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The annual DST thread (2017 edition)

Started by CNGL-Leudimin, March 06, 2017, 07:13:44 AM

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tdindy88

Interesting hearing about working during the time change. I asked my boss if I could come in one hour early so that I can get my eight hours of work (this would be overtime pay) and I was told that we would get paid for eight hours even though we only work for seven that night. Considering that this will be my 12th straight night of work, I'll gladly take one less hour of work.


1995hoo

Looking around the house this morning I'm reminded that the biggest nuisance is not so much the time change itself as it is changing all the clocks and watches and such. I'm typing this while sitting at the kitchen table lingering after breakfast and I note nine devices in this room alone with some sort of clocks to change, including appliances with digital clocks built in. (Coffee maker, microwave, range, wall clock, radio, small clock on the end table, answering machine, kitchen timer that contains a clock, and cordless phone.) Yeah, I could skip some of them, but I find it really distracting if I look at a device and see the clock is off.




Earlier in the thread vdeane mentioned how the morning light is more jarring when you wake up and turn on the lights compared to the more gradual effect of natural sunlight. If that's something you find especially bothersome and you're willing to spend some extra money, you could try the Philips Hue color-shifting bulbs. One of the features is a wake-up cycle where you program a start time using the Hue app and you tell it the period of time (say, 20 minutes or whatever) over which you want the lights to come up to wake you. We have those particular bulbs in the master bedroom. The original reason was so we could voice-control them using our Amazon Echo, but then I discovered the wake-up cycle. I don't need it, but Ms1995hoo is horrible about getting up in the morning, so I set the bulbs' wake-up cycle to come up over a 20-minute period starting about 10 minutes after I get out of bed (basically letting her snooze while I get up, use the toilet, shave, brush my teeth, and shower). It's still not the same as real sunlight, but it's also a lot less jarring than the lights coming on full brightness all at once. Only problem is, while you can tell the app not to wake you on weekends or whatever (if, say, you're off Tuesday and Wednesday instead you can tell it to wake you only on the other five days), it doesn't have a setting to tell it to ignore holidays. I forgot to disable it prior to Washington's Birthday and I was awakened as the lights gradually came on at 6:50 AM–but I just rolled over, told Alexa to turn off the lights, and went back to sleep (I fall asleep very easily and I usually fall back asleep easily until I've gotten up in the morning).

Those bulbs cost more than regular bulbs and there's a bit of a start-up cost because you have to buy the "hub," a white square box a little bigger than a hockey puck that uses a wired connection to your wireless router. But the bulbs are supposed to last 20+ years, so the price didn't bug me that much.
"You know, you never have a guaranteed spot until you have a spot guaranteed."
—Olaf Kolzig, as quoted in the Washington Times on March 28, 2003,
commenting on the Capitals clinching a playoff spot.

"That sounded stupid, didn't it?"
—Kolzig, to the same reporter a few seconds later.

hbelkins

Morning light has nothing to do with when I wake up. That's usually determined by either the alarm clock or my bladder.


Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

1995hoo

Quote from: hbelkins on March 11, 2017, 11:58:26 AM
Morning light has nothing to do with when I wake up. That's usually determined by either the alarm clock or my bladder.

Same here with one addition: On the weekend at home during the winter, I usually have trouble sleeping past 8:00 because the thermostat is programmed to bring up the heat by 8:30. It's set at 58°F overnight and it goes up to 67°; since it's set for 8:30, the system starts the heat earlier so it reaches 67° by the target time. I find it hard to sleep with warm air blowing, so I wake up and start the laundry while my wife sleeps in. (The same issue doesn't happen in the summer because the AC is set to a colder temperature at night than during the day. When it stops running, that doesn't wake me up the way the heat coming on does.)
"You know, you never have a guaranteed spot until you have a spot guaranteed."
—Olaf Kolzig, as quoted in the Washington Times on March 28, 2003,
commenting on the Capitals clinching a playoff spot.

"That sounded stupid, didn't it?"
—Kolzig, to the same reporter a few seconds later.

paulthemapguy

Quote from: CNGL-Leudimin on March 06, 2017, 07:13:44 AM
Also, I've heard at least one member call this the "Daylight Wasting Time". Nice one :sombrero:.

I call it Daylight Shaving Time, as it shaves off an hour of time.

Quote from: cabiness42 on March 10, 2017, 04:01:13 PM
It's really sad that sunrises after 8am have come to be perceived as normal.  It's the farthest thing from it.

