Anybody else dreading this weekend??

[Sully008]

Ugh. Well, it's that time of year again, DST will be happening on Saturday night and I've got about 20 watches and a bunch of clocks to change this weekend. Might as well change the batteries while I'm at it (with the exception of my Synchronars ).

Does anybody else do them all at once? Or do you change the time "on the fly" when you were a different one?

[J Thomas]

[rewolf]

We had it last Sunday already, always the last Sunday in October, that is, this year it was at the latest possible date.

I adjust only the watches I wear frequently, that is about 4. The rest "on the fly".


@Jeff: IMVHO it's no good idea the "hard code" the DST date in any device. The day and even the time is different all over the world, and prone to change by ignorants...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

But there is a solution: AFAIK in any country it's on a Sunday morning. So give the user the possibility to program the latest (or earliest) possible switchover date, and the exact time.
Then, the firmware switches over at any Sunday within a 7-day-period before (or after) the programmed date, at the programmed time.
E.g. here in Europe the latest possible date is October 31st (until some years ago it was September 30th) at 01:00, 02:00, 03:00 (depending on time zone).
For the US the rule is (currently) "second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November at 02:00", that is:
Spring: switch at Sunday between March 8th and March 14th,
Autumn: switch at Sunday between November 1st and November 7th.
Of course this only works if the watch/clock knows the day of the week.

[J Thomas]

[LEDluvr]

I'm with rewolf on this one.
I change my 8 daily wearers and then the others as they fall into the rotation. When DST comes again next year I'll notice a few wathces that are 'already set' - in other words I didn't wear them for a year. These are the ones I promise to sell... but never do.

[rewolf]

@Jeff: IMVHO it's no good idea the "hard code" the DST date in any device. The day and even the time is different all over the world, and prone to change by ignorants...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

Thanks Wolfgang

You're right on. I'm already setting up a menu variables to define the starting and ending week, the day and the hour. This way I can dump the multiple tables supporting N / S America, Europe, AUS and leave it to the customer.

Regards, Jeff

Regarding AUS: Lord Howe Island uses a half-hour shift http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/clockchange.html?n=750

[charger105]

Regarding AUS: Lord Howe Island uses a half-hour shift http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/c ... html?n=750

Some states in Australia don't have DST at all. Queensland doesn't (it's a massive state and the northern most part of it has minimal daylight variation over the year since it's closer to the equator).

NSW has a 1 hour DST variation.

Lord Howe Island, being about halfway between Sydney and Brisbane (the capital cities of NSW and Queensland respectively), must be hedging it's bets !

Rgds.

[bruce wegmann]

I just re-set them as they need new batteries. I used to try to keep them all running, but when the count went past 300 I decided to let all but a few of the stainless and goldfilled ones to go dormant (no batteries), and keep just a few of the solid gold ones running (the P1s, Pulse Time, Midas models...things like that). Battery consumption has dropped from about 400 a year to more like 50...a number I can live with. And don't forget the calendar re-set you have to do in non-leap-year years (internal calendar sees 29 in February, so 3 years out of 4, you end up a day late past the beginning of March). If I remember right , the Synchronar had a setting for what year in the four-year cycle you were in, so the calendar never went out of sync...they do get points for that one...