Greetings Sunday and hello Spring! Thanks for the warmer weather, but no thanks for the time change! Why can’t we solve DST yet? So let’s revisit the lovely spring forward annual activity and how can you make the switch less painful?
Yep, things still break with the time change
The smartphone updates overnight, so everything else should play nice right? Nope. Got a standalone device that’s not connected? Get ready to update it the old fashioned way. Got an app that stores local time vs UTC? Well, that would be a bug. Meetings with folks that don’t change their time? Hello Phoenix. Might have to change something there too.
Of the two changes per year, this is actually the easy one with “spring forward.” In November, when “fall-back” triggers bugs come out to play. The same time occurs twice, which can wreak havoc with apps that don’t know how to handle that. Alert twice? For “spring forward”, hope you didn’t have something set for 2AM as well; it just doesn’t exist.
How to avoid the issues?
Don’t schedule anything around 2 AM on changeover night. Automated jobs, deployments, anything time-sensitive. That hour is pretty much cursed. Save the grief and avoid it.
Update any servers and connected devices. Your phone and laptop patch themselves, but servers, NAS boxes, and smart home gear sometimes don’t. Check just in case.
Recurring calendar events that “magically shift”. After the switch, scroll through your week and confirm nothing has shifted. It happens more with events created by people in other time zones.
Stop using EST and EDT. They’re technically different things, and people get them mixed up all the time. Just say “3 PM New York time” or use UTC when you’re coordinating across time zones.
Manually fix your “not so smart” devices. Microwaves, alarm clocks, older thermostats, your car. None of them auto-update. Takes two minutes and saves you from being an hour off all week.
Will DST Ever Go Away?
Maybe. There’s been a real legislative push in the US and EU to end the time change for good, but Congress really just needs to get it together on this one. The sticking point is that while most people agree to stop changing the clocks, nobody can agree on which time to land on permanently. Until that’s figured out, we’re stuck doing this every year.
For now: update your stuff, check your calendar Sunday night, and use the extra morning light while it lasts.