I really don’t care for daylight savings time. There are a couple of things I appreciate. The balance of getting more light earlier and later is a give and take. Mostly I really dislike how it disrupts my sleep pattern. It always seems to take a full week for me to get used to it. It’s like mini-jet lag without moving anywhere.

My method for dealing with it is very specific. I like to make sure I change every clock before I go to sleep, and then I wake up somewhat unaware that anything changed. I forgot to do that last night so I had to run around first thing this morning before I became cognizant of the time. As I was changing the 15th clock it dawned on me that we have household clock proliferation.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

  • Digital cameras all have clocks. Had to change two of these. Let’s see, there is enough computer in here to do amazing stuff with imaging but no ability to automatically change the clock?
  • Remote controls!? You bet. Two Philips Pronto’s with their own clocks. They can learn IR codes and do all sorts of gymnastics that make them worthwhile. Dealing with DST is not one of them.
  • One Polar wristwatch. It can tell me what my heart rate is and theoretically my VO2 Max but no clue about handling DST.
  • Microwave and ovens both have clocks, two more. I’m not going to blame them a lot since the electronics are so basic. But it sure would be easy to fix.
  • The phones have their own clock. Kudos to them for taking the time of the master unit so I don’t have to change it on every phone. But it has date and time, it’s trivial to adjust for DST as well!
  • I count at least 10 good ole’ clocks that I had to change. Can’t blame them, it’s just a AA battery with a clock mechanism.

Only devices to deal with this on their own are the computers and our TiVo. There has to be a better way.