I've never liked Daylight Saving Time.  It's an annoyance to me.  It would be nice to live in a state like Arizona that has decided that it's useless, instead of a state like Utah whose inhabitants have generally decided that it's useless, but whose legislature hasn't.

I thought that the idea came from Benjamin Franklin, but apparently, he only suggested the idea in a satirical way when he was an American envoy to France.  The anonymous letter suggested that the Parisians could save money on candles if they woke up an hour earlier to use morning sunlight.  The same letter proposed a shutter tax (to further save money on candles--without shutters, more sunlight enters and candles are not necessary), as well as waking people up by firing cannons and ringing church bells at dawn.

My deepest apologies to Ben Franklin for the times that I have directed grumbles at him because I thought he had come up with the idea.

The only interesting thing I remember about Daylight Saving time was back in 1974.  Yes, I remember a couple of things from 1974.  The previous year, Richard Nixon signed into law the Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act of 1973.  Supposedly, this was to save energy.  Said Nixon:

"We have taken a number of actions to meet the energy crisis, and more will have to be taken. Many require inconvenience and sacrifice. But daylight saving time on a year-round basis, which will result in the conservation during the winter months of an estimated equivalent of 150,000 barrels of oil a day, will mean only a minimum of inconvenience and will involve equal participation by all. Unlike many of our other initiatives to deal with the energy crisis and to accomplish the goal of self-sufficiency in energy through Project Independence, these savings will not require research, new technology, diplomacy, or exploration."

 

I doubt that Daylight Saving Time has any net effect on energy usage.  As a native american once said, it's like cutting an inch off of the bottom of a blanket and sewing it on the top to make the blanket longer.  If there are more hours of daylight during "leisure" hours, people are going to go to beaches and parks and sporting events, and I can almost guarantee they aren't WALKING to those places.  If anything, I would think that Daylight Saving Time actually increases energy usage--especially when it comes to petroleum products.

The effect of this Energy Conservation Act was that Daylight Saving Time started on Sunday, 6 January that year.  My older brother was in the first grade and usually walked 4 blocks to the grade school.  I remember my mother being worried about him walking to school while it was still dark--even keeping him home until it started getting light outside.  Why this particular thing sticks in my mind, I have no idea, but it probably contributed to my negative opinion of Daylight Saving Time.

As a software engineer, anything I do that deals with dates and times has to be smart enough to know if it's Standard Time or Daylight Saving Time.  Every time Congress decides to change the starting or ending time of Daylight Saving Time, it causes work for a lot of software engineers in the world.

At any rate, most of you reading this blog entry, like me, must set your clocks back an hour before going to bed tonight.  Enjoy the extra hour of sleep, because you're going to wish you had it back in a few months.

Yes, a few months down the road, we're going to cut that inch off of the top of the blanket and sew it back on the bottom.

I've been thinking a lot about work and jobs and careers lately, so I thought I would post about the various jobs I've had in my life.