I live near Chicago, on the far eastern end of our time zone, so this doesn't really happen.  Everything is earlier in Chicago.  Of course, that also means that the sun sets around 4 FREAKING OCLOCK in the winter.
Avatar is the last interesting highway I clinched.
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Desert Man

Daylight savings time doesn't benefit farmers or office workers, it only serves to help the US chamber of commerce and the retail industry: one extra hour to shop in the summer months. Just like the idea of the Christmas Holiday season in the winter (a cold, dark, grey and horrific time), get people to go shop and spend their hard-earned cash.
Get your kicks...on Route 99! Like to turn 66 upside down. The other historic Main street of America.

02 Park Ave

The makers of Rockford charcoal are said to have lobbied hard for the extensions of the DST.
C-o-H

CNGL-Leudimin

Quote from: paulthemapguy on March 11, 2017, 01:16:11 PMI call it Daylight Shaving Time, as it shaves off an hour of time.

However you'll get that hour back in Fall, so every day in a calendar year lasts on average 24 hours.

As I've already said, I use my local time minus 6 hours for timekeeping purposes in this forum (Which most of the time is Eastern time) So, tomorrow I'll be waking up at 1 am as I'm going on a road trip. Then, at 2 am, since I don't switch to DST now, my "forum time" will get stranded in a void at UTC-5, as the whole USA doesn't switch at the same time like Europe does. Then, at 3 am that time will now match Central time. Finally, and since I observe the European DST rules, on March 25th at 8 pm my "forum time" will be 9 pm, thus going back into Eastern time.
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kphoger

Quote from: kalvado on March 10, 2017, 04:06:23 PM
Quote from: cabiness42 on March 10, 2017, 04:01:13 PM
Quote from: kalvado on March 10, 2017, 03:53:32 PM
Quote from: cabiness42 on March 10, 2017, 03:48:44 PM
Sunday in Terre Haute, IN, the sunrise will be 8:06 am and the sunset 7:53 pm.  That's just absolutely ridiculous to have daylight shifted by that much.  Indiana either needs to go back to not observing DST or move to Central time.
But, honestly speaking, this is a fairly reasonable timing for normal day - sun goes up about morning commute, and stays up for some time after evening commute...

No, that's not anywhere near reasonable.  Most schools start at or before 8:00 and there's no reason to have kids going to school in the dark except when the days are really short in Dec-Jan when it's pretty much unavoidable. 

It's really sad that sunrises after 8am have come to be perceived as normal.  It's the farthest thing from it.

Kids in the dark... There is no argument that can beat safety!!! of kids!!!!   
Given that even crossing the road is now a no-go for KIDS! because it ENDANGERS!!! them - why dark is that big of a problem?

It's not about the kids' safety; the post you replied to made no mention of safety.  Instead, it's ridiculous to make your children (who need more sleep than adults to begin with) wake up, get ready, and get to school all before the human body is naturally wired to wake up–and then, in the summer, to make them go to bed while it's still light outside.  And God help every parent who is in the middle of sleep-training a baby during the DST switch; I've been there before, and it ain't pretty.

My goodness, you should have seen my middle son yesterday.  He could barely finish supper because he was so tired, having woken up an hour earlier than usual (in reality, not by the clock).




Quote from: hbelkins on March 11, 2017, 11:58:26 AM
Morning light has nothing to do with when I wake up. That's usually determined by either the alarm clock or my bladder.

In the summer, I wake up at or before my alarm clock due to the lightening sky, and I find it easy to get out of bed and get ready.  In the winter, I rarely wake up before my alarm clock, and it takes a feat of determination to get out of bed; I was four minutes late to work today because I just couldn't drag myself out of bed.  For most of my working life, the spring forward has come right around the time I was starting to get out of bed at dawn instead of in the darkness; it rips the happiness out from under my feet.
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

MisterSG1

Ah DST....just when I was starting to board my train after sunrise, it is now dark again on the platform, and it was "blue hour" when we arrived downtown.

The problem I have with DST are the consequences in the shift forward, today is generally the most dangerous day regarding traffic accidents of the year. Combine that with a potential winter storm (which is happening later on today here) and you have a real double whammy.

kalvado

Quote from: kphoger on March 13, 2017, 12:05:58 PM

My goodness, you should have seen my middle son yesterday.  He could barely finish supper because he was so tired, having woken up an hour earlier than usual (in reality, not by the clock).
Tell him that someone in NY feels exact same pain....


