#*@X&$ !! daylight savings time got me again! - Page 9

I've looked over a number of posts in this thread. I want time zones. It sounded like some people want people working at 2AM which I am sure many do not want. I was not able to read all posts but I don't think the following was mentioned.

Some countries are 30 minutes off such as India and Iran. I also  think the 24 clock is much better than the stupid AM and PM. Time tables are much clearer with the 24 clock and it is easier on time calculations such as between US and Australia. Normally the time difference between NYC and Munich is 6 hours - 3PM (15:00 ) in Munich and 9AM (09:00) in NYC. Currently central Europe (CET) is 7 hours until the end of the month. Normally it is "instant" calculation - currently it isn't automatic. At least I don't worry about waking someone  up now. Once I called someone at 9AM in Poughkeepsie and then I realized too late that I was calling California!. In general at work one is usually dealing with the same foreign location and the time is "automatic" - not a problem.

 It's a little different than the usual topics he covers, but Brian Dunning discussed Daylight Savings Time in an episode of his Skeptoid podcast.  I think it's an interesting read/listen.

Not everyone in the U.S.  

 

Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Nation),  Hawaii and the territories of Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa do not observe Day Light Savings Time.

Doug

Doesn't help that Congress won't leave it alone.  I have a DVD/VCR combo that'll attempt to automatically adjust for DST in a few more weeks. So I have to adjust that clock four times a year now.

With out restating what I have already posted in this thread too much - There is a large portion of the population that already works at 2AM. While I think one world wide time is the best system, I believe that there are far too many people who have the idea that lunch should be at 12:00 noon ingrained into their head, that it can not be changed. If you ever worked an off-shift schedule, you realize that the time displayed on a clock is really irrelevant to what your daily activities are.

I live in Central Time, GMT-6. So instead of my alarm clock going off at 6:30AM, it would go off at 12:30AM. The sun would still be at the same point in the sky, I would still have to be at work in an hour and a half. What does it matter if the clock is displaying 6:30 or 12:30?

Actually, the people advocating "one time" want to make everyone have to figure out the position of the sun wherever it is they're calling/traveling to, which would of course be much more cumbersome than what we have now.

Interesting thread.

I live in Indiana, which decided to ditch DST from roughly 1967 to 2005.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indiana

So for most of my life, I never had to fuss with changing clocks!

For me, it's had both pros and cons.

Interesting tibbit: We are now the furthest state to the west to observe the Eastern Time Zone, and now with DST, it stays light for a loong time in the summer hours.

Swatch tried some years ago, selling watches that also had a "universal time" that was unrelated to the usual 12/24hr clock (IIRC, it divided the whole day into 1000 units).  Needless to say, it didn't catch on.

We are so ingrained to the 'usual' times of our standard clock that fiddling with that for the sake of any arbitrary 'universal time' is a PITA.  As it is, for instance here in Singapore, in the past we were one of those odd "on the half hour" territories, with our time at GMT+7.5, same as our northern neighbour West Malaysia, whilst East Malaysia was at GMT+8.  The Malaysian government then decided to go to GMT+8 for the whole country, and Singapore followed suit.  We now have the slightly off situation where the sun doesn't rise till after 7am, but neither does it set till after 7pm either.  (This applies all year round, since we're almost on the Equator we have no significant deviation in sunrise/sunset due to passage of seasons, unlike those of you further north or south.)

As it is, China is a single time zone, following Beijing time, which is fine for everyone on their east coast, but those in the far-flung west have to live with the oddity that the sun doesn't rise until about 9am. 

For those who absolutely must on a regular basis, they already follow a "universal time", usually GMT (Zulu time in the US military).  For everybody else, for the odd time we have to deal with someone else in another time zone, we just figure it out.  What's so difficult about that?  I have to do it most weekends when figuring out when the live English Premier League game is on, and some mid-weeks for the live European Champions League game.

Between being so far west in the Eastern time zone and being north, too, it stays light until almost 10pm here in the longest days of summer. Whenever we travel east, I have to get used to it getting dark almost an hour earlier.

It sure was  nice having some daylight left when I got home from work yesterday. I even had time to fertilize my lawn.

I was not aware it was Daylight Savings Time, until I heard the local time, when my flight landed in the US, returning from a trip to Europe.