Martin Rowe

What time is it this week?
November 1, 2007

This week marks the first time that Daylight Savings Time in the U.S. has been delayed one week, from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November. Unfortunately, many devices have the last Sunday in October preprogrammed, forcing you to change time twice. We had this problem in the spring when we moved the clocks forward earlier this year than in previous years.

On Sunday morning (October 28, 2007) at 2 AM, my clock radio pushed back one hour. A far less sophisitcated $7 digital alarm clock didn't. If I were to adjust the time on the clock radio forward one hour, I'd just have to set it back again on November 4--not worth it. For one week, I let it display time that's behind by an hour. Then there are those VCRs, DVD recorders, etc., all with clocks. One jumped back an hour and the other didn't. I suspect that one that didn't gets it's time fron the cable network and will jump back over the weekend. If, not, I'll have more fun trying to remember how to adjust its clock. I use my cell phone as a time-of-day reference when setting clocks. It's portable and it get's its time from the network so I consider it reliable.

As for my computers, I use SymmTime software, free from Symmetricom, to keep time. If the time goes off, I just run the software and it synchronizes my PC clock to a network time server.

In it's latest newsletter, Symmetricom features an article called "The many ways we can access time" that discusses time standards such as those from NIST and the US Naval Observatory. As the artricle explains "If your time piece is not directly connected to any of the [time] sources, then it’s up to you to manually set the time of your wrist watch, alarm clock, pendulum clock, cuckoo clock, radio clock, stove clock, wall clock or pocket watch."

I know what you'll be doing on Saturday night or Sunday morning.

Posted by Martin Rowe on November 1, 2007 | Comments (1)