• Newspaper Delivery - I delivered the Billings Gazette early in the morning.  I don't know how old I was when I started...probably 11 or 12 years old.
• Cleaning - There was a little computer store in Billings near my house.  I don't really remember much about it other than that I would hang out there because I thought those Apple ][ computers were pretty cool.  I wanted to make some money.  They didn't want to clean their toilets.  It didn't last long, because, as it turns out, I didn't want to clean their toilets either.
• McDonald's - I started working at McDonald's with a friend when I was 15.  Since I was only 15, all I could do was clean the lobby.  And the toilets.  Hmmm.  But it was regular work, which was nice.  I worked at McDonald's through High School. Of course, once I turned 16, I could do all of the greasy cooking stuff and all of the annoying serving customers stuff.  A couple of days after I gave my notice (to go to Ricks College), my favorite manager sat down with me and told me that if I stayed there, they would make me *gasp* a MANAGER.  Um... No thanks.  They gave that same offer to one of my cow-orkers (as Dogbert calls them) and he took it.  He manages a McDonald's today.
• Ricks College Vending Services - I got up exceedingly early and stocked the vending machines in the girls' dorms at Ricks College.  It was a decent job.  The vending machines were usually completely empty the Monday after fast Sunday.
• Ricks College Music Department - I was a "property manager" for the music department, which basically meant that I would set up chairs and risers and other such stuff for rehearsals, performances, etc.  It was a perfect job for a guy that thought, at the time, that he would be a music major.
• Gibson's Garden Center - After returning home from Ricks College, I took this job because it was a full-time job and because it didn't take any employable skills other than a strong back and a good attitude.
• Subway Sandwiches - When the garden center started winding down (because the planting season was pretty much over) they laid me off. I needed a job for a few weeks until I left for my LDS mission.  I helped open the first Subway sandwich shop in Billings.  The owner hired me in spite of the fact that I would be leaving in only a few weeks.
• LDS Missionary - I served a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in The Netherlands and Belgium.  It was a unique, amazing, life-changing experience for me.
• Buttrey Foods - After returning home from my LDS mission, I had a couple of months to kill before returning to Ricks College.  I bagged groceries for Buttrey Foods, and then worked for the produce department during the Christmas season helping out with Christmas tree sales.  Apparently Christmas trees are produce.  *shrug*  Who knew?
• Ricks College Music Department - When I returned to Ricks College, I lucked out.  There was an opening for a property manager in the music department, so I got my "old job" back.
• Buttrey Foods - I came back from Ricks college engaged to be married.  I needed money and I needed it fast, so I went back to Buttrey's.  They hired me on immediately as a bagger and told me that I was going to be trained as a checker.  Cool!  That was, until I told them about the time I would need to take off for my wedding, my sister-in-law-to-be's wedding, and my brother-in-law-to-be's wedding.  They didn't like that, so after one day of training to be a checker, they demoted me back to bagger.
• Ramada Inn - After being demoted, I started looking for something else that would make more money.  I found a full-time position in the laundry at Ramada inn.  They fed their staff lunch every day, which was a pretty cool benefit.  After my wedding, my wife started working at Ramada as a maid, so we got to go to work together every day and eat lunch together every day.
• Cutco - When we moved to Utah, jobs were way more difficult to find than they are today in this "bad" economy.  I tried selling Cutco knives.  It sucked.
• Emergency Essentials - Without any employable skills, I was lucky to land a job in the warehouse/shipping department at Emergency Essentials.  It wasn't necessarily a fun job, but I worked with some really cool people.
• Missionary Training Center - When I started back at school at Brigham Young University, I was hired to teach Dutch at the Provo Missionary Training Center.  I LOVED this job.  I'd go back to this job in a heartbeat if it would pay my bills.
• McDonald's - I worked at the McDonald's on Bulldog Blvd. in Provo for a short time to make a little extra money.  We were getting by on student loans, and any little bit helped.
• Jones Paint & Glass -When Older Son was born, the money at the MTC wasn't making ends meet, so I left there to build vinyl windows.  It was a pretty crappy job, but it paid a lot more.
• TransEra Corp - I was studying to be an Electrical Engineer and a friend of mine told me about a job opening as an Electrical Engineer's Assistant.  I thought it would be a perfect career boost at the time.  However, I would work with hardware all day, then after work, I'd talk to the software guys about what they were doing.  It took a long time of doing this before I realized I liked software a LOT more than I liked hardware.  I ended up getting fired because I complained about lesions that were developing on my hands due to some solder flux.  When I asked for Material Safety Data Sheets, they didn't have any. I asked a friend who worked for OSHA about it and mentioned this to my "friend" that worked there.  He mentioned it to our boss and I was fired the next day.

That's pretty much all of the various odd jobs I've had in my life.  I'll post soon about the rest of the jobs I've had--the rest are all part of my career as a software engineer.

I feel like I'm back in school because I have different schedules on different days.  Yesterday's post detailed my Monday-Wednesday schedule.  Friday is the same except I get to go home after work instead of going to UVU.  So here's my Tuesday-Thursday schedule.

6:30 am - Alarm goes off.  I wish I could sleep a little longer, but since my wife is already at work, I have to get up or my younger son will be late for school.

7:00 am - I meet younger son in the kitchen, make breakfast for him and ask him what he wants for lunch.  (A pickle-cheese sandwich, usually.)

7:40 am - Leave home to take younger son to school and head off to work.

8:00 am - Arrive at work.  I have the same daily meetings at 10:00 and 10:30.

5:00-ish pm - Leave for home.

5:30-ish pm - I usually cook dinner because I honestly enjoy cooking.  A lot.  And eating.  Thus the need to go swimming and tell my sweet tooth to SHUT UP.