As for "keep in bed after sunrise" - I would prefer to see more morning activity before leaving for work as a more common alternative to staying up late, especially in summer - when sun cycle warrants earlier wakeup.  But "wake up and head to work" is programmed too deep..

kphoger

Quote from: kalvado on March 13, 2017, 12:44:31 PM
As for "keep in bed after sunrise" - I would prefer to see more morning activity before leaving for work as a more common alternative to staying up late, especially in summer - when sun cycle warrants earlier wakeup.  But "wake up and head to work" is programmed too deep..

Even more difficult when we have to change the clocks to make sunrise an hour later.

Inasmuch as Benjamin Franklin "proposed" DST, he did so as part of a parody, suggesting the following to help people rise with the sun instead of sleeping the morning away:

Quote from: Benjamin Franklin:  "An Economical Project," as a letter to the editor of the Journal of Paris, 1784
(1) Let a tax be laid of a louis per window, on every window that is provided with shutters to keep out the light of the sun.

(2) Let ... guards be placed in the shops of the wax and tallow chandlers, and no family be permitted to be supplied with more than one pound of candles per week.

(3) Let guards also be posted to stop all the coaches, &c. that would pass the streets after sunset, except those of physicians, surgeons, and midwives.

(4) Every morning, as soon as the sun rises, let all the bells in every church be set ringing; and if that is not sufficient?, let cannon be fired in every street, to wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest.

All the difficulty will be in the first two or three days; after which the reformation will be as natural and easy as the present irregularity; for, ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte. Oblige a man to rise at four in the morning, and it is more than probable he will go willingly to bed at eight in the evening; and, having had eight hours sleep, he will rise more willingly at four in the morning following.
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

vdeane

Quote from: kphoger on March 13, 2017, 12:05:58 PM
It's not about the kids' safety; the post you replied to made no mention of safety.  Instead, it's ridiculous to make your children (who need more sleep than adults to begin with) wake up, get ready, and get to school all before the human body is naturally wired to wake up–and then, in the summer, to make them go to bed while it's still light outside.  And God help every parent who is in the middle of sleep-training a baby during the DST switch; I've been there before, and it ain't pretty.
Now I'm wondering if DST might be the reason why my circadian rhythm is out of whack.  I've always been EXTREMELY resistant to change (to the point where I completely refused to breast feed because the hospital where I was born had Mom bottle feed me when I was there), and I was born just a couple weeks away from the switch to DST.  I wouldn't be surprised if I got used to standard time and my biological clock just refused to switch over (though it doesn't help that I'm a natural night owl).

Quote
In the summer, I wake up at or before my alarm clock due to the lightening sky, and I find it easy to get out of bed and get ready.  In the winter, I rarely wake up before my alarm clock, and it takes a feat of determination to get out of bed; I was four minutes late to work today because I just couldn't drag myself out of bed.  For most of my working life, the spring forward has come right around the time I was starting to get out of bed at dawn instead of in the darkness; it rips the happiness out from under my feet.
That's the same issue I have.  Doesn't help that I have to wake up during the week at the time my body is naturally coldest (I don't warm up until an hour later), so not wanting to leave the warm blankets is a double whammy.  In past years, my only motivation to get up is so I could curl up over a heat vent, by my apartment changed something, and I no longer get blasts of hot air; this year, it's gotten to the point where I have had to start punishing myself if I end up late to work as motivation.

Plus, with sunrise later, that means more/harder ice to scrape off the windshield of my car, since the sun doesn't have much of a chance to start defrosting it before I go.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position of NYSDOT or its affiliates.

SP Cook

RE: De facto Atlantic Time in New England.  The TV industry would never go for it.  Unless they wanted to do a seperate feed for New England, which would be expensive and cause the availablity of "spoilers", not to mention impact people who live in one state but get TV from another (not an issue in Canada because Quebec is there to sepeate the two English speaking areas), cause primetime would run 9-12.   It would also impact TV sports since national things like national night NFL games would air starting well after 9 PM (and require a kickoff at that time if the Patriots were playing, since the time is dictated by Eastern time.  Similarly nationally shown Red Sox games would not start locally until 9, and locally shown baseball, assuming a 7 first pitch, would be on at 8 ET. 

It will never happen.


kphoger

Quote from: vdeane on March 13, 2017, 01:54:51 PM
Quote from: kphoger on March 13, 2017, 12:05:58 PM
It's not about the kids' safety; the post you replied to made no mention of safety.  Instead, it's ridiculous to make your children (who need more sleep than adults to begin with) wake up, get ready, and get to school all before the human body is naturally wired to wake up–and then, in the summer, to make them go to bed while it's still light outside.  And God help every parent who is in the middle of sleep-training a baby during the DST switch; I've been there before, and it ain't pretty.
Now I'm wondering if DST might be the reason why my circadian rhythm is out of whack.  I've always been EXTREMELY resistant to change (to the point where I completely refused to breast feed because the hospital where I was born had Mom bottle feed me when I was there), and I was born just a couple weeks away from the switch to DST.  I wouldn't be surprised if I got used to standard time and my biological clock just refused to switch over (though it doesn't help that I'm a natural night owl).

