Central Something Time?

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Ron Schmit
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Joined: Thu Jun 10, 2004 12:41 pm

Central Something Time?

Post by Ron Schmit »

Tuned in for a webcast from the Slooh telescopes. They were going to look live at the location of the March 17 impact on the Moon. Post said they would be starting at "9 PM EST."

"OK," I thought, "That's 8 PM CST... But we're on Daylight time right now, so that would be 9 PM CDT." I tuned in at 9:00 local time, and sure enough, got to see the webinar. Tricky to post times like that, as most people don't consider if Daylight time is actually in effect or not.

Observe the bottom right of our forum: "All times are UTC - 6 hours [ DST ]" I find that a bit ambiguous. Wouldn't it be easier to simply post "All times are Central Time"? That way we don't have to remember to change it.

Of course, we could drop a line of code in there that changes with Daylight Savings, or put a longer line that states " All times are CST (UTC - 6 hours) or CDT (UTC - 5 hours, when DST is in effect.)

Practices vary, but if you are going to add levels of precision, we should make sure they are right.

After that webinar, I've suddenly got an eye for time zones, I guess.
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Steve Baranski
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Joined: Fri Dec 07, 2007 4:27 pm
Real Name: Steve Baranski
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Re: Central Something Time?

Post by Steve Baranski »

Actually, mine said "All times are UTC - 6 hours" - and the time you posted this said 8:00 am , but I also noticed you where online... thought that odd... so I went into my user control panel, and saw that the box to use daylight saving time was set to no... I changed it, and now I see "All times are UTC - 6 hours [ DST ]" , and I now see your post as being @ 9:00 am. Something seems wrong about that...
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