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View Full Version : Time Change: Stop the Insanity!


Jerry Raia
10-29-2006, 02:30 PM
For those of you, myself included, who had to change time this morning at 0200 how did it turn out? I'm speaking of course of all of your toys and gadgets that are supposed to perform this feat by themselves. My Smartphones all did as they were supposed to. My PC and laptop as well. Everything else with a clock had to be manually changed in this insane ritual we are forced to go through twice a year. I have asked this question many times, why? I don't buy any of the reasons I usually get either.

Kris Kumar
10-29-2006, 04:59 PM
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry - you need to get a life. It is really bad when you are staying up late just to watch the clock hit the 0200 hour and the resetting them to 0100 hr. :( :wink: :lol:

Jerry Raia
10-29-2006, 05:03 PM
Hey, it's the little things ok? :rotfl:

heov
10-29-2006, 05:23 PM
so everyone knows next year daylight savings time is all messed up. it's like 2wks earlier/later or something.

question: is my phone gonna know that? i assume my pc is covered through windows update or something.

what about my pocket pc?

what about my tv?

next day light savings is gonna be killer :(

i can see it now... i manually update my stuff to an hour ahead... then 2wks later when it's programmed to do it, it does it again, and i'm late :(

Jerry Raia
10-29-2006, 05:26 PM
I'm telling you all, this needs to be stopped! This could cause more havoc than Y2K. :rotfl:

Kris Kumar
10-29-2006, 05:29 PM
i can see it now... i manually update my stuff to an hour ahead... then 2wks later when it's programmed to do it, it does it again, and i'm late :(

Oh boy, we need to send you and Jerry to some DST de-addiction camp or something. :wink: :lol: Sorry couldn't resist.

Getting back to the topic, I wasn't aware of the unique scenario next year. I believe most of the devices are programmed by the last week of Oct and first week of whatever for the change.

I am sure the PCs would get some kind of Windows Update to fix the problem. But for the Windows Mobile devices, I guess we will have to battle it out ourselves unless we are using Crossbow devices.

Jerry Raia
10-29-2006, 05:52 PM
Something must be done to stop this Pagan Voodoo ritualistic changing of the time!

...and no I'm not over reacting! :onfire:

Janak Parekh
10-29-2006, 05:53 PM
Getting back to the topic, I wasn't aware of the unique scenario next year. I believe most of the devices are programmed by the last week of Oct and first week of whatever for the change.
Starting next year, in most of North America, Daylight Saving begins on the second Sunday of March (March 11) and ends on first Sunday of November (November 4).

I am sure the PCs would get some kind of Windows Update to fix the problem. But for the Windows Mobile devices, I guess we will have to battle it out ourselves unless we are using Crossbow devices.
I don't see how that's appropriate. It'll cause all sorts of havoc with Exchange, email, calendars, what have you. At this point, we're still waiting to hear a response from Microsoft. :roll:

--janak

Janak Parekh
10-29-2006, 05:55 PM
I have asked this question many times, why? I don't buy any of the reasons I usually get either.
Seriously, then, why do you keep on asking? There's lots of discussion on it, Google it if you want to.

If it was up to me, we'd be on DST year-round. I like actually being able to have light when I leave my office in the evening.

--janak

Jerry Raia
10-29-2006, 05:58 PM
Seriously, then, why do you keep on asking?

It's just one of my things!

If it was up to me, we'd be on DST year-round.

Amen to that!

promano
10-29-2006, 05:58 PM
If it was up to me, we'd be on DST year-round. I like actually being able to have light when I leave my office in the evening.

--janak

I Agree with Janak.
We should just leave the clocks at DST.
There is no benefit to changing the clocks, really....
What does an hour REALLY do for you ?

railrunnerT68
10-29-2006, 05:59 PM
:lol: Well laptops were on top of it. As were the pocket pc and the smart phones. The clock radio in the bedroom also did it's duty. The V.C.R. in the front room as well. The house phones were up to par too. The only items that needed to be hand changed were the phone in kitchen, V.C.R. in bedroom, clock in spare bedroom, clock in bathroom, microwave, and stove. Oh and the wanabe antique clock on the fireplace mantle.

