It’s that time of year again
Yes, it’s time to set your clocks an hour forward (except if you live in Saskatchewan or a couple other parts of North America where they’ve come to the conclusion that daylight saving time is pointless). At 02:00 Sunday morning it will magically be 03:00. Fun, eh?
The theory is that we will save energy, but I still have yet to read anything that says this actually takes place. As I mentioned last year, I have read things that indicate that energy consumption actually goes up. And accident rates tend to be higher in the week after the clocks are set forward. Not exactly a win-win situation.
If you’re a *NIX system administrator you probably updated your systems a couple of years ago, but in case you haven’t you probably should take a look at this. The zdump command should give you something like this:
[gordon@seedling]$ /usr/sbin/zdump -v /etc/localtime |grep 2009
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 8 06:59:59 2009 UTC = Sun Mar 8 01:59:59 2009 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 8 07:00:00 2009 UTC = Sun Mar 8 03:00:00 2009 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 1 05:59:59 2009 UTC = Sun Nov 1 01:59:59 2009 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 1 06:00:00 2009 UTC = Sun Nov 1 01:00:00 2009 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
AKA Keeper of Maps, I'm a geocacher who lives in Ottawa, Canada.
And if you’re in the UK, that didn’t cave to the ravings of the lunatic known as Bush Jr, then we change times here..
rmckenzi@rambler:~$ zdump -v /etc/localtime |grep 2009
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 29 00:59:59 2009 UTC = Sun Mar 29 00:59:59 2009 GMT isdst=0 gmtoff=0
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 29 01:00:00 2009 UTC = Sun Mar 29 02:00:00 2009 BST isdst=1 gmtoff=3600
/etc/localtime Sun Oct 25 00:59:59 2009 UTC = Sun Oct 25 01:59:59 2009 BST isdst=1 gmtoff=3600
/etc/localtime Sun Oct 25 01:00:00 2009 UTC = Sun Oct 25 01:00:00 2009 GMT isdst=0 gmtoff=0