While I doubt your present circadian rhythm is related to how closely you were born to the time switch, I do feel you about the breast-vs-bottle problem.  When my oldest son was born, they took him out to the nursery while my wife was still in recovery from the C-section.  The nurse measured his blood sugar and told me it was slightly low–49 out of a benchmark 50–then asked if I wanted them to give him a bottle.  Being uneducated in the matter, I said yes, and he immediately sucked that nipple flat.  Then, overnight, when he would cry, the nurse kept suggesting she take him out to the nursery for a bottle.  Being desperate for peace and quiet, we said yes, and he quickly grew accustomed to the fast flow of the bottle.  Breastfeeding was a struggle from then on, barely lasted a few months, and hardly every worked exclusively.  We learned our lesson, and things got better with each of the two subsequent sons–such that, by the time we had friends babysit our youngest for the first time, he had never even actually taken a bottle before (we had only ever tried once, and he refused it like it was on fire).




Quote from: SP Cook on March 13, 2017, 02:57:19 PM
RE: De facto Atlantic Time in New England.  The TV industry would never go for it.  Unless they wanted to do a seperate feed for New England, which would be expensive and cause the availablity of "spoilers", not to mention impact people who live in one state but get TV from another (not an issue in Canada because Quebec is there to sepeate the two English speaking areas), cause primetime would run 9-12.   It would also impact TV sports since national things like national night NFL games would air starting well after 9 PM (and require a kickoff at that time if the Patriots were playing, since the time is dictated by Eastern time.  Similarly nationally shown Red Sox games would not start locally until 9, and locally shown baseball, assuming a 7 first pitch, would be on at 8 ET. 

It will never happen.

I'm not sure how much say the TV industry has in this kind of thing...
Keep right except to pass.  Yes.  You.
Visit scenic Orleans County, NY!
Male pronouns, please.

Quote from: Philip K. DickIf you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

hbelkins

All I know is that I was able to take a decent nap yesterday after the NASCAR race was over (and Joey Logano and his crew beat the crap out of that little twerp Kyle Busch) and still was able to go outside and feed the dogs while it was still daylight. No arguments against DST here.


Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

1995hoo

Quote from: hbelkins on March 13, 2017, 03:09:31 PM
All I know is that I was able to take a decent nap yesterday after the NASCAR race was over (and Joey Logano and his crew beat the crap out of that little twerp Kyle Busch) and still was able to go outside and feed the dogs while it was still daylight. No arguments against DST here.

I was happy to be able to grill some steaks without needing a flashlight or other lamp.
"You know, you never have a guaranteed spot until you have a spot guaranteed."
—Olaf Kolzig, as quoted in the Washington Times on March 28, 2003,
commenting on the Capitals clinching a playoff spot.

"That sounded stupid, didn't it?"
—Kolzig, to the same reporter a few seconds later.

kkt

Quote from: SP Cook on March 13, 2017, 02:57:19 PM
RE: De facto Atlantic Time in New England.  The TV industry would never go for it.  Unless they wanted to do a seperate feed for New England, which would be expensive and cause the availablity of "spoilers", not to mention impact people who live in one state but get TV from another (not an issue in Canada because Quebec is there to sepeate the two English speaking areas), cause primetime would run 9-12.   It would also impact TV sports ....

Broadcast TV is dying anyway.  Yes, live events like sports would be a problem.

I'd go for splitting the too-large leagues into Atlantic-Eastern-Central timezone leagues and Pacific-Mountain-Alaska-Hawaii leagues, with maybe just a playoff series between them.



Windfarmer

Don't like your kids (or yourself, if you are one) getting up too early for school?

Ask them to shorten it. But there is one problem: schools don't care about the early waking problem. They just don't like having to bear the effects of it. And of course, schools are more willing to turn to disciplinary actions than get to the source of the problem.

