Congress has blithely passed its own legalized mini-Y2K crisis.
Through the typical myopia of “Hey, that’s a great idea, let’s pass a law,” Daylight Savings Time in the US will now officially (if Bush signs the Energy bill today, which he most certainly will) start three weeks earlier and end a week later. Starting with its ending this fall.
Expect your VCR and clocks and anything else that was “high-tech” enough to include a time change based on the long-term dates of DST to get all screwed up when it happens. You’ll have to manually make the change — and then manually undo it.
Plan to ignore what it says on your calendar this year. And, probably, next year, too, if you buy sixteen-month calendars.
For computers and other programmable devices, you’ll have to download patches and install them. Expect further fun there.
And, of course, everything that assumes that Canada and the US are on the same time zone/daylight savings scheme … will be wrong. Unless the Canadians knuckle under and follow suit. Nice reaching out to the neighbors there, folks.
I don’t know if Daylight Savings Time is stupid or not — but changing all the clocks twice a year is, and arbitrarily changing the date you do it is even more stupid.
Rrg.
Yeppers!