Oh no, it’s Y2k all over again!!
Previously posted on August 15 at: http://spaces.msn.com/members/evandodds/Blog/cns!1phaOgcvNsBxzvBN9Zpx1vbQ!153.entry
I’d been talking intermittently about timezone stuff over at my work-related blog, so I suppose it’s time I move that discussion over to my non-work-related blog. Here are some of the previous posts on Eastern Standard Time, Eastern Daylight Time, the Microsoft Timezone Utility, proposed changes to daylight saving time, and my July 22nd update to the proposed changes. Whew, I think that’s all of them.
So, the latest is that President Bush signed the energy bill…er… the “Energy Policy Act” on August 8th, 2005. This means we’ve now got — starting in 2007 — new start/stop dates for daylight saving time in the US. This is great! Kids get an extra hour of daylight over Halloween (um, an extra hour?).
Ok, let’s try that again. Kids will get up an hour earlier over Halloween, so when they go trick-or-treating at — let’s say — 7pm, it’ll actually be 6pm in “legacy daylight saving time” and therefore still bright and sunny. 
But all is not wonderful, according to the media sensationalists. Oh no, things never are. If you believe the media, it will be armageddon, just like Y2k all over again. Clocks off by an hour on your VCR, causing you to miss CSI… if you don’t download any “critical updates” for your Windows PC during the next 2 years, the clock might change on the wrong day… and worst of all, your smoke detector battery will have to last an additional week!! AAAAAAAAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEE! Whatever will we do. (don’t let the comparisons to the Y2k “non-crisis” confuse you, this is SERIOUS stuff!)
Ever get the sense that the media is just forever “sniffing around” for something new and silly to hype up?
Evan Dodds - Non-work-related blog » Even 3 weeks earlier I can’t wait for it to be over said,
February 23, 2007 at 5:27 pm
[...] year, we’ll be starting Daylight Saving Time 3 weeks earlier than we have in the past. Here’s where the problem starts: Lots of computer stuff won’t [...]