Kris Kumar
10-29-2006, 06:08 PM
I don't see how that's appropriate. It'll cause all sorts of havoc with Exchange, email, calendars, what have you. At this point, we're still waiting to hear a response from Microsoft.

Janak, I am totally ignorant about this change to the DST schedule so please shed some more light on it. Do you have any links to share? Also I cannot think about the possible problems other than ofcourse the air traffic control.

gai-jin
10-29-2006, 06:21 PM
If it was up to me, we'd be on DST year-round. I like actually being able to have light when I leave my office in the evening.

--janak

Or you could just leave work an hour earlier...

Danborg
10-29-2006, 07:03 PM
My i-Mate Sp5 did not change time automatically, I guess because it was off at the time. But still, one would think it would adjust as soon as I turned it on this morning?

Jerry Raia
10-29-2006, 07:06 PM
It should have yes.

OSUKid7
10-29-2006, 09:07 PM
I, surprisingly, had problems with my Smartphone changing from DST properly. I was still awake around 2 AM (DST), and my Smartphone did tell me it had adjusted the time for the DST change. All was good then.

I set my alarm for this morning, but I woke up almost an hour later. (Good thing I didn't have anywhere important to be.) I assumed I either set my alarm wrong or just slept through the sound. I checked my Smartphone though, and it was another hour early, and had the same prompt as I saw early after 2AM. :? I have no idea how or why my Smartphone would adjust twice, but I just manually set it ahead one hour to the correct time.

I definitely didn't expect this problems. All of my other gadgets worked fine (although I haven't even checked my Pocket PC... not using it much now that I have my Smarphone). The only clock I had to set manually was on my microwave.

Danborg
10-29-2006, 09:28 PM
It should have yes.

well it didn't

Jerry Raia
10-29-2006, 09:36 PM
One of you had it change twice, another not at all. We should stop this silly messing with time. I wonder how much money is lost with people not making it to work and then nobody seems to be able to drive right the Monday after. It messes with our circadian rhythm.

OSUKid7
10-29-2006, 09:40 PM
We should stop this silly messing with time.
I agree... but instead, our government decides to mess with us even more and change when we switch to/from DST. :roll:

Jerry Raia
10-29-2006, 09:43 PM
We should stop this silly messing with time.
I agree... but instead, our government decides to mess with us even more and change when we switch to/from DST. :roll:

They can't even decide when they want it to get dark! To make it more confusing some places don't even switch to DST.

Janak Parekh
10-29-2006, 10:23 PM
Janak, I am totally ignorant about this change to the DST schedule so please shed some more light on it. Do you have any links to share? Also I cannot think about the possible problems other than ofcourse the air traffic control.
When in doubt, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving#From_2007):

Beginning in 2007, DST will start on the second Sunday in March (March 11, 2007), and change back to standard time on the first Sunday in November (November 4, 2007). Under Section 110 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the U.S. Department of Energy is required to study the impact of the DST extension no later than nine months after the change takes effect. Congress has retained the right to revert to the DST schedule set in 1986 if it cannot be shown that there are significant energy savings from an extension of DST or if the extension may prove to be unpopular with the American public. One potential issue is that some northern regions on the western edge of time zones will for the first time since the 1974-75 "almost year round" DST experiment have sunrise times that occur after 8am.

As to problems, think about syncing and what will happen to appointment times and the like if the Pocket PC thinks you're on standard time and in fact you are in DST, or vice-versa. One "solution" is to switch the time zone, but that may cause your Pocket PC to report the wrong time in email headers, etc., and you must remember to switch back. Moreover, CDMA phones (and GSM in Europe) auto-set the cell phone's time, which will mess with the timezone setting more, or so I think.

