Hey folks, Richard Rost with Computer Learning Zone. Time for my semi-annual rant about how changing the clocks is dumb. And yes, I will keep posting a new video twice a year until this dumb practice is over.
Like everyone else, I spend a good chunk of time twice a year running around my house changing clocks. My computer, my phone, my Alexa devices, my smartwatch, they've all got it figured out. But everything else, forget it. I've got the digital clock in the bedroom, one in the garage, the car clock that requires an engineering degree, the stove, the microwave, the coffee maker, the wall clock, the oven timer, the air fryer, the old VCR that I keep around just so I can be mad at it. Every single one needs manual intervention.
It's like a time-themed scavenger hunt that I never signed up for. I'm half expecting to find one hiding in the freezer. Why am I doing this twice a year?
Now here in Florida, we get a special spin on the madness. A few years back, our state proudly passed the so-called Sunshine Protection Act to keep daylight saving time year-round. Everyone cheered, we patted ourselves on the back and then nothing happened. Because surprise, we actually need federal approval before we can stop pretending it's 1918.
So we're all down here in the Sunshine State, ready to stop changing clocks, just waiting on Congress to remember that we exist. And here's the kicker, even President Trump said he was on board with making the change. He campaigned on it. He literally called it inconvenient and costly to the nation. So we've got bipartisan agreement on something for once and still, Congress has been sleeping on the job and still getting paid.
In the shutdowns, the hearings, the grandstanding, they can't seem to get around to actual legislation that would make a difference in people's daily lives. Now I get it, there are bigger fires to put out, but come on, this one's easy. Just pick a time and stick with it. Arizona and Hawaii already figured it out. Meanwhile, the rest of us are running around like confused time travelers twice a year.
So here's my appeal to my fellow Floridians. Try saying that ten times fast - fellow Floridians. Let's do what Arizona and Hawaii already figured out decades ago. Let's just stick with standard time year-round and be done with it.
We don't need congressional approval to stop playing this twice-a-year game of guess-what-time-it-is. Instead of changing the clocks, just change what we do. For those of you who are worried that it's too dark for kids in the morning waiting for the school bus, start school a little later. If you want more daylight after work, start work earlier. If you're worried the sun's going to set before you finish the 18th hole of your second round, hit the course earlier. Problem solved. It's way easier than convincing a do-nothing Congress to amend the law from the 1960s, especially a Congress that can barely agree on what day it is.
Alright, so for those of you who didn't catch my last rant, here's a quick recap. Changing clocks is bad for your health, bad for your schedule, bad for your software, and bad for your sanity. Your taxes go up, productivity goes down, and somewhere a poor IT guy is patching another database because timestamps don't match. We've got smart lights that can sense sunrise, but we're still acting like we're saving whale oil for the war effort.
Honestly, if we're going to keep doing this, we might just as well randomly change the calendar too. Let's move lunch to 3 a.m. and call Thursday New Monday. Embrace the chaos.
And now it's time for me to share a few of my favorite memes that people have submitted to me since the last video. This one's from Platinum Member Donald Blackwell. Love a good Star Trek meme. This one's from YouTube Member Fitz027. This one's from Gold Member Anna Blakely. If you've got a good meme you want to send to me, post it in the comments, email it to me, post it on the website, maybe it'll be included in the next video.
Alright, for those of you who haven't seen it yet, here's the rest of my previous video, and yes, I'm going to keep adding to this every year until something actually changes.
Hey folks, it's Richard Rost with Computer Learning Zone. It's that time of the year again. It's my semi-annual rant about how changing clocks is dumb. And I used to complain about daylight saving time, but it's not just daylight saving time. If you want to keep extra sunlight hours in the summer, that's fine. I don't care. Just leave the clocks alone. Stop messing with them.
