Important Daylights Savings Time Update

I took this post’s title from the subject line of an email I received from Microsoft this morning:

This year Daylight Saving Time (DST) extends by approximately four weeks.  In compliance with this provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, DST dates in the United States and Canada will start three weeks earlier (2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March) and will end one week later (2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November).

In some instances, effort will be required to accommodate the new DST legislation.  For example, systems and applications may need to be updated directly, while in other circumstances the application may inherit the date and time information from the underlying system.

Microsoft is committed to helping customers that are affected by the DST changes make this transition as seamless as possible.  Microsoft is producing updates for Windows products as well as other Microsoft products affected by the new U.S. statute.  These updates will be released through technical support channels including Microsoft Customer Service & Support (CSS), as well as online channels such as Windows Update and Microsoft Update.

At first, I thought, “Can’t they SPAM me with something better than this?”  Then I rolled back my negative attitude and considered the impact of the many productions servers I’ve worked with in the past and current being off by one hour.  Some of those servers can’t be off by a second — nevermind 3600!  

Though I’m sure that updates will be issued well before March 11, it’s good that MS is bugging us with this stuff if for no other reason than I know too many servers which aren’t patched/updated on a regular basis. 

And it is good to know I will be getting an extra hour of sleep four weeks earlier this year…