Ben Franklin couldn\u2019t have seen this coming.<\/p>\n
Among his many crazy ideas, this one was perhaps the zaniest:\u00a0 twice a year, let\u2019s have everyone in the country shift their clocks forward one hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall. \u00a0He reasoned that, in the summer, farmers were sleeping past sunrise and then using up valuable candle wax when they stayed up past sunset. \u00a0By shifting back an hour, a lot of candle wax could be saved.\u00a0 He was right.\u00a0 And luckily for us, our current government leaders are as wise as Old Ben, and certainly as dedicated to saving energy. \u00a0In 2005, President Bush \u2013 our greatest evangelist against the scourge of petroleum dependency \u2013 signed legislation moving Daylight Saving Time (DST) up 3 weeks, to March 11.\u00a0 The intent is to save millions of dollars in fuel, and the results will be closely monitored by the Secretary of Energy over the next four years to determine if the change should be made permanent.<\/p>\n
But somebody should have checked with Bill Gates first.\u00a0 All those computers he sold before 2005 are in for a big hiccup, a little calendar glitch called the \u201cDST bug.\u201d\u00a0 The IT guys are ripping their hair out.\u00a0 Microsoft has set up a hotline for anyone with problems installing their \u201cDST patch\u201d. \u00a0It\u2019s free for most people, but, as always, there are big chunks of the PC world that are no longer covered by Microsoft\u2019s support programs. \u00a0Some older systems will need to pony up $4000 to deal with the issue. \u00a0And, in one of those great cosmic giggles, Forbes Magazine announced just this week that Mr. Gates would retain the title of \u201cWorld\u2019s Richest Man.\u201d\u00a0 For the 13th<\/sup> year in a row.<\/p>\n So rise and shine in the dark this Sunday. \u00a0Gates will be sleeping soundly with many more Franklins under his mattress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Franklin couldn\u2019t have seen this coming. Among his many crazy ideas, this one was perhaps the zaniest:\u00a0 twice a year, let\u2019s have everyone in the country shift their clocks forward one hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall. \u00a0He reasoned that, in the summer, farmers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[128,135,263,325,394,1245],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","tag-ben-franklin","tag-bill-gates","tag-clock","tag-daylight-savings","tag-energy","tag-time-change"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}