The rest of the evening is usually spent enjoying family time until 9:00 when we generally follow the same schedule I outlined yesterday. However, tonight is the first Thursday of the month, so I have round table (kinda-sorta training for scouting) at 7:00 pm followed by Stake Corner (more of the same, but with different talking heads).

So instead of family time, I didn't get home until my wife was pretty much going to sleep. Oh well. At least it's only once a month.

5:45-ish am - Halfway awake, I hear my wife downstairs on the treadmill.  I don't need to get up until 6:30, but the treadmill always wakes me up.  I roll over and go back to sleep

6:15-ish am - I'm woken again by shower noises.  I used to sleep more soundly than this.  I go back to sleep again.

6:30 am - My alarm goes off.  I get up and get ready for the day.  I hear my son leave for his College Algebra class at Utah Valley University.

7:00 am - Time to drive to work.

7:30-ish am - After arriving at work, I catch up on a few emails and dive into a project.  I wish it was Thursday, because Thursday is "Bagel" day at ancestry.com

10:00 am - Daily team meeting

10:15 am - Time to check email or do something else to kill the time remaining before my...

10:30 am - Other daily team meeting.  I'm on two teams at work right now.

10:45 am - I usually research and fix bugs after the team meeting because I don't have a lot of time left before I...

11:30 am - Drive to the Orem Rec. Center

11:50-ish am - I get in the pool and start swimming lap after tedious lap.  I wish I had a waterproof .mp3 player to make the time go by faster.  Mental note:  Santa Claus might bring it for me this year.

12:45-ish pm - I finish 20 laps--2 kilometers of swimming.  That's more than half of the Iron Man distance I've set a goal to swim by the end of the month.

1:30 pm - I return to work and inhale the lunch that I brought.  Swimming always makes me HUNGRY.

4:00 pm - I tell my sweet tooth to SHUT UP for the millionth time.  I'm NOT walking down the hall to the stash of cinnamon bears on the counter or the ice cream bars in the freezer.

5:30 pm - Time for me to leave to teach my class at Utah Valley University

6:00 pm - Class starts.  Wednesday classes are mostly filled with small group activities and other interactive things.

7:40 pm - Class ends.  This is the only time I have "office hours," so I usually end up meeting with students, helping them with their math, and reviewing problems that they are having.

8:00-ish pm - Leave for home.

8:30 pm (sometimes quite a bit later) - I (finally) arrive at home.  I throw some leftovers in the microwave to reheat and remember that I have a wife and two sons that also sometimes want/need my attention.

9:00 pm - Scripture reading/prayer time, then my wife goes to bed.  The next hour is usually spent helping with homework, reading to my younger son, and/or watching an episode of The X-Files with both sons.

10:00-ish pm - "Me" time, which usually includes catching up on email, facebook, watching something on TV, or something like that.

11:30 pm - Bedtime...usually...unless something else has grabbed my attention and forgets to let go of it.

I was told that today not once, but TWICE.

I host my various web sites on a Virtual Private Server.  Since I never come close to using the bandwidth allotted to me every month (No, dear Internets.  That is NOT a challenge.), I host sites for a couple of friends as well.

This afternoon, I helped one of my friends work out a problem that was occurring on her site, and she said it was the best tech support ever.

I suppose it helps that I actually care that things go well for her site because, she's a friend.  It probably also helps that I understand the frustration that goes along with bad tech support.  It helps that I'm in the same time zone (well, within an hour, depending on Daylight Saving Time) and I'm not working off of a tech support script.  Oh, and I also enjoy reading her blogs, so if they have problems, I might end up missing out!

So hooray!  Today, I'm proud to provide the best tech support ever!

Last week, my goal was to swim five miles.

I came up a mile short because Friday night, I slept horribly.  HORRIBLY, I tell you!  Stupid peeping noises from smoke alarms...  So I slept in on Saturday instead of swimming that last mile.

Usually when I swim now, I swim 2000 meters, which is just about a mile and a quarter.  On Friday last week, I swam 2400 meters.  That's a mile and a half!

At Scout Camp this summer, I'm going to be able to do the mile swim without too much difficulty.  That's a cool thing.

I've also decided that before the end of November, I'm going to swim an Iron Man Triathlon swim.  Sure, it will be in the pool and not in open water, but my goal is to complete that 2.4-mile swim and I'm going to complete it within the 2 hour and 20 minute time required for an Iron Man.

