Fun_People Archive
31 Oct
Fall back! . . . Fall Back! . . . Fall Back! . . . Fall Back! .

Date: Tue, 31 Oct 95 11:58:26 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Fall back!  . . .  Fall Back!  . . .  Fall Back!  . . .  Fall Back!  .
. .  Fall Back!  . . .

Forwarded-by: bostic@bsdi.com (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: Chris Small <chris@eecs.harvard.edu>

  When I set up my Win95 machine here in Redmond, Washington, a few weeks ago,
I set up my time zone as "(GMT-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada); Tijuana" and
checked the "Automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes" check  
box.
  Tonight, having given up a battle with insomnia, I was working late in the
office.  When 2 am (Pacific Daylight Time) rolled around, Windows gave me a
friendly message that it had updated my clock to reflect the Daylight Savings
Time change.  I clicked "OK," checked the time (correctly changed) in the  
clock
window that had automatically appeared on my screen, and clicked "OK" there as
well.
  I thought, "What a nifty feature."
  Until 2 am (Pacific Standard Time).  I again got the friendly message from
Windows that it had updated my clock to reflect the Daylight Savings Time
change.  I thought I had just done this, and sure enough, Windows had re-reset
my clock to 1 am.
  I am confident that if I had not changed my clock settings to past 2 am at
 that point, I could have sat here all night, clicking OK and watching Windows
set my clock back an hour every hour on the hour.  I even reset my clock to
1:59 several times to see what would happen when it hit 2, and sure enough, it
went back an hour every time.
  Since this "window" of opportunity happens only once a year for one hour  
when
most normal people are fast asleep, it doesn't seem like a serious bug.  If  
the
computer is off, or if the user doesn't click OK for an hour, and the dialog
box stays open until after 3 am Standard time, the clock is reset correctly.
  However, given that Windows so intelligently changes the "Current time zone"
in the "Date & Time" tab of the same Date/Time Properties dialog from Pacific
Daylight Time to Pacific Standard Time once it hits 2 am, you might think that
when it decrements the hour, it could set the time zone to "Pacific Standard
Time."  Then, Windows could only take back the hour if the time zone were
currently "Pacific Daylight Time."

  Oh well, you can't win 'em all.  Happy End of Daylight Savings!

  Christopher Thorpe
  t-cthorp@microsoft.com

© 1995 Peter Langston