It’s that time of year again. Time to “fall back” by resetting our clocks back one hour to mark this year’s conclusion of Daylight Saving Time.

For 20 years, that’s what we - and our technology - have done with our clocks on the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October. But no longer. When few people were paying attention, Congress lengthened daylight saving time by four weeks in the name of energy efficiency.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed the time change dates for Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. Beginning this year, DST begins on the second Sunday in March and ends the first Sunday in November. The change is supposed to save us untold barrels of oil by extending daylight hours.

But as you’ve probably read or experienced, the change hasn’t been without some glitches. Unless altered by one method or another, many systems such as Palm devices remain programmed to read the calendar and end daylight saving time on its old date in October, not its new one in November. The digital clock in Dawn’s car, for example, automatically reset the time back one hour last week. As IBM noted on its Web site: “Any time-sensitive functions could be impacted by this change… It is important for users to assess their environments and develop appropriate plans for applying the necessary changes.” Some of our systems still require patches.

So this Saturday night before you go to bed, remember to set your clocks back one hour. Happily, you’ll be gaining an hour of blissful sleep. And you can pat yourselves on the back in the knowledge that you may have helped reduce energy consumption… by an estimated 0.2%.

One final note: It’s a good time to change the batteries in your smoke detectors. Doing so twice a year will assure they continue to do their job.

Here’s another Southern California fire image from Arnold Christensen, this one taken of the Santiago fire from across Mission Viejo Lake by a “friend of a friend” of Arnold’s daughter, Michele. Says Arnold, “This image was taken the same night I took the images I sent you earlier. Though it is actually a little further from the fires than my home (which is somewhere near the middle of the frame of this image, about two blocks from the lake), it was certainly taken from a better pictorial vantage point.”

I have to say that I find this more than a little disconcerting:

Militant Palestinian groups who have been launching rockets into the western Negev from the Gaza Strip have been using Google’s popular satellite imagery program “Google Earth” to reconnoiter areas in Israel to be targeted for attack, according to a report in the British daily The Guardian.

A leading figure in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades told the paper that his organization scans military and civilian sites, including the town of Sderot, through Google Earth. […]

The Palestinians are not the first to employ Google Earth for military gains. According to the report, British authorities expressed concerns that Iraqi insurgents were using aerial images from Google Earth to target British bases near the southern Iraqi town of Basra.

And Google’s somewhat cavalier response does little to make me feel any better about the situation:

When queried about the use of Google Earth by militants, Google issued a statement saying “we have paid close attention to concerns that Google Earth creates new security risks. The imagery visible on Google Earth and Google Maps is not unique; commercial high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery of every country in the world is widely available from numerous sources. Indeed, anyone who flies above or drives by a piece of property can obtain similar information.’” […]

Read the entire article. If the Palestinians are using Google Earth against Israel, are our enemies using the service to check out our military positions in Iraq and Afghanistan (or here in the U.S.)? Or are they just using satellite data supplied by unfriendly foreign governments? Am I being overly concerned?

Steve, a systems engineer, sent me this humorous illustration dealing with the elements of project design and installation from the different perspectives of everyone involved…

One more before I turn in. Got it from Jamie. Is this scary or what? Looks like an airbrushed kitty, the best animal “costume” I’ve seen this year! But like Jamie says, it’s a good night to keep your animals indoors for their own safety.

When Beethoven passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard a strange sound coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Terrified, he summoned the priest to come and listen to it.

The priest bent close to the grave and heard  faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest summoned the town magistrate.

When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, then declared, “Ah, yes, that’s Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony being played backwards.” He listened a while longer and said, “There’s the Eighth Symphony and it’s backwards, too. This is most puzzling…”

Continuing to listen,  the magistrate noted,  “There’s the Seventh… the Sixth… the Fifth…”

Suddenly the realization of what was happening occurred to the magistrate. He stood up and announced to the gathering crowd, “My fellow citizens, there’s nothing to worry about, nothing at all. It’s just Beethoven decomposing…”

Okay, folks, here they are, the jack-o-lanterns and decorated pumpkins submitted by our creative and artistic readers presented here for your enjoyment and amazement! (Click thumbnails to view full size)

There’s still time… If you want your pumpkin displayed here, email it to me.

Michael sends this game for the holiday, guaranteed to drop your productivity a notch or two. Give it a try… if you dare!

Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!

Yes, it’s Superman, strange visitor from another planet who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, and who, disguised as grandson Jacob, mild mannered kid living in a great metropolis south of Sacramento, fights a never ending battle for truth, justice and the American way.

(Cue music track)

Yes folks, you have nothing to fear this Halloween from witches, ghosts and goblins because Jacob, er, Superman is on the job! Coming Wednesday to a neighborhood near you!

Here’s an idea: Email me a photo of your decorated pumpkins. I’ll post them here on the site on Halloween! Share your artistic handiwork with the blogosphere!