And while we're at it, hey, President Trump, this one's for you. You've been signing all kinds of executive actions. Why not take a shot at this? I know it technically requires an act of Congress, but you renamed the Gulf of Mexico, so why not push this through and see what happens? Why wait for Congress? The great state of Florida, of which your residence has already voted to get rid of this dumb stuff. And you expressed support for eliminating it during your campaign. You called it inconvenient and, quote, very costly to the nation, unquote. You said the Republican Party would use its best efforts to eliminate daylight saving time. So let's get this done. Make it happen. Or as Picard would say, make it so.
Alright, for the rest of you, here's the rest of my previous video. So you get all the history and all the good stuff about daylight saving time and why it's so dumb. And yes, I said savings again. It's a habit.
Hey folks, Richard Rost from Computer Learning Zone. I know you just had to watch this video back in November, but I'm going to keep posting it until our lawmakers finally get rid of this stupid practice of changing clocks twice a year. It's dumb. And clearly, I'm not the only person who feels this way. Look at these people. This guy is so angry, his legs fell off his body. And this guy brought his cello to the party. So yeah, it's not just me.
Hey folks, this is Richard Rost with Computer Learning Zone. I want to just take a minute to say that we should abolish daylight saving time once and forever. It's dumb. It's time to stop changing the clocks twice a year. DST is dumb. It causes problems with both people and computers, and we're going to talk about that in just a minute. And it's time to get rid of it.
So daylight saving time was originally introduced in Germany and Austria in 1908 to conserve energy during the war. In the United States, we had the Uniform Time Act of 1966. That's what gave us daylight saving time. And it's daylight saving time, not savings time. I know I catch myself saying it wrong from time to time as well. And that's how dumb daylight saving time is.
And of course, it's a big myth that it was to help the farmers with their crops when actually the agricultural industry lobbied against DST. They hate it. No, that's a big myth.
Now Arizona, which we'll talk about in a minute, and Hawaii passed state laws to exempt themselves from DST. So they're on standard time year-round. Twenty-nine other states, including where I live in Florida, have passed state laws to make DST permanent. However, and this is why it's stupid, since doing anything other than exempting yourself from DST goes against that law we talked about. It requires congressional approval because it's interstate commerce and blah, blah, blah.
So we could exempt ourselves in Florida from DST, which means we'd be on standard time all year round, but we don't want that. They want to make DST permanent, so that requires congressional approval. The whole thing is dumb.
And let's talk about some more craziness inside of Arizona. You've got this mess. Arizona is exempt from DST. However, inside Arizona, you've got the Navajo Nation, which does observe DST. But then inside the Navajo Nation is the Hopi Nation, which does not observe DST. So yeah, it's crazy.
Now the Sunshine Protection Act, introduced by two Floridians, Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Vern Buchanan, was aimed at making DST permanent and it's been introduced in Congress multiple times. It's passed in the Senate, but it's not passed in the House. So the House members need to get their butts moving. And no, those pictures in no way represent my feelings toward Congress.
Now, in addition to being a nuisance, DST has been shown to have many negative effects on humans. It can disrupt sleep patterns, mood, alertness, appetite. It messes with your circadian rhythm. Even this morning I woke up and it was seven o'clock and of course my body still thinks it's eight o'clock. You can trigger mental illnesses like bipolar disorder and seasonal affective disorder. I had that really bad when I lived up in New York, because it was dark all the time. And of course, those things are all indicators for elevated risks for cardiovascular diseases, injuries, and immune-related diseases. These are all from scientific papers, not just my opinion. You want some references? Google it.
Now of course this is Computer Learning Zone. So DST has also been shown to have many negative effects on technology, which is my emphasis. Switching clocks is dumb. It causes time synchronization issues, scheduled task disruptions, logging and auditing challenges. For example, time clocks with shifts that span the DST switchover. Sure, Windows itself can handle the change, but does your software calculate those differences properly? If your shift starts at midnight and ends at 8 a.m., is your time clock software properly programmed to notice that daylight saving time kicked in? I've done lots of software fixes for people that had databases or spreadsheets where that wasn't the case.
