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14 March 2010
DST - hate it or love it?→[More:]I'm hating Daylight Savings Time. It's like they're stealing an hour a day. And don't tell me I'll get it back in the fall. Grrr.
I hate the time change (in either direction) because it always occurs two weeks after my body has started to wake up naturally at the time I need to get up.
Yea, I'm a little disoriented today but on the other hand, I love having it stay late in the evening so it's worth the couple days of jet lag. One thing that I like living in Pittsburgh is that it's pretty far west in the Eastern Time Zone so that we get almost 1/2 an hour more daylight in the evening than the east coast does.
Nothing better than hanging out on the porch on a spring/summer evening with a beer and a book/laptop.
Hate the transition, especially in spring. I have to get up at 5:30 on weekdays. Tomorrow, according to my body clock, my alarm's gonna go off at *4:30 AM.* That's just brutal.
Violently hate. The next week or so I'm going to be waking up even more often during the night than I normally do because I'll keep freaking out about being late.
I fucking hate it when my sleep schedule gets all borked. It's bad enough as it is and I do not need the clock helping me towards crankypants.
I hate that it's never done at the same time across the world. Our clocks go forward on 28th March.
Once I was in Ohio when the clocks went forward, and then came back to the UK and they went forward again. But when the clocks went back that year, I was in the UK the whole time so I officially lost an hour of my life that year.
The days it happens, I don't like having to change my clocks (especially the one in the car, which always involves a series of unintuitive button presses that I never remember from the last time). The rest of the time, I don't really have any strong opinions one way or the other.
I think we should abolish time zones altogether. We have computers and GPS; let's just adapt to local noon. It'd be nice to do away with rush "hour"; if everyone's going to work at different times (like say your company does business with Sweden) it'll reduce traffic congestion.
Love. I'm a sucker for light in the evening. All winter long I get home and am SO unable to function because it's dark. Now it's 6:09 and light as can be. I do hate the actual change though.
I hate having less light in the morning. I always got up relatively early, and those days where I had to get up before even the morning twilight starts filled me with pure discontent. Sure, light in the evening is nice, but light in the morning is more important.
I can't imagine that making people commute to work in the dark really makes things much safer or economical.
But! I am currently in Japan where there is no stupid clock putzery. Also the morning twilight starts at 6:50 even in the middle of winter, here at one of the southwesternmost parts of Japan. Which is all in the same time zone. In midsummer the sunrise is at 5:15!
DST screws with me in a big way that I never expect because for years and years and years Indiana did not participate. When I moved it screwed with me for three years. Then I moved back and got used to not having to do it. Then Indiana decided to participate. IT MESSES ME UP EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's not a huge deal but it definitely screws me up for a few days and I'm normally totally confused about time zones for a few days too. EVEN THOUGH I SHOULDN'T BE...because everyone I'm dealing with changed times too and so it's really kind of the same. NER.
Doesn't bother me, usually, although in the past it's caused me to be late for church or (once) work. I like having a reminder to check the smoke alarm batteries.
Virgin Mobile USA never used to get the time change taken care of until around 2pm Sunday, and I use my phone as my alarm clock. But since Sprint took over it's been right on the nose.
It's about the only time I can think of where people don't fight against some natural cycle or pretend it doesn't exist for the sake of some kind of mechanical efficiency. Instead, we take the natural cycle and amplify it.
It's great. It makes summer more summery and winter more wintery by comparison.
Losing an hour of lovely sleep is a drag. My body clock is already screwy, and having it made more so by random clock changing is not pretty. But I live on the eastern edge of my time zone, and extra daylight in the evening is really welcome. I'll be feeling better by Thursday, and will be appreciating the extra evening daylight, if it ever stops pouring rain.
Here in Wisconsin we've been lucky to have a good melting spree over the last week or so. Which is nice, because we've had two feet of snow since Dec. 9 (and don't even THINK about missing the giant piles of plowed-up sludge that are taller than your car and make pulling into traffic impossible).
I love it, but as a cyclist who trains outdoors as much of the time as possible, I'm probably the poster child for wanting as much daylight as possible available in the evenings after work. What I really love is being able to put my bike commuting lights away for another summer - the lights, battery packs, chargers, et al are yet another heavy bulky "winter commuting" item that I now no longer have to tote around in my messenger bag.
I have never suffered from jet lag, disordered sleep or associated issues from the time changes, however. Whenever my head hits the pillow, I'm out, regardless of what the clock says. I'm pretty good at getting up on whatever schedule is necessary, too. I'm sure I'd be firmly in the "loathing" camp if I had trouble functioning because of the change.
I hate it and I wish it would stop. It was just starting to get light in the morning and now I'll be walking the dogs in pitch darkness for several more weeks and I hate that.
I usually get up at 5:15 am for volleyball. Today, I woke up at 4:30 and saw that I had a bit of sleep left that I could avail myself of (never used an alarm. . hate them unless I need to catch a plane, etc.)
Next thing I new it was 6:30 and I'd missed volleyball. I blame the time change.
On the other hand, Lighter Later Day has always been a minor day of celebration, meaning that I made it through another winter. . .
This! Even more extreme than "hate" - it is completely impossible for me to operate without natural sunlight in the morning. I am a zombie all winter, and then just as the sun starts to rise before 6:30, I have to knock my clock back and the sun starts rising at 7:30 again! It's like the groundhog saw his shadow and I have to suffer 6 more weeks of winter!
In other words, pick one or the other! Don't tease me with a week or two of excellent spring mornings before knocking me back down into winter!
Though I always have a twinge over giving up an hour in the morning, that disappears pretty quickly. I don't love or hate DST --- but I do always blink around and stumble like a zombie for the dawn and dusk hours for the first week or two after the switch either way. My interior finds all this new-fangled time-shift business very disruptive. (I don't know how accurate this is, but a police officer once told me that there's a statistical bump in auto accidents after a time change, because people are so disoriented by it.)
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