Dates & Times in PMA report

[Steve Kerman]

As I write this, it is 9:53 PM on Friday, March 9th, in California.  I just read this in the PMA report:

Saturday, March 10, 2007 – PM

Oh me, oh my! Kathy and I got back to Kingman last night a few minutes before midnight local time.

I am completely at a loss to understand what the dates and times are in that blog.  By my calculation, it is not yet 11:00 PM on Friday there.  Thus, it will still be an hour before they arrive back in Kingman.

Have I been time warped?  Have I entered the Twilight Zone?  What's going on here?

[michael]

Yes, you've been time warped. (You live in CA, so why be surprised)?

But the whole world does not live in California. The internet covers the entire planet.

This site has readers from all over the world. I'm in eastern North America. You're on the west coast, three hours earlier than me. Should I wait till it's midnight for you, and 3am for me before calling it tomorrow?

When I post a new article it's usually early evening my time. That means that for half the people in the world it's already tomorrow. As I'm eating dinner, they're eating breakfast. When they read an article dated by me as being at the end of my day, it's long been yesterday where they live.

Californians should be used by now to being in one of the last inhabited time zones in the world. Only Hawaii is further in the past (chronometrically speaking, of course).

A final point. If I buy an evening newspaper after dinner it is dated with the next day's date. When I buy a magazine it is dated with next months date. The purpose of this is to ensure that most people consider the read to be current, rather than "old".

Since even in North America most people won't read an item posted by me in the evening until the next day, now maybe you see the logic of what I do.

Michael

[Steve Kerman]

Michael,

Yes, I actually do understand how you date your posts, and I think your convention makes as much sense as any other.  That's not (at least directly) what I was commenting about.

Also, I gave the date and time here in California only as a "rock solid" reference point for my other comments.

What I was commenting about is that the Saturday post says that they arrived back at their lodging "last night" just before midnight local time in Kingman, AZ.  The "reasonable man" would suppose that "last night" in a Saturday post refers to Friday.  My perplexity was that, at the time when I was posting, it was still before 11:00 PM, Friday in Kingman, AZ.

I take it then that "last night" in that "Saturday" post actually refers to Thursday night?    

Does a show report for a show in Las Vegas, NV, labeled "Saturday", report on events that occured on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, Las Vegas time, when it uses the term "today"?


Please don't take this as criticism.  I greatly value the things I learn on this site, and the effort you put into sharing all this with us.  I'm just a little confused about which side of the Twilight Zone I'm on.  

[jani]

I think this is yet another excellent example why time zones are annoying. Let's switch to Swatch Internet Time already!

[Don Libby]

Maybe I'm slow on the uptake here but I read the messages "a day early" and really didn't think to much about the date.  I guess I just figured that since Michael is on east coast time that he added it on his time after his editing of the message.  I guess I'm just used to being time challenged living in Arizonia, while we don't set clocks back or forth we do change between Mountain & Pacific time - lets see .... I think we're back with being on the same time as Pacific for the next couple months which now means it's 3 not 2 hours later on the east coast.  This is fun when you have a satellite tv.

Is this much to do about nothing?

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

For a while today my PC was on daylight saving time, but my wife's wasn't. It seems that one of my XP updates took care of the new time, but my wife's (windoze 2000) didn't get fixed until I downloaded Micro$oft's special timefixer app and ran it. But there are still about a dozen or more clocks in the house that need to be reset manually.

I can sympathize with people who get their days and times a bit confused.