DST

Rarely does the federal government have a positive effect on my life, but this year will be different. In 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act which, starting in 2007, changes the start and end date of Daylight Saving Time, increasing the portion of the year that we spend in Daylight Saving Time by about a month. I love Daylight Saving Time. Last year we entered DST on April 2nd, left on October 29th. This means that last year we traded the useless hour of daylight between 5am and 6am for the incredibly useful hour of 6:30pm to 7:30pm. Then in October we're forced to give up the hour of daylight between 5:15pm and 6:15pm in trade for daylight between 6:30am and 7:30am, a time I usually reserve for sleeping. Here's a
graph of last year (sunrise, sunset and total hours of daylight)

Here's the improvement for 2007. Instead of making that trade of giving up a useless hour for a useful hour at the beginning of April, we do it on March 11th. That means we give up daylight from 6:30am to 7:30am and in trade the sun sets at 7:15pm instead of 6:15pm. DST will end in 2007 on November 4th at which point we give up 6pm to 7pm in trade for 6:45am to 7:45am. 28 more days of having that extra hour.