Daylight savings pain
March 11, 2012 – 10:54 amThis morning I awoke in a cloud of cognitive dissonance. On my side of the bed the clock read 7:30, while on my wife’s side the red LEDs said 6:30.
Ah yes, must be that spring forward thing going on in the backward lands of planet earth.
As the cobwebs continued to clear I began to fondly reminisce about a sabbatical stay in Queensland Australia where the local paper had a screed by an elderly woman from the northern part of that big island who argued that daylight savings was simply critical – as to not adjust the clocks would subject her curtains to color-draining amounts of sun exposure.
You see, living in the enlightened valley of the sun brings with it the wonderful experience of ignoring silly conventions like daylight savings time. In theory, This should be particularly joyful for Apple users since they don’t have to wonder if the magical device that contains their schedule is going to handle the grand time-shifting thing with Apple’s usual aplomb, or not?
You would think that being both an Apple user and a sun devil, I would be basking in the joy of ignoring daylight savings drama. But you would be mistaken my friend.
For starters, after I was sufficiently caffeinated this morning it dawned on me that my bedside clock, (a.k.a. iPhone 4s) should have read the same time as my wife’s clock since I’m here in the land of no DST and I thought I set my phone to Phoenix for the time zone. Which, if true, would mean the clock on the phone shouldn’t spring forward.
But it did.
Why?
Well, I guess it is because Cupertino must be the center of the universe for that is what my time zone read when I checked the phone. I’m pretty sure I didn’t set it to that. What I did do, however, is turn on Set Automatically. This seems to be code for set the time zone to Cupertino.
Ok so I don’t get to avoid the Apple time shifting glitch despite my geotag. First world problem, I will just have to suck it up.
But the larger issue is living in a place that ignores DST while the vast majority of the country observes this superstition. Yesterday, I was an hour ahead of Cupertino and two hours behind New York. Twenty four hours later I’m on the same time as Tim Cook and three hours behind Billy Joel.
For those of you living in the lands of the dark ages, your only problem this time of year surrounds the question of absolute time. You, living in say Brooklyn, might not know if it is 10 or 11 am due to the DST shift, but you know you are three hours ahead of Los Angeles. The latter is relative time.
We, the citizens of the enlightenment lands, have to deal with not only uncertainty about your absolute time, but because we are all connected (and we care about not calling you at an unholy hour), also our relative time. That isn’t constant for us because you all are worried about your curtains.
Cretans.