--janak

Janak Parekh
10-29-2006, 10:27 PM
Or you could just leave work an hour earlier...
Ah, good point, but the "academic day" just plain starts late. This way, I also get to miss rush hour. :)

One of you had it change twice, another not at all. We should stop this silly messing with time. I wonder how much money is lost with people not making it to work and then nobody seems to be able to drive right the Monday after. It messes with our circadian rhythm.
Okay, now you're pushing the blame a little too far. Are you telling me you've never slept/woke up an hour early or late in your life? Moreover, the changeover is on a Sunday just to prevent your Monday driving scenario. We've been doing this for decades, I've almost never had problems.

I agree... but instead, our government decides to mess with us even more and change when we switch to/from DST. :roll:
You say this as if it was set in stone. It's not. It's shifted over the decades. ;)

They can't even decide when they want it to get dark! To make it more confusing some places don't even switch to DST.
At this point, two states ignore it in the US: Arizona and Hawaii. Not very confusing at all. I think you just like to complain. :)

--janak

Jerry Raia
10-29-2006, 10:40 PM
Okay, now you're pushing the blame a little too far. Are you telling me you've never slept/woke up an hour early or late in your life? Moreover, the changeover is on a Sunday just to prevent your Monday driving scenario. We've been doing this for decades, I've almost never had problems.

Statistically I believe there are more traffic accidents the Monday morning after.

At this point, two states ignore it in the US: Arizona and Hawaii. Not very confusing at all. I think you just like to complain.

Not true, some areas (not even the whole state, just to keep it complicated) of Indiana don't change either. And yes I do enjoy complaining, this is one of my favorite things to gripe about! :mrgreen:

kerrins
10-29-2006, 11:28 PM
Personally, I wish we would get rid of DST and time zones entirely. I'm tired of having someone in the midwest schedule a conference call at say 4:00. I now have to figure out, do they me their 4:00 or my 4:00...are they 2 hours ahead of me or 3 hours. If we just had one time zone GMT, then when someone said 4:00 we could eliminate the confusion. Yes, I'm in favor of military time too. No more guessing AM or PM. That doesn't mean that everyone would have to work from 9-5 no matter where they were in the world. My California shift would instead of starting at 0800 would start at 1600 and I would work until 0000. The transistion would be hard, but once everyone used the same clock we would be better off.

Rocco Augusto
10-29-2006, 11:44 PM
i had to stay up late to make sure nothing messed up since my girlfriend had to go to work in the morning. you have no idea how weird it is to watch your clock go from 1:59AM to 1:00AM :lol:

Aw, good times.

It's funny, ever time there is a time change I have to stay up cause I don't trust my clocks :)

Jerry Raia
10-29-2006, 11:52 PM
Personally, I wish we would get rid of DST and time zones entirely. I'm tired of having someone in the midwest schedule a conference call at say 4:00. I now have to figure out, do they me their 4:00 or my 4:00...are they 2 hours ahead of me or 3 hours. If we just had one time zone GMT, then when someone said 4:00 we could eliminate the confusion. Yes, I'm in favor of military time too. No more guessing AM or PM. That doesn't mean that everyone would have to work from 9-5 no matter where they were in the world. My California shift would instead of starting at 0800 would start at 1600 and I would work until 0000. The transistion would be hard, but once everyone used the same clock we would be better off.

You are an person I could call friend. One more test, are you sad we are not on the metric system here?

Sven Johannsen
10-30-2006, 02:59 AM
I don't see any Aussies piping in here. Maybe they feel we haven't a thing to complain about, with just hour differences. Those people have half time zones to deal with. When It's 12 in Sydney it's 11:30 in Adelaide. Sheesh.

