Journal #7423
Posted 13 years ago2011-10-02 19:37:01 UTC
Last night, I got off my computer at a reasonable time (11PM) for work tomorrow. I go to set my alarm, and it's an hour behind!
"What's wrong with this thing?", I thought to myself. I must have knocked the time set button or something last time I hit snooze on it for the tenth time in a row.
I thought little of it, and grabbed my phone to confirm the time - it was indeed 11PM. Stupid alarm must be playing up.
So I woke up this morning at 6:45, half an hour before I needed to leave. I flicked on the news while I was eating breakfast - the news says that it's 5:45AM. That's an HOUR AND A HALF before I need to leave! I check my phone and it is still an hour late. I check my trusty analogue wall clock and it is showing 5:45!
At this point I was really confused. Do I need to go to work yet, or not? I messed with the date settings on the phone, turning off automatic time setting. The time went back exactly one hour.
Suddenly, a little light bulb switched on in my head. Daylight savings time switched over yesterday morning, and, of course, being in Queensland, Australia, I don't need to worry about all of that crap.
BUT, it turns out that somehow, BOTH my phone and computer had their time zones set to Sydney and had automatically switched to daylight savings time yesterday.
And this is why I hate daylight savings time.
Moral: Don't trust devices that know about time zones!
Also, daylight savings time sucks!
"What's wrong with this thing?", I thought to myself. I must have knocked the time set button or something last time I hit snooze on it for the tenth time in a row.
I thought little of it, and grabbed my phone to confirm the time - it was indeed 11PM. Stupid alarm must be playing up.
So I woke up this morning at 6:45, half an hour before I needed to leave. I flicked on the news while I was eating breakfast - the news says that it's 5:45AM. That's an HOUR AND A HALF before I need to leave! I check my phone and it is still an hour late. I check my trusty analogue wall clock and it is showing 5:45!
At this point I was really confused. Do I need to go to work yet, or not? I messed with the date settings on the phone, turning off automatic time setting. The time went back exactly one hour.
Suddenly, a little light bulb switched on in my head. Daylight savings time switched over yesterday morning, and, of course, being in Queensland, Australia, I don't need to worry about all of that crap.
BUT, it turns out that somehow, BOTH my phone and computer had their time zones set to Sydney and had automatically switched to daylight savings time yesterday.
And this is why I hate daylight savings time.
Moral: Don't trust devices that know about time zones!
Also, daylight savings time sucks!
6 Comments
Crollo
Commented 13 years ago2011-10-02 19:48:00 UTC
Comment #50118
But, you get more daylight in your day!
Oskar Potatis
Commented 13 years ago2011-10-02 19:57:34 UTC
Comment #50115
Time zones suck, too. IMO we should all use the same time system. We should also get rid of leap years and the one-second corrections of UTC. Every second that passes, the date displayed on our clocks should increase by one second, always. With 5-days weeks we would have the same calendar every year. 365 days should be a full year, always. It would snow during summer in 400 years, but it would be worth it for the gained simplicity and consistency. POSIX time ftw.
Mcrich114
Commented 13 years ago2011-10-02 20:38:21 UTC
Comment #50119
Leap years are necessary, Because 1 year is 365.24 days, we need to account for that extra day somehow.
DiscoStu
Commented 13 years ago2011-10-02 20:47:57 UTC
Comment #50117
Grats. I don't like DST either.
Oskar Potatis
Commented 13 years ago2011-10-02 21:06:19 UTC
Comment #50116
There are different meanings to the word "year". It can be the time it takes for Earth to complete an orbit around the Sun (which isn't constant). In astronomy, a year is exactly (365 + 1/4) * 86 400 seconds. I was talking about calendar years. Those are defined by their creators and users, us humans. To try to match calendar years with the movements of a planet is in my opinion foolish. It's not a meaningful measurement and we'll never get it right. A time unit is more useful if it can be defined as a constant number of seconds (or fractions of seconds). If those number of seconds can be divided by the number of seconds in a day (which will also have to be constant) without leaving a remainder that's great, because it simplifies calendars and calculations.
monster_urby
Commented 13 years ago2011-10-03 20:27:07 UTC
Comment #50114
Haha. Yeah. Been caught out by DST one too many times. Once my PC clock changed itself and for some reason or other I assumed it was wrong. Long story short I turned up at work an hour early. Lucky it wasn't the opposite way around I guess.
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