As I tweeted tonight on Twitter and noted earlier this week, daylight saving time ends this weekend in much of North America.
As we’ve noted online, in the United States the Energy Policy Act of 2005 introduced changes to the start and end dates of DST, which began in 2007. (Another benefit of the current administration.) Now, DST in North America is observed across most of the United States as well as Canada from the second Sunday in March through to the first Sunday in November.
In 2008, DST ends later than in years prior to 2007, at 2:00AM local time on Sunday, November 2. This results in a new DST period that is approximately three to four weeks longer than in previous years. It also means that you’ll get an extra hour of daylight to trick or treat, or for my friends in Canada, Halloween Apples.
For the most part, that means many of you in the States and Canada will get an extra hour of sleep. Or an extra hour to club and dance, late night sushi at Hidekazu Tojo’s, watch the last weekend of political skits on SNL live, play Halo 3 on Xbox Live or, like many of us old, married guys on Facebook, just sleep.
Whatever you do, remember that "time is a precious thing. Never waste it."
That is, unless you live in Arizona and Hawaii, or Saskatchewan and parts of northern British Columbia. A few US territories don’t observe DST either, including American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the delightful US Virgin Islands: these areas stay on standard time throughout the year.
Visit http://www.microsoft.com/time for more details.
If you have a PC, ensure that you have applied the latest updates (more info at the link above). For Microsoft Smartphone or Pocket PC owners running Windows Mobile 5.0 or earlier versions, you should have already received the required update from your carrier or installed them earlier this Spring from our Windows Mobile site at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/daylightsaving/default.mspx.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
Tags: Microsoft, Daylight Saving Time, Daylight Savings Time, RSS, DST, 4,880,000 (up from 4.3M a month ago); 1,940,000 (up from 900K a year ago, down 200K since last month)
3 replies on “Attention, most of North America: make sure you Fall Back this weekend as daylight saving time comes to an end”
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I’m Canadian (Vancouver area) and this is the first time I’m hearing about ‘Halloween Apples’… Here is the best answer I found:
In parts of Canada, children are more likely to say "Halloween apples" instead of "trick or treat." This probably originated when the toffee apple was a popular type of candy. However, there are some children today who say "Halloween apples" instead of "Trick or treat" because sometimes if the latter was said, the person at the door would take it as a question (i.e trick or treat?) and ask them to perform a trick instead of giving them a treat.
That’s right. I grew up in Western Canada and we always visited houses with a loud "Halloween apples." I recall one Halloween where I said "trick or treat" and other kids looked at me as if I were from Mars (I was dressed as an alient, so it was appropriate). 😉
This week, we saw several kids here in the States finding that upon announcing "trick or treat" the treater was more than willing to give extra treats in turn for a song, dance or some other feat.