The biggest thing to happen this week is Daylight Savings Time. Those in the know (geek) refer to it as DST. And those who don’t know, ie management, are trying to make this as big as Y2k. Yessery Bob! Come Sunday morning, all those computin machines ain’t gonna know what time it is and stop working. And because of that, the bureaucracy is in full motion.

We’ve got a core DST team and on that core team are primary DST tester, the assistant DST tester, the backup DST tester and the alternate DST tester. Did I leave anyone out? And these teams exist for every device that keeps time, including the clocks on the wall.

We also have a disaster recovery team in the event that DST didn’t happen and a back up plan which calls for manually changing the time. Plus, we have a back out plan which calls for changing the time back to EST if DST doesn’t work. Even the National Guard have been put on alert. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

What people around here seem to be missing is the fact that the computers, clocks, etc. don’t know what time it is. They only know what time we tell them it is. If we tell them that it is 8AM, they think that it is 8AM. They don’t look at the clock on the wall and say “But the clock on the wall says it is 7AM. Who do I believe?”

Reality check! DST has been happening twice a year since the late 60s. This is a non-event. But, since we had so much fun with Y2K and Y3K won’t be happening for a few years, we need a reason to hold high level meetings, appoint committees, put together project plans complete with Gantt charts and call out the National Guard. Yippy Ki Yeah!

The simple solution to DST is to leave the clocks alone and require every one to get up one hour early. After all, it will be just as dark at 5Am EST as it will be at 6AM DST.