Jerry Raia
10-30-2006, 03:45 AM
I'm going to name this global confusion. Time Schizophrenia.

expediter
10-30-2006, 04:11 AM
For those of you, myself included, who had to change time this morning at 0200 how did it turn out? I'm speaking of course of all of your toys and gadgets that are supposed to perform this feat by themselves. My Smartphones all did as they were supposed to. My PC and laptop as well. Everything else with a clock had to be manually changed in this insane ritual we are forced to go through twice a year. I have asked this question many times, why? I don't buy any of the reasons I usually get either.

I'm with you on this one Jerry.

Mark Kenepp
10-30-2006, 09:51 PM
I'm going to name this global confusion. Time Schizophrenia.

I personally don't see any reason to complain about any of this,

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. :lol:

dlinker
10-31-2006, 01:43 AM
I don't see any Aussies piping in here. Maybe they feel we haven't a thing to complain about, with just hour differences. Those people have half time zones to deal with. When It's 12 in Sydney it's 11:30 in Adelaide. Sheesh.

Don't get me started:

Firstly there's the half hour difference Sven mentioned.

Now we have the crazy situation where Queensland (the State on the north Eastern coast of Australia) doesn't have Daylight Savings Time, but the other Eastern states do. This means people living on the border may have to change their watch when they go to work/school across the border - then back again when they get home. Think of New York having daylight Saving and New Jersey not having it.

so everyone knows next year daylight savings time is all messed up. it's like 2wks earlier/later or something.

question: is my phone gonna know that? i assume my pc is covered through windows update or something.

what about my pocket pc?

what about my tv?

next day light savings is gonna be killer :(

i can see it now... i manually update my stuff to an hour ahead... then 2wks later when it's programmed to do it, it does it again, and i'm late :(

You guys don't know what you're in for with the change to the start/end of DST. It's going to get very ugly.

Let me tell you from experience - we've been through this twice and it creates absolute havoc. The government changed the time zone in 2000 for the Sydney Olympics - we started DST the last Sunday in August instead of the the Sunday in October (remember we're "Down Under" so all our seasons are reversed - summer is Dec-Feb). This meant rolling out a fix for all the Windows computers. Trouble is MS didn't provide the fix till a few weeks before for Windows and not at all for PocketPC.

The effect of the change is that any meeting that is already in your calendar for the period between the new start date and the old date (ie March 11 - April 1, 2007) will move by an hour - that includes recurring meetings. Yes - that's right - all meetings already in the Calendar prior to you applying the patch will be out by one hour. This really annoys people - especially senior managers who show up to meetings an hour late (or is it early - I can't remember).

We did this all over again for the Commonwelath Games in Melbourne in 2006 - although this time they only moved the end of DST by one week. Still painful but not quite so bad.

Let's hope this time - since it actually affects Americans and not just us poor Aussies - Microsoft will release a patch for Windows Mobile (not just Windows).

Then there's the TiVos, Blackberries, PVRs etc that will all need patching. Looks like the DoE has no idea the havoc they're going to cause :-)

I'd like to say I can just sit back and watch the chaos - but I work for a multinational - so I now get to go through the pain for the third time. Maybe I'll dig up the VB code that moves all appointments during the relevent period by an hour - once the change has been implemented.

Good luck - and start preparing now - the sooner you make the change, the fewer appointments you (and if you're an IT person - your users) will have during the affected period.

The problem is caused because Outlook stores all appointment internally in UTC (or GMT) time. It knows how to cope with DST - until you change the definition of DST in the OS. Outlook then gets itself twisted and all appointments in the changed period are out by an hour.

Mark Kenepp
10-31-2006, 02:09 AM
Think of New York having daylight Saving and New Jersey not having it.

Sounds like something New York would do just to p*** o** New Jersey 8)

BTW,

I just noticed that with the time change, All my backup jobs were moved an hour later. As a result, those jobs set to go off after 11:00pm moved to midnight so the job I had scheduled to run this evening, ran this morning :bad-words:

I take back what I said about time being an illusion. Maybe it is, but my backup jobs are not.

