This week, you’re going to lose an hour of your life.
Or it’s going to feel like it. A little.
Daylight-saving time goes into effect this weekend.
And it’s a gyp.
Sunday morning you’ll wake up at 9 a.m. to whip up a batch of waffles.
But, because of spring forward, it will actually be 10 a.m.
Doh!
An hour of your life. Gone. Pfft!
And you haven’t even benefited from an extra hour of sleep.
The time has just vanished, wiped out through some cosmic accounting entry dreamed up by the US government. (Canada is simply going along with that decision — it’s easier that way.)
Daylight saving is happening three weeks earlier than normal this year. And it’s going to extend longer, until November 4.
At least Washington has a reason.
That extra hour of daylight, launched three weeks early, is going to save heaps and piles of energy.
But it has also raised worries about a baby Y2K crisis — computers will get confused because it’s daylight savings, but the programmers didn’t bother telling them.
The change in the clocks caught the industry flatfooted, and it has been scrambling to issue patches to ward off problems.
Nevertheless, across the continent a few older, slower machines will probably be passed over, rendering them perpetually late, like that dim guy at the office who forgot to reset his alarm clock.
This could cause problems for our computer-dependent culture.
You know, deposits made at 11 p.m. might not be credited until the next day — that sort of thing.
Which doesn’t affect regular folks very much. But investment houses and bankers might worry about losing a day’s interest.
Of course, this small crisis probably won’t amount to much. But programmers have to take advantage of excitement whenever they can.
The rest of us will just have to decide — do I lose a little sleep and get up earlier? Or do I sacrifice a little of my waking day?
However you cut it, that’s a gyp. (RM)