An Amusing Blindside

I haven't been surprised by Daylight Savings Time in years, thanks in part to my partial adoption of the system David Allen outlines in Getting Things Done, but I was, yesterday morning. Typically, on going through my calendar on the evening before, or during my weekly review, I would have seen "02:00 * Begin Daylight Savings Time *" marked there. But I didn't get to check my calendar the night before, and since I was without a baby sitter last Friday, I ended up performing my weekly review in bits and pieces; apparently, checking the next week's calendar had slipped through the cracks.

In any event, it was amusing to see what advances in technology have made it like to completely forget about Daylight Savings Time. First, I woke up on time. The baby sleeps in our room, so I use my smart phone, set to vibrate (which I can still hear), as my alarm clock. My phone had already automatically re-set to the correct time. I started my coffee and logged in to my computer, which had also re-set itself to the correct time. Since I always plan my day first thing, "02:00 * Begin Daylight Savings Time *" popped up on my calendar.

"What?" I thought. I enter everything into my calendar manually, so I wondered whether this was correct. And since, without even being aware of DST, I was awake and seeing the time I had thought it was on my computer screen, I checked the paper. Yep: The Boston Globe's web site had a blurb.

"Oh, great! So it's really 4:00 a.m. and I've lost an hour's work already," was my next thought. But it quickly occurred to me that my phone and computer had probably reset themselves. To confirm this suspicion, I consulted my analog wristwatch and saw that it read a little bit past 2:00 a.m.

I chuckled with mild relief.

-- CAV