Announcements

This is off topic but some of the misinformation I hear about Daylight Saving Time (DST) irritates me so I’m going to try to correct some of the more common misinformation.

I’ve seen it stated that DST was started to help farmers. If you know any farmers then you know that is illogical since they generally get up with the sun regardless of what the time is. DST was started in the U.S. as a way to save energy. Whether it actually does that and whether it is the reason we have DST now is open for debate. You can find studies supporting both sides.

The hours of sunlight in a day change because of the tilt of the earth’s axis. Some people think that DST actually changes the hours of sunlight in a day. It only changes what time of day we have sunlight. In order to actually increase the hours of sunlight in a day would require powers much beyond what Congress has.

I personally like having the extra hours of sunlight later in the day since I’m not an early riser. I’m not really sure if DST is an overall benefit though.

I managed to get three days off from both jobs for Thanksgiving.  I still managed to make some money during that time though.  My mother works at a travel agency located inside a bank and while visiting her I noticed the bank was paying a $50 bonus for opening a free checking account.  Since I run a site on bank bonuses I couldn’t pass this deal up.   It wmas an easy $50 but it appears to be a YMMV deal and it is a small bank chain so I didn’t add the bonus to my bank  bonuses blog.

I also bought a Zune 80gb mp3 player and sold it on eBay.  It looks like I’ll make about $25 in profit after all fees are paid.  If everything goes smoothly in the transaction this will be worth my time.  If there are problems I’ll probably wish I hadn’t bothered.

Of course the main benefit of my trip was getting to see my family.  The Thanksgiving meals were a great benefit as well.

It is that time of year when people start giving me things I don’t really want or need and in exchange I have to buy them something they probably don’t really want either.  The entire gift-buying thing is crazy to me.  That is why I’ve opted out of it.  I just tell my friends not to buy me anything and in return I will not buy them anything and we’ll come out even.  The only person I get a gift for is my mother because she will get me a gift even if I tell her not to.  The concept of Christmas without gifts doesn’t work for her.  This works ok for me because I still retain a little bit of the gift-giving tradition of Christmas without having to get into the crazy gift-buying thing.