We're finishing our first week in the new, improved Daylight Saving Time period. For the record, it is Saving, not Savings time. This switch has not gone well in the world of computers. Perhaps it suffered the backlash of the Y2K hype since Congress approved the change in early August of 2005 and none of the software manufacturers did anything about it until just a few weeks ago. Contrast that to the end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it kind of response we heard about Y2K. Add to that the grief we Hoosiers suffered last year when we started observing Daylight Saving Time for the first time in decades and we're a bit edgy about what time it is, and even more edgy about what time our meetings are supposed to start.
As catastrophes go, this isn't an earth moving one, but one would think so to have listened to the telephone lines at computer support companies this week and last. It will likely go on until April 1st (the old start of DST). For the truly calendar obsessive who already have their lives planned out well into the future, there will be another spate of calls in late October as we enter the extra week of DST that was added with the three weeks we're enjoying now.
Since the old switch would have happened on April Fool's Day, here are some thoughts you can plant in the over obsessive minds to make them even more obsessive:
- The clock on your computer is going to leap ahead another hour on April 1st because it still thinks that's the start of DST.
- The clock on your computer will fall back an hour one week early on October 28th because that's the old end of DST.
- The clock won't fall back on November 4th (or it will fall back another hour, having done it on 10/28).
- My favorite: Once all of this is figured out, the Indiana Legislature will decide next year to move Indiana into the Central Time Zone and we'll have to move all of our meetings again.
We here at Port-to-Port understand how frustrating this transition has been for many of you. We know that some of your meetings will never move to the correct time on their own. We imagine that a few of you will actually miss a meeting or two because they won't move while your others will. We believe that Microsoft and other software manufacturers could have provided updates and patches sooner. For all of that, we apologize. We will continue to do all that we can to keep your computer, and you, working as efficiently as possible.