Daylight saving glitch leaves hangover for some

When daylight saving time came two weeks early this year, there was concern that there might be a host of problems. There were some, but like the Y2K bug, there was not widespread mayhem and chaos as the movie-of-the-week industry might have hoped.

But Congress didn't just spring forward a little early this year. It's also is making us wait a week longer to fall back. Instead of changing this past weekend, we don't go back until next weekend. I thought most of the gadgets would know, but it appears not all of them got the message.

At least from a quick survey of folks in the newsroom, minor glitches still seemed to abound. One of our editors got in her family's Mercedes C320 on Sunday and was surprised to find herself ahead of schedule. "We were startled," she said. "We thought we were suddenly an hour early."

Another co-worker had his Treo shift back to daylight saving time. As a result, he set all his clocks back an hour and strolled into work a bit late Monday, though looking quite well rested. He realized something was amiss when he noticed his neighbors leaving for work an hour earlier than normal. "The extra hour of sleep was awesome," he said. (For the record, Palm did post an update to its Web site some time ago to fix the issue.)

Yet another colleague was woken an hour early by his BlackBerry Curve, which he uses as an alarm clock. Other BlackBerry-toters also reported issues, though RIM has also been posting warnings on its Web site.

Meanwhile in Baltimore, some of the city's parking meters fell back too soon, leading to unwarranted tickets, though the city won't make people pay for the meters' malfunction.

Got any good stories of gadgets that missed the mark? E-mail me or post them below.

[jture]

Panasonic DVD not so smart

My DVD player/recorder INSISTED that the clocks changed yesterday. I manually reset the time and it switched it right back. I finally went into the settings and changed the DST setting to "Off." I'll have to adjust it manually next weekend. Oh well...

[bneal1950]

Better keep checking it.

I also have a Panasonic DVD recorder and went through this in the spring. You may have to keep changing it every day till DST kicks in. I turned off auto and it still kept changing on me anyway.

[yipcanjo]

My digital watch...

I have a new-to-me Nixon 286 watch (no puns, please) and it surprised me yesterday when it was an hour slow. It's easy enough to change, of course, but I guess I'll be dealing with this as long as I have this watch! Unless, of course, I can turn off the "daylight saving feature" altogether...

[rcrusoe]

We had a nice quiet morning . . .

because the phone system decided to "sleep in" an extra hour
today. :)

[erictnt]

No surprise

I have an Acura TL 06 and although manual said it updates clock from the satellite, the car still changed the clock Sunday morning. The glich also happens for satellite receivers ...

[boychuk]

Time change traffic Snarl

It appears traffic signals in Winnipeg slept in for an hour before
switching to rush hour.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2007/10/29/daylight-
time.html

[sismoc]

Daylight Saving Time Needs To Be Abolished

Get rid of Daylight Saving Time completely.

It is the equivalent of setting your watch 15 minutes early so you won't be late. Pure idiocy.

Instead, switch to "Summer Work Schedules".
Everyone would change their office/work/school schedules to start one hour earlier and end one hour earlier. Instead of 9 to 5, make it 8 to 4.

Change the habits of people, not our clocks.
As we become more and more automated and computerized the stupidity of changing the clocks instead of our schedules is becoming more and more obvious.

[ronpadz]

not willing to be a slave to my gadget

I disagree with sismoc. Changing the way we work because it's too hard to change our gadgets is a sign of the sad state of our technology. We need to make technology better -- not give in to its weaknesses.

[jwilliams306]

DST - dump

DST proponets have always used the excuse that it saves enegy and in all studies done, it has been a falicy. Guess what lobby in Washinton contributed the most money to have DST extended.
Retail and Marketing. The lighter in the evening, the more people spend. It's all about money.

[punterjoe]

Give me utterly dumb or genuinely smart

I have no problem with devices that require manual setting - and make that task straightforward. Devices that think they are smarter than the user and make it difficult to override their settings drive me to howl!
Everything that flunked the DST test has moved to my 'soon to be replaced' list.

[godlyfrog]

DST test...

I think Congress failed the DST test, too. Think you could move them to the list?

[GreySkies01]

Cisco Concentrator and Phone Switches take a Nap

So, core switches roll early, brings down VPN due to Kerberos thinking VPN Concentrator is an hour off in time. Also, the phone switch software freaks due to it getting a time update from the switches also. Guess somone in Networking forgot to Patch. :-)

Microsoft side of the house is working fine, since we applied the updates to the updates to the updates for DST.

John G.

[Kingsley-BellSouth]

Smartphone

I updated my smartphone in the spring when we went to DST then this weekend is wrong once again. You would think you would only have to make the update once. Go figure!!

[donhac]

WWVB and "atomic" clocks

This whole mess is worse than I had thought. We own one of those "atomic" clocks that really syncs itself to the NIST time signal on WWVB (http://tf.nist.gov/stations/radioclocks.htm) and it moved back an hour on the 27th.

That clock has no setting for date, it's driven entirely by WWVB broadcast data, which is apparently in error. I wonder what the clock will do next weekend?

[michclar]

Re: WWVB AND "ATOMIC" CLOCKS

I have 2 large clocks in the house and my wrist watch that all auto set every night to the Atomic Clock radio broadcast from Boulder, Colorado. None of them had any issues. The time continued to be daylight saving throughout the weekend. Had no issues back in March either when we started DST 2 weeks early. I'm sure there will be no issues this coming weekend when we go back to observing Standard Time.

[ch2]

Samsung Smartphone

Samsung Blackjack fell back an hour this past weekend. I thought it was up to date with the last patch from earlier this year.