SM-S320VL

This account has been mostly abandoned as of 11 January 2018.

kkt

Windfarmer, my school district contracts out school busing.  I expect this is pretty common.  In order to save money, they have each bus collect kids for three schools, one after the other.  To have time for the bus run, they're about an hour apart.  So the schools are pretty arbitrarily divided up into starting too early (7:45 AM), too late (9:45 AM), and just right (8:45 AM).  If you're really 12, you might think 9:45 would be fine rather than too late, but when the kids are too young to get themselves ready for school in the morning it prevents one parent from holding most jobs.  Also if they start at 9:45 and have a full school day, there's no time for after school clubs, sports, a job, or other activities.

Schools do care, they're just chronically short of money.  Doing anything other than the cheapest solution possible, even if it has demonstrated bad effects on kids' learning, doesn't have a chance.

1995hoo

Regardless of all the other issues, the later sunset was nice tonight (snow notwithstanding) because it meant not having the sun in our eyes on the drive home.
"You know, you never have a guaranteed spot until you have a spot guaranteed."
—Olaf Kolzig, as quoted in the Washington Times on March 28, 2003,
commenting on the Capitals clinching a playoff spot.

"That sounded stupid, didn't it?"
—Kolzig, to the same reporter a few seconds later.

vdeane

Come to think of it... how DOES broadcast TV deal with the time zones anyways?  I know for Central and Eastern they just use the same feed and everyone in Central has to mentally subtract an hour (and have their local news schedule jumbled around relative to how it is here), but I was looking at some programming listings for other cities, and Mountain and Pacific appear to have their own separate feeds rather than using one feed.  Is there a reason why Central and Eastern use the same feed but the other two each have their own rather than using the same one?
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position of NYSDOT or its affiliates.

slorydn1

Quote from: vdeane on March 13, 2017, 11:49:20 PM
Come to think of it... how DOES broadcast TV deal with the time zones anyways?  I know for Central and Eastern they just use the same feed and everyone in Central has to mentally subtract an hour (and have their local news schedule jumbled around relative to how it is here), but I was looking at some programming listings for other cities, and Mountain and Pacific appear to have their own separate feeds rather than using one feed.  Is there a reason why Central and Eastern use the same feed but the other two each have their own rather than using the same one?

It's funny you mention that, because I was thinking about the same thing. Back when I watched a lot of network TV I always remember the announcer saying "remember to catch (insert show name here) Sunday at 8, 7 Central and Mountain" I never remember them mentioning Pacific at all.

When I lived in Chicago we saw everything as you were seeing it in New York, just an hour earlier. Our primary late local news was 10pm (over the air WGN always had an early 9PM news).

I guess Mountain just delays everything another hour by waiting until it's 7pm there to show the same program you and I already watched.

I would guess if Pacific used the same feed as Mountain that would have them starting that first show at 6pm, not allowing people enough time to get home from work and have dinner before settling in for the prime time shows?

Please Note: All posts represent my personal opinions and do not represent those of any governmental agency, non-governmental agency, quasi-governmental agency or wanna be governmental agency

Counties: Counties Visited

1995hoo

I recall when The West Wing aired that live presidential debate, they did two live performances, the second of them for Pacific time, rather than airing a recording out west.

Whenever I've been in Canada and have watched TV, they mention the air times for Atlantic time as an hour ahead (for example, if Seinfeld airs at 9:00 Eastern, as it did, it will air at 10:00 Atlantic and 10:30 Newfoundland). Speaking of Seinfeld, I worked in Montgomery during the summer of 1997 and it was pretty convenient having that show air at 8:00 instead of 9:00–still had the bulk of the evening free after it was over.
"You know, you never have a guaranteed spot until you have a spot guaranteed."
—Olaf Kolzig, as quoted in the Washington Times on March 28, 2003,
commenting on the Capitals clinching a playoff spot.

"That sounded stupid, didn't it?"
—Kolzig, to the same reporter a few seconds later.

NWI_Irish96

Quote from: vdeane on March 13, 2017, 11:49:20 PM
Come to think of it... how DOES broadcast TV deal with the time zones anyways?  I know for Central and Eastern they just use the same feed and everyone in Central has to mentally subtract an hour (and have their local news schedule jumbled around relative to how it is here), but I was looking at some programming listings for other cities, and Mountain and Pacific appear to have their own separate feeds rather than using one feed.  Is there a reason why Central and Eastern use the same feed but the other two each have their own rather than using the same one?

Back before Indiana did DST, the South Bend TV market would be all in the same time zone during the winter but in two different time zones during the summer.  Prime time network TV ran from 8-11 Eastern year-round, so in the summer on the Indiana side it ended up being 7-10.  So the late local news was at 11pm in the winter and 10pm in the summer. 
Indiana: counties 100%, highways 100%
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