…Or maybe some of you can.

According to CNN.com, we have that know-it-all Benjamin Franklin to thank for coming up with the idea of daylight savings back in 1784.  He thought that it would reduce the use of candles if there was more light in the evening. During WWI in 1918, the U.S. adopted daylight savings in order to save energy during the war.  Other than some other minor changes to the system over the years, one thing has remained the same up until a few years ago…the fact that you had to manually adjust all of your clocks.  Ten years ago, you would have had to go around to all of your clocks and figure out how to manipulate the buttons in order to put the right time on it, and every electronic device is different.  Since you only have to do mess with it twice per year, you have to re-learn the process from scratch each time.  Hit the wrong buttons on your alarm clock, and you may end up setting your alarm for 3:45pm instead of setting the current time.  It is probably one of the most overused excuses for being late to work.

These days more and more devices update themselves.  Cell phones, cable boxes, and computers are all smart enough to do the legwork for you via satellites, radio waves, and cell signals .  I even set up an alarm clock recently where all I had to do was plug into the wall, and it “magically” figured out what the time was.  Now I just need my microwave, stove, and car to figure this out.  I am sure there are some fancy GPS enabled cars out there that update themselves now, but I don’t even have power windows or locks in my little car.

So, for those of you that are fully integrated in fancy, you can disregard this reminder.  But for the rest of us that have a mixture of old and new, be aware that this Saturday will be the time to dig that microwave manual out of the junk drawer in order to figure out how to add one hour to the display.