Janak Parekh
10-31-2006, 05:23 PM
Not true, some areas (not even the whole state, just to keep it complicated) of Indiana don't change either.
Actually, as of this year, all of Indiana observes DST (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Indiana). Two small parts of the state are in Central and the rest is in Eastern, but they do all switch.

--janak

Janak Parekh
10-31-2006, 05:24 PM
Let's hope this time - since it actually affects Americans and not just us poor Aussies - Microsoft will release a patch for Windows Mobile (not just Windows).
Agreed. This is inexcusable behavior on Microsoft's part. :?

--janak

Jerry Raia
10-31-2006, 05:25 PM
Two small parts of the state are in Central and the rest is in Eastern

Well now that is simplification at its finest! :lol:

Darius Wey
10-31-2006, 05:34 PM
Trouble is MS didn't provide the fix till a few weeks before for Windows and not at all for PocketPC.

Sigh, what a mess. You know, the rate at which these updates are rolled out (or not rolled out), I think my devices will all be out of sync if (when?) WA goes ahead with DST next month.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20678166-1245,00.html

Janak Parekh
10-31-2006, 05:35 PM
Well now that is simplification at its finest! :lol:
Well, Northeastern Indiana is largely a Chicagoan suburb, so it makes sense. If you look at the map I sent you, Indiana is not the only state that is split. Nevertheless, it's DST statewide, so while timezone allocations may be up for debate, one no longer needs a special "Indiana" setting in Windows...

--janak

Jerry Raia
10-31-2006, 05:45 PM
Well now that is simplification at its finest! :lol:
Well, Northeastern Indiana is largely a Chicagoan suburb, so it makes sense. If you look at the map I sent you, Indiana is not the only state that is split. Nevertheless, it's DST statewide, so while timezone allocations may be up for debate, one no longer needs a special "Indiana" setting in Windows...

--janak

It is just a symptom of this whole Time Schizophrenia we have. I think the earlier poster had the right idea. GMT only! What was the thing? Centibeats? Remember that Internet time thing?

aximilation
10-31-2006, 07:34 PM
Time goes abstract.......

Actually, don't quote on this, I heard somewhere that DST was created for farmers so they would have more time in the fields or something like that.

Jerry Raia
10-31-2006, 07:42 PM
Actually, don't quote on this, I heard somewhere that DST was created for farmers so they would have more time in the fields or something like that.

That is true.

Janak Parekh
11-01-2006, 01:26 AM
What was the thing? Centibeats? Remember that Internet time thing?
You're referring to Swatch's .beats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time). Unsurprisingly, it never took off, despite some good ideas.

--janak

Jerry Raia
11-01-2006, 02:57 AM
Yes exactly. I just set it up on a desktop clock. I also found an application, WorldTime, (http://software.smartphonethoughts.com/product.asp?id=5505) that will display it on a Smartphone. I say we start the conversion right here! Let the revolution begin! :rock on dude!:

ruindforlife
04-01-2009, 04:49 PM
Instead of springing forward and falling back as in the past I recommend we split the difference this fall we just fall back 1/2 (half an hour ) and forget about it. Never to change it again!

Sven Johannsen
04-04-2009, 03:34 AM
Quote:
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=6 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=alt2 style="BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset">Originally Posted by aximilation
Actually, don't quote on this, I heard somewhere that DST was created for farmers so they would have more time in the fields or something like that.

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>That is true.

That has to be BS, though I've heard it, found it. Farmers don't punch clocks. If they need to work from sunup to sundown, what difference does it make if that is from 0600 to 1800, or 0700 to 1900. DST does make the daylight any longer, it just shifts the hours at which it occurs. The more reasonable rational was to have more daylight happen when folks are at home doing stuff so that energy could be saved by not needing the light, etc. Whatever. I gotta go with the 'stop the madness' altogether camp. It's more trouble than it is worth.