according to his internal clock or the conclusion of my breakfast, he feels that he’s entitled to his morning walk.  It really is 7:30, even though we normally eat at 6:30 and it’s still pitch black outside.  I’m mentally trying to working it out; he’s staring expecting the call to put his collar on.

The computers handle it nicely.  I’m old enough to remember a time when you had to physically change the clock.  Then, it was sort of a semi-automatic change; the computer would change the time but ask you to confirm.  Now, things just happen like magic.  It would have been interesting to stay awake all night to see how the changes were done but seriously not interesting enough to actually do it.

Here, we’re not connected to the internet of things yet so there will be the semi-annual trip through the house to change the clocks.  It’s only at these time that you remember how many clocks are actually here.  I’ve received so many as gifts over the years and just can’t bring it upon myself to throw things away.  Then, there are a couple of clocks that I was never able to figure out in the 3 seconds I allocate to the job.  Some of them will now have the right time and some of the others will be off an hour until the fall.  Their day will come.

I can appreciate the original concept of saving the hour.  Conversations always point to the extra hour of daylight for farmers who apparently didn’t have lights on their tractors.  I do remember having some friends who were dairy farmers and they didn’t care.  The cows didn’t either.  Dairy cattle will eat non-stop if you let them anyway.  Reading through the article from the Wikipedia made me smile at another timing issue that’s important to parents who have kids.  It pushes the start time for fireworks back an hour.  That explains the correlation between the excitement of fireworks and the crabbiness of kids on fireworks night.  The Wikipedia article actually is quite a good read and could be used for a good read and discussion this Monday morning, as I write this on a Sunday morning.  Hey, we all time shift.

Even more fodder for discussion can be found in this infographic.

The bigger question though is why as a society do we continue to put ourselves through this.  Even my lawn tractor has headlights on it and I’ll lend it to any farmer whose equipment is dated!  Isn’t this a concept that’s had its day?

I need to wrap this up.  I have two brown eyes staring at me to remind me that we’re now an hour late for our walk.  The wagging tail serves as a reminder that, no matter what, there’s hope and life will go on…eventually.