Sunday 30 September 2007

Wuuurrrr...

It's that exciting time of the year again: daylight savings. I remember when it used to be at the end of the month, but that seems like so long ago now...

Usually I only find out that the time has changed by booting up the computer and noting the time(*), and going 'that can't be right...'. One time, when I had a Sunday shift, that was all that saved me from turning up an hour late! (Fortunately, when I noticed, I still had an hour to get ready, replacing the two I thought I had. Could have been worse...)

The main reason for this early shift is of course that some politicians thought that since people like the summer and its hours so much (because its the relative hours that define summer, of course), then why not have daylight savings for longer? Well, by that logic, we should be on daylight savings time permanently! But that would be silly, of course... but more silly than being of a different time zone for half the year? (And it is half the year now...)

(*)Congrats to Microsoft for keeping up with strange NZ daylight savings policies and updating the time of my computer for me. As I've said, it usually the only thing that makes me realise...

[END]

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

At least with desktop computers, MS can fairly easily issue updates which are automatically downloaded (assuming you have that enabled). The company I work for sells handheld computers running Windows CE, so the only way to update them is to apply the patch manually...

Jamas Enright said...

A friend of mine at a governmental department I won't mention had a bitch of a time trying to get their systems patched, many times needing to develop the patch from scratch.

Jamas Enright said...

Huh. My laptop updated, but my desktop didn't...

Paul Scoones said...

Both my home PC and laptop updated automatically. Our IT dept had to apply a patch manually to each and every PC in the office though.

Many years ago when I was doing Sunday shifts at Whitcoulls I arrived at work one day and wondered why the shop was already open - that was the one time the daylight savings announcements completely passed me by!

Anonymous said...

Yep, patches had to be applied on all PCs and servers at our workplace. Our other IT guy created a launch script that patched all PCs when rebooted after daylight savings, although he did have to patch the server and MS exchange prior to that.

Telecom on the other hand have been very slack with patching our phone system, despite assuring us that everything was in hand and not to worry. We raised it with them as an issue about 3-4 weeks ago. Grrr!