Things That Annoy Me, But Shouldn't

Because to effectively take advantage of it, you'd have to do a bunch of mucking about with business hours and it's just easier this way. It benefits literally everyone and only mildly inconveniences you as an individual 2 days out of every year.

 

People do already muck about a fair bit with business hours, though - not in response to the sun, but to the increasingly global nature of our world. Stock brokers in Vancouver start work at five or six in the morning because they have to be in tune with the big markets in the Eastern time zone; big events are planned at times when the majority of the TV audience will be able to watch, regardless of the local time; etc.

If the world keeps globalizing, I think we'll need to shift to a more global work day. Someone trying to have a meeting with employees in Australia, Vancouver and Paris will have a much easier time if there's a more-or-less standard global time zone.

 

Oh god, that argument again.

Apologies, but we're into full-on pet peeve territory here. So sunrise in the summer is before 5 am at this latitude, without DST. Great, just get up at five, no problems, right? Except most stores don't open until 9, work doesn't start until 9, and my evening job ends at 7pm. When I cycle home from work, I have to make sure that I have my lights, because it'll still be bright enough when I leave the building, but by the time I get back home, they'll be advisable/legally required.

Twelve or so years ago, Hokkaido prefecture (which is an island in its own right) tried a soft rollout of daylight savings time. In a particularly Japanese move, they had some businesses run on DST, while others stayed on JST (Japan Standard Time). Many people said they liked it, because it let them get out of work (on DST) in time to pick up their kids from school or catch happy hour at the izakaya (on JST). Others didn't like it so much, since their businesses decided that they'd be starting an hour early (DST), but not doing any of that going home early (DST) nonsense, so they'd be finishing at the regular time. All in all, it was decided that the experiment didn't work, but IMHO only Japan could fuck things up that sideways.

 

I never seem to hear as much whining when people are getting an extra hour of sleep....

 

I worked at a call center that had semi-flexi, you could apply to be (on a monthly basis? Don't remember, it's been a long time) one of the 7-3s, 8-4s, or 10-6s, but once it was set, you had to be there on time and couldn't leave "early" from your shift. Default was 9-5, everything else was pending appropriate staffing levels, seniority etc. At my uni job it's similar, I work three out of five lessons a day and submit my availability before each new year. Most all of us work 1st-3rd period, but there are a couple who work 2nd-4th or even 3rd-5th. The night jobs are set to match with the time the businesspeople finish work though, so it's almost always 1730-?.

 

Right now where I am the sun rises at about 8:00am and sets about 6:30pm. I get up at 6:15am and try to go to bed about 10:00pm. That's on Daylight Saving Time. I get up in the dark and go to bed in the dark.

In a couple weeks we'll shift back to Standard Time and the sun will rise about 7:00am and set about 5:30pm. I'll still wake up and go to bed in the dark. What's been gained?

 

What time is sunrise and sunset in June?

 

In June, sunrise around 5:30, sunset around 9:15. That's DST. So without it sunrise would be 4:30ish, sunset 8:15ish. Either way I'm getting up in the daylight and going to bed in the dark... I don't know, does that extra hour of daylight at the end of my conscious day help me out?

(I remember when I was a kid, being absolutely OUTRAGED about having to go to sleep while it was still light outside. So the 8:15 sunset might be easier on small children (and their parents!))

 

When you think of all the power that's used when you're still awake at the end of the day and the sun's down as opposed to when it's dark out and you're still asleep, then yeah, it helps out a bit.

 

My sister says that part of the year in Alaska the sun doesn't rise until 0930-1000.
That would drive me nuts.

 

I spent a year in Northern Alberta. In summer when the sun went down and you'd only get about 4 hours of twilight before the sun came up again, but in the winter you'd only get about 6 hours of daylight, which was killer if you had an office job. It was amazing, but the winter was definitely murderous there.

 

The one thing I liked about Spokane WA, was during the summer it would not get dark until 2000.
Down side was that it was gray a lot, and windy.

 

Logical inconsistencies in stories.

I recently watched a playthrough of the F.E.A.R. game franchise. I'd played the first one and a few of the expansions, but was curious about the story. In the first game, the player-character is the point man of a special forces team, and he doesn't have a name. It works well enough, because his boss just calls him "buddy" (e.g., "What about you, buddy? Ready to go to work?").

The expansions aren't part of the canon of the franchise, but when we get to the third game, the geniuses at Monolith decided to name the character "Point Man." Not only that, but we've discovered he was in the military prior to his service in First Encounter Assault Recon, but apparently without a name or any idea of his history.

Sorry, but that's just lazy. It's one thing to avoid naming him in the first game, because part of the story involves learning his identity. But by the third game (the second in the franchise to feature him as the protagonist), he should know a name for himself beyond his "once upon a time" job title. And there should have been some explanation for why he didn't remember his childhood but his brother could.

Unfortunately that's just the tip of the iceberg. As a "time waster" FPS game, I love the John Woo-style slow motion and particle effects, the challenging AI, and the creepy, sci-fi thematic elements. Just not a fan of the lazy storytelling. But the third game was mostly a yawn-fest of killing wave after wave after wave of zombies and robots and soldiers, with very little in the way of a compelling story or tactical challenge.

 

I still want to slap the stink off Foster the People for that "Pumped Up Kicks" song. And Magic! for "Rude."

 

Ah, the scary days when people actually thought that was a good look for a band...

 

Well Tom Araya from Slayer turned into Evil Clause.

 

He looks like a Cro-Magnon man from some museum diorama.

 

That's not an entirely inaccurate description.

 

Websites that make the back button in your browser function as a page refresh, so that instead of going back as desired, you get the same page loading again.

Piss off!! I want to go back! If I wanted to refresh your page I'd hit the fucking refresh button!!

Oh, and this is in the wrong thread, as I reckon my annoyance is wholly justified.

 

Here?

Not Happy?

Anyway, I fucking hate sloppy writing.

What set me off specifically today is the TV show (on National Geographic in my area) "Air Crash Investigations".

Love the show, real-life detective drama, but it has a multitude of sins. In particular, the (rerun) that aired tonight was on the crash of the Concorde in 2000. They repeatedly referred to the Concorde as "the world's only supersonic plane".

Fuck you, I will put myself into cold sleep for a thousand years just to hunt down your ancestors.

All of them.