What Time Is It?! [UPDATE]

March 8, 2009 - in Snippets by: Gwyneth Llewelyn
7 Comments

If you don’t know, you’re not alone!

According to timeanddate.com, California is supposed to have followed the rest of the United States in changing to daylight savings time earlier today. However, if you log in to Second Life®, it still shows “PST” (Pacific Standard Time), e.g. the time without daylight savings. For us living on Europe, it’s always a challenge to figure out when the US switches hours, since they (and, well, Canada…) don’t stay in sync with the rest of the world.

But this time I’m even more baffled! If you zoom in the picture above, you’ll see me logging in to Dreamhost, which is also located in San Francisco, California — and their servers definitely changed the time as expected! So… did Linden Lab change the rules? Will they stick to PST forever (and not change to PDT?) and be out of sync with the rest of California for about 34 weeks? Are they in touch with Obama, who might declare Bush’s definition of daylight savings for 2007 and onwards void, and implement a method that keeps the US in sync with the rest of the world?

Or did just someone from the operations team at Linden Lab forget to set the clock to PDT?

Alas, the plot thickens, and a conspiracy is in progress, I’m sure! Watch out as 2/3 of all SL residents log in for their favourite events at the wrong time, clueless about what time is it now in SL…

[UPDATE] Linden Lab’s Release Candidates and Imprudence don’t suffer from this problem. Apparently, it’s limited to Kirstens Viewer and other non-LL SL clients.

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Readers who viewed this page, also viewed:

http://firstlife.isfullofcrap.com Crap Mariner

I’m just worried my clocktower exploded.

-ls/cm
http://analutetia.com Ana Lutetia

/me thinks you broke it
http://gwynethllewelyn.net Gwyneth Llewelyn

/me thinks that LL ought to get a Swiss watch.
http://gwynethllewelyn.net Gwyneth Llewelyn

Mmmh. Things seem to be slightly more complex. Apparently, you just get the SL time wrong IF you’re currently living in a place that did not change to daylight savings today (March 8 ) — ie. basically the whole world except for the US and Canada.

This might also be different from SL client to SL client. A few might have this fixed.

I’ve done a simple check using an in-world script: it definitely shows the correct time, called from the servers. It’s just the SL client that displays it wrongly! So, Crap, your clocktower might continue to work fine…

Oh my. I guess I’ll have to start telling people the time in UTC…
http://gwynethllewelyn.net Gwyneth Llewelyn

I’ve checked it with LL’s latest Release Candidate and with Imprudence; both actually report the correct time. Kirstens Viewer doesn’t and apparently some others don’t, either…
http://osgrid.org Charles Krinke

The daylight savings thing is a continuous source of consternation to many. For me, I am advocating that Metaverse time be expressed in UTC with OpenSim. To try to at least set an example, things like “Office Hour” on OSGrid will stay at 1900UTC regardless of that the daylight (or lack thereof) do.
Hyang Zhao

Cool SL Viewer not affected, checked RC based 1.22.10