Time zones insanity
Apr. 7th, 2006 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pphaneufThey're all nuts, I say.
And the US are changing some things to their daylight saving times in 2007.
I fucking hate discontinuities in the flow of time. Particularly when I have to write software that keeps track of the flow of time. Which I do.
Through the magic of daylight savings, you can have a weekly international meeting in a company shift by an hour, but only for some people, only for a week or two a year. All so that people can go to bed an hour (or two, depending on exactly how insane your country is!) earlier. Why can't they just be sane, and fucking go to bed a bloody hour earlier? I already have to deal with damned leap seconds, but these have a physical reason (slight difference between the rate of rotation of the Earth versus it's revolution around the Sun). Now, these people, they're just making my life difficult just because they can. There's absolutely no logic to it, it's all make-up crap, that politician whimsically put together because they've got nothing better to do.
I leave you with this to ponder:
5.1M /usr/share/zoneinfo
This is the space used by the time zone information files on my system. An average file is about 800 bytes. Some are smaller, like Canada/East-Saskatchewan (381 bytes, I believe they don't have daylight savings?) and others are larger, like Riyadh (which has about 11343 bytes for it, spread among multiple files because it is very complex there, apparently!). There are 1620 files. When some some wacky country decides that their daylight savings are going to jump by two hours instead of one every year that's a multiple of 7 (except those where the froobs are not ripe), these files have to be updated, and sometimes even actual code has to be modified. By people like me.
And people wonder why I don't wear a watch.
And the US are changing some things to their daylight saving times in 2007.
I fucking hate discontinuities in the flow of time. Particularly when I have to write software that keeps track of the flow of time. Which I do.
Through the magic of daylight savings, you can have a weekly international meeting in a company shift by an hour, but only for some people, only for a week or two a year. All so that people can go to bed an hour (or two, depending on exactly how insane your country is!) earlier. Why can't they just be sane, and fucking go to bed a bloody hour earlier? I already have to deal with damned leap seconds, but these have a physical reason (slight difference between the rate of rotation of the Earth versus it's revolution around the Sun). Now, these people, they're just making my life difficult just because they can. There's absolutely no logic to it, it's all make-up crap, that politician whimsically put together because they've got nothing better to do.
I leave you with this to ponder:
5.1M /usr/share/zoneinfo
This is the space used by the time zone information files on my system. An average file is about 800 bytes. Some are smaller, like Canada/East-Saskatchewan (381 bytes, I believe they don't have daylight savings?) and others are larger, like Riyadh (which has about 11343 bytes for it, spread among multiple files because it is very complex there, apparently!). There are 1620 files. When some some wacky country decides that their daylight savings are going to jump by two hours instead of one every year that's a multiple of 7 (except those where the froobs are not ripe), these files have to be updated, and sometimes even actual code has to be modified. By people like me.
And people wonder why I don't wear a watch.
