The 25th Hour

I look forward to the 25th hour we get today/tomorrow when we shift back to normal time instead of daylight savings time. I see it as Mother Nature giving me back time it borrowed several months ago. Just wish we could collect interest on the time. I will be spending it watching a movie provided Therese is able to pick one up when she is out tonight (I gave her a short selection I was interested in). I always set my clocks back earlier in the evening so I mentally adjust to the shift.

One thing I learned a couple years ago is working on VFP projects during the time shift is not a good idea. Why? VFP looks at the compile time of the last build and sees the newly saved program as an older file so it does not need to be compiled. I figure it is just easier to read a book or watch a movie than worry about this for one hour every year. One of my favorite 25th hours was a few years ago at WhilFest. It was spent hanging out with the FoxGang.

Over on ProFox, several developers have been debating on the new legislation passed which lengthens the daylight savings time part of the year. Funny how a bunch of lame-brained politicians (I know, redundant) can create unintended hassles in our lives. I would be willing to bet our so called representatives had no thought or clue to the impact on computer users of older, no longer supported operating systems. Some developers are calling this a mini-Y2K. I think this is a bit over dramatic. The hassles this will cause businesses and home users will be trivial to fix, but a pain in the neck. I think the big deal with this is how it can directly impact data. I would hazard a guess that most database applications timestamp data. If one computer is running Windows 98 or even Windows 2000 and others are running Windows XP, some machines will get correctly updated and some will not. This means there potentially could be data corruption. Not a good thing.

I for one like how Windows automatically switches the clock for me. I wish all my clocks worked this way so I could save the 10 minutes it takes me to switch them all twice a year. So how many designers, developers and testers do you think Microsoft, Apple, and the Open Source teams will have on this project to change the code in Windows, OS X and Linux? Then there is all the mainframe operating systems, the Palm OS, and various other platforms. Who is going to beta test the changes? I guess I for one should be cheering this kind of change, after all, it is employing more developers and I see that as a good thing.

The real question is will they be able to get this change done in time for the spring forward of 2006? You would think this is a trivial fix, but what if the daylight savings time module is one of those modules with horrible code no one wants to touch? You know the type of code, we all have it hidden in our applications.