IT Professionals

Now That Wasn't So Bad!

Posted by on Mar 12, 2007 | 8 Comments

What, me worry? Yes, the “big day” has come and gone, but I was really hoping for a little more drama this time around. Nowhere to be seen were there traffic lights shooting laser beams, microwaves singing the blues, or even the modest blender chasing around the host of some party around in a DST-induced rage.

Short of needing to reset a few clocks, everything went over rather smoothly I think. My Ubuntu boxes were all ready to go with zero interaction from me, and my Windows Mobile Smart Phone was patched perfectly. What I found interesting, though, was that I still needed to set my phone’s clock (Cingular 8125) manually despite the installation of the DST patch. Maybe the patch is only for calendar-ing functions? If anyone out there knows for sure, I would love to get that cleared up.

And this brings me to your experiences. Any household appliances explode, jump out of their corners of the kitchen, or try to attack anyone in particular? Hit me up in the comments area, I would love to hear your DST stories from this Sunday.

[tags]DST,clocks,y2k,end of the world[/tags]

  • Ted Bruner

    Welllllll, pilgrum, Ah’ll tehlya sumthin’…

    At 2:08, I double-clicked my clock in the SysTray and selected the tab to let M$ “adjust/update” my clock; … 2:08 …

    Sunday morning later – after a night’s sleep – I repeated the useless exercise.

    Today (Monday) I also tried.

    Well, now it’s over 90 minutes into Tuesday. I did the exercise, then set my clock an hour ahead (to the “right time”) and recontacted M$.

    At work, my machine kept volleying all night (Monday). Each restart would drop me back to pre-neoDST and then, capriciously, pop to a new hour and back, … totally on its own.

    I guess what bothers me so very much is that the “Mother$hip” doesn’t even know what time it is. Is it too strange to expect M$ to have their machines “patched” for the correct time????

    I see this as the beginning of the realization that the “Honeymoon” betwixt DC and Redmond is over and, … unless there are public overtures, I would conclude that we may be witnessing the abandonment of M$ by the government it thought it controlled.

    N’est çe pas?

  • Mark Spacer

    Hmmm… My Cingular 8125 made the DST change all by itself. I did however download the patch for outlook from Microsoft, and the DST patch from Cingular. Otherwise, my experiences reflect yours, had to change the clock on the microwave and of course both cars…

  • http://Notbad,butanusiance Jim

    We are a Windows shop and the DST change has been a pain. No disaster, but a real nuisance.

    - We have a mixture of W2K, XP, and W2003. MS did not make a DST patch for W2K available to “regular” customers. We also had several vendors who only support certain release levels of code. We used the DST updater in the Network Administrator package from IntelliAdmin. It made the OS level update painless.

    - Exchange was an a lot of work to update. The entire process was only spelled out on some of the MS blogs. Also, the updating of Public folders was a time consuming process.

    - The Java update was not a big deal, but took a bit of time.

    - I was surprised at the number of application packages that required updates. You would thing that they would just get their time from the OS.

    - PDAs and Smartphones have been a real headache. A large number of users just never bothered to update their phones or bring them to the IS department for us to update them. This causes a problem when they sync calendars.

    - Cisco VOIP was the biggest problem. We had to get a lot of maintenance to get the DST updates. (That was our fault because we tend not to update a very stable system.) However, a bunch of problems have cropped up since Friday. I don’t think Cisco did enough QC on the DST fixes. However, they have been hustling to get things corrected.

    Now that the smoke has cleared, I can get back to my previous 3 page to-do and project list.

    The punch line is that the DST change may be scrapped if there is no energy savings.

  • Ben Oddo

    Has technology made people just plain stupid??? Long before Windows 95 every computer needed their internal clocks reset every spring and fall to adjust for DST. All Microsoft did was to take that semi-annual task and automate it. But we still have a host of clocks, wristwatches, and other devices that do not automatically adjust for DST. So I could not see the big deal about moving DST three weeks earlier in the spring and one week later in the fall.

    All Windows computers, and most VCR’s that adjust for DST have the ability to turn it off and adjust them manually if necessary. That’s to accommodate everyone in states such as Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, and Indiana that don’t observe DST. Adjusting a computer’s clock for DST manually is not like going to Big Ben and physically move the minute hand forward 360 degrees. Just a few mouse clicks is all.

    I found it amazing that Microsoft had the audacity to charge clients $4,000 to patch older versions of Windows to change the automatic DST parameters to conform to the new schedule. Especially when Microsoft provided a free tool to do just that. (TZEDIT.EXE) I guess what I would find more astounding is finding someone foolish enough who actually paid for the patch.

    Although I shouldn’t be too surprised to find someone who did actually fork over the $4,000. After all, it is Microsoft’s philosophy to make computing accessible to everyone. And in order to do that, Windows had to be simpler to use, thus began the “dumbing down” syndrome where people now rely on computers rather than common sense.

  • Peter

    Had the same issue on my Cingular 8125 – installed the official MS patch and still had to adjust the time manually. I also had the issue before Sunday of my e-mails showing up in SPB Diary an hour later than the actual time (e.g. if the e-mail was sent at 9am, I showed that it was sent at 10am)

    -Pete

  • http://jimmyc16bellsouth.net James Coble

    My Sprint phone updates time automatically from the closest tower. I have watched it compensate for Time Zone changes while driving. I no longer use Cingular, but I believe my old Cingular phone did the same thing. Whas’ up?

  • Deron Funk

    Well, although it seemed like the patch installation on our Cingular 8125′s (mine and my wife’s) went OK, but it apparently had not, as all our calendar events for the extra 3 weeks of DST were off by an hour, and the phone did not set the correct time automatically either, which it should have at 2 AM on Sunday.

    The patch I initially installed was a .cab downloaded from Cingluar and applied directly to the phone from the phone (after receiving a text msg directing me where to go to get it). When that apparently didn’t work as it was supposed to, on Monday I revisited the Cingular site and found a different patch that was installed thru ActiveSync. After installing that patch, I know it was successful because it shows up in the Remove Programs list, however, all of my appts for these 3 weeks are still of by one hour, so I had to reset them manually. I even tested it and found that if you reset the system time to 1:58 AM on 3/11/07, when it rolls over to 2 AM, it will automatically change the time to 3AM and pop up a dialog box telling you did it so.

    Judging from the discussion sites, I wasn’t the only one left with a boogered up calendar by thinking the patch had been successfully applied when it had not. I don’t really know what happened, but it may have been a result of me manually setting the time ahead on Sunday after figuring out that the phone had not done it automatically.

    In any case, we can’t wait for the iPhone!

    Deron

  • Edward

    What I learned from Cingular was that if I turned my phone off and then back on the correct time would be set on the phone. Since it requires the cell network to give it initial time on rebooting the phone, it will show the correct time. Same goes for travelling across a time zone border, once established in the new time zone, turn it off and turn it back on, bingo! the new time shows up.

    That is my learned opinion, but everyone has one.

    Ed