In fact, I remember back in 2011 when the iPhone had a huge glitch and everyone was complaining about it. Its clock fell back an hour instead of springing forward during the DST transition, and lots and lots of people had problems waking up that morning. But of course, it's an iPhone. So what do you expect? Android forever.
Anyway, if you've got Excel spreadsheets that track time clock data, the best way to do that is to use UTC or universal time. Basically, Greenwich Mean Time. Store that in your spreadsheets. I just did a video on this a couple of days ago. I'll put a link down below if you want to watch it.
Same thing for Microsoft Access, which is my forte. If you've got a database where you're keeping track of your time clocks or any other kind of scheduling and calculating the number of hours between clock-in and clock-out is important, make sure you're using UTC time. Here's a video on that. And yes, you can hear me complain about DST some more in these videos.
And of course, I shouldn't even have to tell you how much of a pain it is to run around changing the stove, the microwave, the wall clocks, the clock in the car. It's just easier for me just a couple of months out of the year to know that my clock is wrong than to change it everywhere. Remember the VCR. I hate it. I still have to do it today.
Today, DST just - wait, we just went to standard time today. We fell back. So I'm not looking forward to it. I've got like six clocks I have to change. The pain, twice a year.
Alright, so instead of me just complaining about it, what am I going to do? Well, I'm going to write my congressman and I'm going to encourage as many other people as I can to write your congressman as well. There is the link. You can just Google 'write to my congressman' and you'll find house.gov.
I'll put a link to this down below as well. You can just click on it. You type in your zip code. There's my rep, Byron Donalds. And right down here, you can find a link to email them. See that little link right there? Click on that. You type in your zip code right here. Don't worry about the plus four. Hit submit. Or there are links up here if you'd rather Facebook them. I hate Facebook. Facebook them. Tweet them. And yes, I'm going to call it tweeting. It's not Xing or whatever they're trying to do nowadays. Or there's a YouTube channel on some of them. Different congressmen have different ways to contact them. I'm going to email mine.
And what do you say to them? Well, I wrote a letter. There it is. I'll put a copy of that down below too. You can find it at this page right here. DST is dumb. Feel free to copy and paste if you want. Put your congressman's name up here, your information down there and send it.
So if you're like me and you hate daylight saving time, here's something we can at least try to do. I don't know if they actually read these or not or if it has any effect or whatever, but I'm going to at least try instead of just complaining.
Alright, now I can check this off my list. This is my Rick's Life missions checklist. I'm going to convert the world to ISO dates. I've already done several videos on this. This is the proper date format - year, month, day. It's confusing when people around the world use it differently, and it causes software problems too.
I've done a lot of videos on this. If you're sharing a spreadsheet with someone who's in, let's say, England and they're doing day, month, year, which is more logical than the way we do it here in the US. No, this is the way everyone should write dates. I've been putting it on my checks this way for years. And yes, I occasionally still write checks. I'm old.
Alright. Mission two, abolish daylight saving time. I complain about it every year. Time to do something about it. This one I don't see happening in my lifetime. Or this one, get everyone to use the metric system. Come on. Pounds, inches, dumb. And yes, I think we should switch to a 28-day calendar. It makes more sense. January 1st is always a Monday. You'll need 13 months of 28 days each, each month is the same number of days. Shift the month names so that October is actually the eighth month. Shift all the rest of them over. Then we've got to add a 13th month. What do we call it? I don't know. Call it Rickember. I don't know.
Then you take New Year's Day. Make it a holiday. You can either add it as the 29th day of the last month or whatever you want to do. Or make it outside of the calendar. Make it a party day. And then your leap day is election day every four years and give everybody off so they can go vote or do online voting, which we should do, which I don't know why we don't.
Alright. So there we go. That's my annual tirade on abolishing daylight saving time. It's dumb. Go write your congressman. Tell them I sent you. Point them to my video. Spread the word. Share this. Let's get rid of daylight saving time forever. And yes, I know I just said savings time. That's how dumb it is. OK, bye.
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