This week’s pun comes from Michael D…

A geneticist wanted to be the first person to clone a human. He couldn’t find a volunteer so he decided to clone himself.

His efforts were successful and he was asked to address a conference. But when he began to speak, his clone started swearing profusely. Frustrated, the scientist pushed the clone out a window.

The clone fell to his death so the police arrested the scientist and charged him with making an obscene clone fall.

Contrary to what you might have heard from our mainstream media, the “global warming” debate rages on. And while there’s no contesting there have been slight increases in global temperature in its relative recent history, it should be noted that there have been similar temperature fluctuations, both hot and cold, throughout Earth’s longer history.

I’ve considered as much global warming “science” as I’ve been able to digest and concluded that what we’re experiencing, this phenomenon that’s made more than a few careers and become a darling of our mainstream media, is no more than a natural occurrence. And mass marketing at its finest.

I’m certainly not alone in my semi-scientific conclusions. John Stossel’s recent “Give Me a Break” segment about global warming asserts that much, if not most, “scientific” data we’ve been fed comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of “2000 scientists who agree” that global warming is being caused by humans. Included in that group are members of Greenpeace and other activist groups as well as governments that have supported the Kyoto treaty.

Now, I’m no scientist. But when you scrutinize the supporting data proffered by global warming activists, it becomes abundantly clear that it’s being manipulated to support a preconceived theory rather than reach a scientific conclusion based on historical data. Why? Because there are careers now being supported by a segment of the public’s belief that, if we stop driving SUVs, we can affect the relationship between the planet and the sun. Have our egos gotten the better of our senses? We’re being scammed!

And the scam is being supported by any number of Hollywood elitists (read, actors who crave media face time) and other hangers-on who want to feel relevant by association. And our liberal media, let’s not forget its roll. It loves any excuse to report things controversial or, at the least, alarming.

Understand that I’m not holding Stossel up as an expert, and I certainly don’t always agree with him, but he does try to clear away the hype and give us a view through the prism of logic and common sense. And sometimes, when presented with the simple basics, the smoke and mirrors fall away. Give the video below a watch and see if you don’t come away with, at the very least, a better understanding of the relevant issues and the key players. The debate is by no means over.

Our friend, Jamie, went to Apple Hill recently and “found this super cute bear wine bottle holder. I loved it and brought it home.”

                   Click to enlargeI don’t know how we missed it when Dawn and I spent Columbus Day exploring the Apple Hill area and taking photos. It’s a cute little bear; doesn’t match our decor, but they may have had something in, say, a modern-traditional motif.

Instead, we bought this “trained rabbit” wine butler named Jacques. He seemed pretty good when we first brought him home. He’d fetch red or white wines on command, even learned to differentiate between the French and American stock.

Our joy was short lived, though; we caught him taking a nip of a very fine Château Margaux. He promised it was a one-time thing and we gave him another chance. But then we found an empty (shudder) bottle of our Clos des Papes Châteauneuf-du-Pape 2003 that we’d been saving for our retirement party. And before we could even confront the little scoundrel, we discovered that all the ‘03 Cabernets were gone! It was clear something had to be done.

                    Click to enlargeWe scolded him, of course, even threatened to send him back where he came from. But it was in one long, furry ear and out the other. And then he broke into the liquor cabinet!

Well, that was the last straw! We called the store where we’d purchased the little lush and asked if we could return him. No way, they told us, not even if we paid them! Seems the little rodent had pulled the same shenanigans with them and they wanted nothing more to do with the booze-guzzling hareball.

So we’re placing an ad on Craig’s List tomorrow for one “Cute brown and white rabbit, free to good, non-drinking home.” If there’s someone you really dislike, Jacques might just be the perfect gift!

SignOnSanDiego has posted a great interactive map that allows you to see where the fires are, click on specific areas for the latest statistics and status, click on icons to view photos and videos from specific areas, and more. It’s pretty well done; you can zoom in or out, move the map up or down and pretty much keep track, interactively, of all the fires. Those of you near the fires or with friends or family in harm’s way will appreciate this additional tool to keep informed.

In hills and canyons from Santa Barbara to San Diego, about 8,000 firefighters struggle against more than a dozen wildfires that have scorched at least 645 square miles, an area twice the size of New York City, in the past five days. Seven people have died and 2,327 structures have been destroyed or damaged as of late yesterday. Damages may top $1 billion and have forced almost a million people from their homes, the biggest evacuation in California’s history. There are 22,000 people in shelters across the region, thousands of them in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium. About 2,000 people are at an evacuation center at the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

The four major fires that have burned the most homes are far from being controlled, according to the state’s Web site. In San Diego County, there is only 10 percent containment at the Harris Fire, which has burned 73,000 acres and 200 homes, and the Witch Fire that burned 196,420 acres and 645 homes. The Rice fire, which burned 7,500 acres and destroyed 206 homes, is 15 percent contained. Link

How you can help.

My good friend Arnold Christensen took these images night before last from his back yard in Mission Viejo. The fire was three or four miles from his home!