The left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.
Most technology has a built-in feature, which is the ability to point out shortsightedness in its creators. A few years ago, someone designed a spiffy radio alarm clock which, after prototyping, tweaking, testing, retesting, and probably sixteen more steps, ended up on a store shelf in 2006, from which it got bought for me. They thought of quite a few things that hadn't been within the reach of Sony when they made my last alarm clock fifteen years before, including an automatic time set feature. To make this feature useful, there's one thing it has to do manually: adjust twice a year for Standard and Daylight Savings times, based on the set dates for this to occur for the foreseeable future. There's probably on an official table for this somewhere in Washington, D.C.
What they didn't consider until their clock was in stores was that a certain piece legislation that was already on the docket during the design phase would go through. It went through, and it called for Daylight Savings Time to start earlier by a few weeks. What this means is that I have to adjust for Daylight and Standard Time myself. What it also means is that my clock knows what day would have been the start of Daylight Savings had it not been for that legislation but I don't. Not, at least, until it sets itself forward, which it did this morning. I've got an hour to kill that I'd like to have spent sleeping, but I didn't figure out that I was up an hour early until after I'd showered and gotten half-dressed.
The legislation also extended the end of DST, so some Sunday morning in autumn, it's going to go back an hour without my knowledge and I'll sleep in another hour. Let's hope I don't have somewhere to be that day, too.
What they didn't consider until their clock was in stores was that a certain piece legislation that was already on the docket during the design phase would go through. It went through, and it called for Daylight Savings Time to start earlier by a few weeks. What this means is that I have to adjust for Daylight and Standard Time myself. What it also means is that my clock knows what day would have been the start of Daylight Savings had it not been for that legislation but I don't. Not, at least, until it sets itself forward, which it did this morning. I've got an hour to kill that I'd like to have spent sleeping, but I didn't figure out that I was up an hour early until after I'd showered and gotten half-dressed.
The legislation also extended the end of DST, so some Sunday morning in autumn, it's going to go back an hour without my knowledge and I'll sleep in another hour. Let's hope I don't have somewhere to be that day, too.