Black Raven Dragoons

[Zancarius]

If I'm not mistaken, today should be our favorite warlock's birthday. Given the 12-ish-hour-time-difference, this should be hitting sometime in the afternoon in Russia on the 16th of May.

Anyway, happy birthday! Not sure if you check the forums much!

[MaxRile]

Lock on!

[Tirian]

Exactly a month late on my part, thank you (But I did see your Steam message!)

And belated happy birthdays to you other 3 maids of May...

[Zancarius]

Hey, better late than never! Consequences of being busy and in another country, right?

[Tirian]

I'd say our time difference is the hardest part, actually!

[Zancarius]

True. About what? 12-14 hours?

[Tirian]

9 right now, but now varies on the time of year since the global time changes aren't synced anymore. (If I recall correctly, the US shifted off the 'global standard' two weeks on each side, and Russia instituted first a year of daylight savings time and now a year straight of winter time.)

[Zancarius]

This is why I'm glad I'm not a maintainer on the zoneinfo database. Not only do you have to keep track of the current time zone changes, but you must also include all changes over the course of history to ensure consistency. This is especially true if you store time locally in UTC (which you should), converting it to the local zone as needed.

And, well, there's also this (borrowed from here).

I was actually looking for some info related to a problem the JVM had with a very specific time in the past due in part to zoneinfo-related problems (actually, I seem to remember it as a JVM problem that confused two dates), but I can't find it. Suffice it to say timezones are hard. Harder still if an atlas/horoscope company threatens to sue you for maintaining historic data.

[Zancarius]

Here's some fun ones for you to muse over:

Unit tests fail when run in Australia (and some related stories).

Ah, here's the Java-related one I believe I was thinking about: "Why is substracting these two times (in 1927) giving a strange result?"

Possible kernel crash during a leap second (2012).

And a bonus that isn't time related. A Story About "Magic".