Masked Mom's Media Monday: Daylight Saving Time

The negatives of Daylight Saving have been enumerated elsewhere (including by Masked Mom herself), but what I've yet to see articulated in any convincing fashion were the "positives" of Daylight Saving. That's probably because there are no positives or the ones that do exist aren't concrete or provable.

This year's Daylight Saving adjustment is all the more annoying and pointless because it's happening three weeks early, a change for which there are the same vague (and unsupported) explanations as for Daylight Saving in general. (And including the three-weeks early change in a bill called the Energy Policy Act of 2005 does nothing to convince me that it's going to have a provable positive effect...)

A friend and I were talking about the fact that having it come three weeks earlier is going to be a huge pain in the ass for computers and computer programs--not so much for us at home but for people in companies with more sophisticated programs that are auto-set to change the first weekend in April. At home, it's a matter of manually changing the computer clock twice--once this weekend and once again when it springs ahead all by itself, completely unaware of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which I still see as kind of a pain in the ass especially since (again) there is no logical proven purpose to it.

Way worse than resetting the clocks on my computer and around the house is trying to recalibrate my internal clock--not to mention recalibrating my kids' internal clocks, which are always running behind in any case. Daughter-Only "forgot" to reset her clock last night and has to go in late to school today--don't worry I didn't fall for it--especially since their father calls all of them as a back up to their alarms (which "fail" regularly)--but she's late nonetheless since the argument we had over whether that was a valid excuse for oversleeping an hour took a considerable amount of time*.

It would be fantastic if the energy savings from this change were great enough to justify the energy we're expending to adjust to it.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Pointless.

*I would like to take this time to thank Daughter-Only for trying to get away with that excuse since it reminded me of the best ever "I forgot to change my clock" excuse, which was given by an assistant manager when I worked at Burger King, who claimed he was an hour late because he forgot to reset his clock--except that it was October and anyone with even a basic understanding of "falling back" would realize that if you really forgot to reset your clock in October, you'd have been an hour early instead of an hour late. Duh. The asst. mgr.'s name was Kirk, and we all called him Capt. Kirk to his face (pseudo-affectionately) and behind his back (completely mockingly). I once made the mistake of saluting him (he was a Capt, after all, and due a certain amount of respect) and he had a little fit about how "sarcastic" I was. My argument was that I wasn't sure how an action, rather than words, could be sarcastic. Of course, I was aware then (and even more so now that I have teenagers) that it's entirely possible to be sarcastic without saying a word, but it was worth playing dumb to see the color red poor Capt. Kirk's face turned. Hmmm, I think it just hit me (not for the first time) where Daughter-Only gets her knack for winning losing arguments.