For the first time in my life, I'm starting to wish that I could run.

I can complete the swim in about 2 hours.  I can complete the cycling in about 7 hours.  That leaves 8 hours for a marathon to make the 17 hour cutoff.

Could I walk a marathon in 8 hours?  Possibly.  That's just over 3.25 miles per hour.  If I walked quickly, I could still make it.

That's a long, LONG day.  The idea is stuck in my head a bit.  I don't know if anything will ever come of it, but it's food for thought.

Today I swam a mile.

I don't know when I last ran a mile, but it must have been in the 1980's.

But today, I swam a mile!  That's something I'm sure I have never done before in my life.

I found my "stride" or "pace" or whatever you call it in swimming.  My breathing was controlled and my heart rate didn't climb until I thought my heart would give out.  When I was done, my arms were tired, but not to the point that I couldn't have continued swimming.

Yes, swimming is going to be very good for me.

I'm pretty much done with the bike for the year.  Here's the data from the Heber Valley Century:

[iframe http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/117556461 548 500]

It was a good ride for me.  I finished 45 minutes faster than I did last time I rode Heber Valley.  The route was a little bit different.  Instead of 3750 feet of climbing, there was 4385 feet of climbing.  The other good thing was that I did this one "iron man" style.  I didn't draft at all.  I rode the entire ride "solo."

Before the ride, I noticed that my back tire was squaring off.  Not a good thing.  So I ended up buying a new set of tires before the ride.  I'm going to try to remember to rotate my tires a little more often now.

So... what do do in the "off season?"  I decided to swim over the winter months to keep in shape and to keep the pounds I've lost from creeping back on.  I have a membership at the Orem Rec Center and I started swimming on Saturday.

On Saturday, I swam 500 meters.  It was slow and clunky, but I didn't swim all that long because my sons were there and I wanted to spend some time playing in the water with them.  On Wednesday, I swam 800 meters.  I wanted to die.  The jury was out for about an hour or so on whether or not I was going to lose my lunch.  IT SUCKED.  But today, I swam a whole kilometer, and I felt a lot better afterwards than I did on Wednesday.  This is good.

It's been a long, LONG time since I've done anything that works out my upper body.  I think swimming is going to be really good for me.

Just some random strangeness I've heard recently:

- KSL Radio has a "Speaking on Business" segment that features local businesses.  Monday's made me shake my head.  It started out with "Did you know that the average toddler falls up to five thousand times before the age of four?"  The business is a chiropractic business.  Apparently, falling down and getting up is hard on a toddler.  This particular chiropractor also does adjustments on infants, because "if you think about it, birth and entering the real world is as tough on the babies as it is on the mom."  I don't think I even want to go into all the reasons that this is just plain wrong.

- A friend on facebook mentioned something about an aunt that had passed away.  In reply, someone posted "Sending golden light to this family as they walk to the new path."  If someone said that to me in real life, my first reaction would probably be to slap them and say "Now say something intelligible that has meaning in THIS universe."

- State Farm insurance has a new series of advertisements on the radio.  Each of them has a 30-second mini song.  One of them mentions something about buying something more practical (with the money they saved by switching to State Farm insurance) like "a pet baboon with one robotic arm."  Why?  Because the next line, of course, ends with "State Farm" and they needed something to rhyme.  *headdesk*

- As I was walking to class at UVU the other night, I overheard a young woman talking on her cellular phone. (Very loudly, might I add.  It wasn't hard to overhear.)  She was obviously distressed about something and said "That's why I'm asking you for advice.  I'm tired of making all of these decisions BY MYSELF."  Welcome to life, young lady.  Welcome to life.

On Saturday, I rode the Alpine Loop. Here's the Garmin Connect information about the ride:

[iframe http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/113272048 548 500]

I hadn't ridden the Alpine Loop in more than 5 years. (I thought it had only been 3, but I was wrong.) Here's my blog entry from last time.

I must have taken a different route because this ride was about 5 miles shorter.

However, I did a LOT better on this ride.  Last time, I had to stop 3 or 4 times because my heart was pounding out of my chest and I couldn't catch my breath.  This time, I only had to stop once when my chain came off.  (Stupid chain.)

I am riding the Heber Valley Century ride in less than 2 weeks.  Saturday's ride told me that I'm ready!