A lot of people I talked to earlier this week didn’t realize that we set the clocks forward this weekend.  We’re setting our clocks forward in March, rather than April, because Canada opted to follow the dates imposed by the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 as a matter of convenience.  The goal of the change in the US is to effect a 1% reduction in energy consumption, but everything I’ve read on the history of daylight saving time suggests there haven’t been any appreciable energy savings because of daylight saving time.  Ever.

In fact, a report by the Center for the Study of Energy Markets looked at an attempt in Australia to reduce energy consumption in other parts of their country to help offset the consumption by the Olympic Games in 2000.  Their research found that the demand for energy in Australia was not reduced by the extended daylight saving time.  It also suggests that the 1% reduction in electricity consumption the 1 month extension the US adopted will fail to be realized.

If you’re a *NIX system administrator and you haven’t patched your system to respect the new dates that came into effect last year, you might want to check out my blog entry on what you need to do to update your system.