Proposed Legislation May Break Your Digital Watch

Watches that won't be affected are obviously yourautomatic and mechanical watches, your digital watches without an automatic daylight-savingsfunction, and digital watches which are set remotely like atomic watches or MSNDirect watches. The bad news is that your watch might become obsolete. The good news is thatit's a great excuse to buy a new one.If your digital watch automatically adjusts for daylight-savings, congress maybe about to make it obsolete. According to thisCNN story, lawmakers recently approved legislation thatwill extend daylight-savings by a total of two months:Lawmakers crafting energy legislation approved an amendment Wednesday to extenddaylight-saving time by two months, having it start on the first Sunday in Marchand end on the last Sunday in November.The amendment was approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee that isputting together major parts of energy legislation likely to come up for a votein the full House in the coming weeks.Yes, more daylight might save us 10,000 barrels of oila day, but what about all the watches that will no longer adjustthemselves properly? Who is lobbying for them?Watches that will be affected are quartz watches which automatically reset themselvestwice a year to compensate for daylight-savings. Fortunately, most if not all ofthese watches have a way to manually turn DST on and off, but it would be a bummerto have to remember to do that.