Does Anyone Know What Time It Is?

In my job I have to deal with five time zones, four of which observe summer time at some point in the year. The team I manage sits in the following time zones:

• Central European Time (CET) - 1 hour ahead of UTC
  
• North American Eastern Standard Time (EST) - 5 hours behind UTC
  
• North American Central Standard Time (CST) - 6 hours behind UTC
  
• North American Pacific Standard Time (PST) - 8 hours behind UTC
  
• Hawaiian-Aleutian Standard Time (HAST) - 10 hours behind UTC
  

UTC is Coordinated Universal Time. All of the time zones I need to deal with deal with summer time except for HAST. In the summer, I need to deal with the following time zones:

• Central European Summer Time (CEST) - 2 hours ahead of UTC
• North American Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) - 4 hours behind UTC
• North American Central Daylight Time (CDT) - 5 hours behind UTC
• North American Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) - 7 hours behind UTC
• Hawaiian-Aleutian Standard Time (HAST) - 10 hours behind UTC

However, they don't all change at the same time. The North American summer times start on the second Sunday of March and end on the first Sunday in November. Note that this only went in to effect in 2007 in the United States. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 amended the Uniform Time Act of 1966 and extended the daylight saving time period. Prior to 2007, daylight saving time in the US started on the first Sunday in April and ended on the last Sunday in October.

CEST is another story. CEST starts on the last Sunday in March and runs to the last Sunday in October.

Scheduling meetings in March is frustrating because 9 different time zones end up being used during the month. The start of summer time was never aligned between the US and Europe, but we used to both end on the same day.

In the United States, if you live in Hawaii or Arizona or any of the US territories, you don't have to deal with this crap (except that you do when working with people in other time zones). But it is nice having the same local time throughout the year.

If you live in Indiana, I do not know how clocks work for you.

Post Birthday

Aside from the tsunami and yammering on about my car, I have been off the blog for a while. Quick summary of happenings in no particular order:

• Had some friends from Innsbruck, Austria visit. Decided to buy an Aerobed for visitors and that turned out to be one of the best purchases we've made here. I still need to learn German.
• Took a long weekend trip to Turtle Bay Resort and stayed in a beach cottage (it's on the other side of the island, the best we can get for a weekend road trip).
• Became manager of my team at Red Hat. So far that has meant more use of the phone and more decision making, but I'm enjoying it.
• Got a land line phone, since the cell wasn't cutting it for the many calls I have to make for work now.
• Had a birthday. Karen framed my diploma from Georgia Tech, which was a really nice surprise.
• Booked the venue for our wedding and got save the date notices sent out. Also put together a wedding web site. Now we have to deal with the details.

And that's more or less the major things that have happened since my last real post.

Karen is currently getting past bronchitis, which has kept her down for about a week now. She is starting to feel better.

I worked over the weekend on bug blocking an in progress release of RHEL. We figured out the problem and have it fixed now, we just have to get to the point where it's too late to do anything about the release.

Speaking of work, I had lunch on Friday with the other two RH employees based in Honolulu. It was nice to meet other RH people in my time zone. And fortunately we're all on the same island. When we moved here, I was the only RH person in Hawaii. Now we have two others, so maybe someday there will be an office here (doubt it).

We've got a lot of travel coming up. April may require travel for me and June is definitely going to be travel. We're going to Karen's brother's wedding at the beginning of June and from there I head to Boston to get some office time.

Car Service

My 2004 Jetta was in need of service, so I finally got it over to Tony Volkswagen today. Of the different VW dealers I've used in the past several years, I like this location the most. They do a nice general check on the car and give you a multipage printout of how your car is doing in certain areas and they explain what different things mean so you are not totally in the dark.

Today the car got its 70000 mile service done. I had them replace a broken storage compartment latch and figure out why the rear door locks do not always unlock as well. During the general car inspection, they discovered the following problems:

• Left tail light bulb out (how did I pass the state safety inspection in Dec?).
• License plate bulb out (again, state inspection passed, how?).
• DG coolant fan "problem" (it's stuck on the high setting, unknown reason).
• Electrical short.

That was in addition to the service I came in for. On one hand, it's nice to have all of these things found, on the other hand it reminds me why I hate owning a car.

They recommended replacing the rear brake pads and rotors (rear brakes were at 3mm) as well as a brake system flush, power steering system flush, new wiper blades, and headlamp restoration. The estimate quoted was $1326.12. Come on. I declined most and got $320 worth of service instead.

Next in line will be brakes. I also need new tires. I keep going back on forth on whether I should get tires or not. I can't buy all season tires in Hawaii unless I order them, so I may end up doing that.