Wreckless Abandon

This is Major Tom with spin control. Since it seems that the Big Guy has left everyone in a lurch and abandoned his post, I have bravely volunteered to step in and give this blogging thing a go.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m doing this because my bluff got called.

I’ve been emailing with the Big Guy for a little while and have been giving him grief about not posting for so long. I’m apparently not the only one. Even his brother from Florida called to make sure he hadn’t gotten injured again (since that’s been the main reason for previous hiatuses – or is that hiatae? I don’t really know).

No, the Big Guy is reportedly painting. He’s apparently spending all of his free time on it. Except for the four or five days he had the flu, that is. Paint, paint, paint. Maybe it wasn’t the flu. Maybe he was just really high on paint fumes. Hmmm.

But for now you get Major Tom. I guess I could go by something like ‘medium-sized guy who used to ride bicycles but now rides snowmobiles and motorcycles’, but MSGWUTRBBNRSAM is a little much.

So I said to the Big Guy, “Dude, what’s so hard about writing a post now and then? How can you be getting writer’s block after doing this for only a year-and-a-half? I bet I could do better.” That last sentence was the mistake I am now living up to. Except my challenge from him is to just write a post once in a while and not every day like he’d been doing. Oh, and I’m free to throw out trivia questions, too.

Ya know, sometimes it’s hard just to come up with one thing to write about, much less several month’s worth. And so far this post has just been background as to why I’m actually writing and not him. I guess I’d better get to typing something with some substance.
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We just switched around on Daylight Savings Time again. This year was a little different, coming early as it did, but we still fool around with our clocks twice each year (except that I rarely get around to resetting the clock in my car, so it’s only good for half of the year).

The whole idea behind DST was to provide some kind of energy savings, or something. According to what I’ve read and what I’ve heard on NPR, nobody has actually proven that any energy has been saved. In fact, little things like moving the switcheroo up to last weekend this year have cost significant money to businesses and government offices that use computers so that the transition got made more-or-less smoothly. Add to that the issues faced by multi-national companies who have offices in places where they don’t use DST. Seems like a big hassle to me. Some have even suggested that we go on DST permanently. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Here’s what I think we should do. First, get rid of the whole DST thing altogether. Then, if we decide that maybe it would be a little nicer to have more daylight in the evening during part, or even all, of the year, then maybe we should just shift our work hours. Instead of showing up for work at 8:00 am (or 6:30 am for the Big Guy), we start showing up at 7:00 am (or 5:30 am, dude). It’s really the same thing we have now. The sun would be in the same position when we go to work on March 15th at 8:00 am DST as it would when we went to work at 7:00 am Standard Time. And I wouldn’t have to fool with changing my clocks around twice each year (just the alarm time on the clock in the bedroom).

But you know that someone would complain. I can hear it now. “How would we ever remember to change the batteries in our smoke detectors under that set-up?” Oh, I don’t know – maybe write it down on your calendar?

Been a pleasure,
Major Tom

Trivia Question for today: A certain Brit-pop rocker has at least two songs that mention me. What was the second one?