Layout starts Advertisement YOU ARE HERE: LAT Home → Collections → Mood January 14, 2004 | Jia-Rui Chong | Times Staff Writer Cindy Oda and her husband, both NASA engineers, sleep with eyeshades in the middle of the day. Their kids have missed swim practice. Take-out food boxes are piling up in the garbage. After work, they aren't sure whether to say "good morning" or "good night." "The dishes don't get done," Oda said. "There are toys everywhere." The cause of this havoc is Mars. Since the landing of the Spirit rover on Jan. 3, more than 200 scientists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena have shifted their work schedules to match Mars' alien rhythm. The Martian day is 39.5 minutes longer than an Earth day, meaning our night and day rarely coincide with Mars'. To stay in sync with the rover's most productive daylight hours, mission controllers must shift ...