Spring forward, fall back ... whoa, not yet

Your home computer may disagree, but we haven't gone off daylight saving time yet.

By MIKE DONILA, Times Staff Writer
Published October 30, 2007

Did the time on your computer's clock fall back an hour Sunday morning, a week before it should have?

You're not alone.

The glitch came as no surprise to techno geeks, who predicted problems when President Bush pushed back the daylight saving time switch to save more energy.

The solution is pretty simple: Just deal with it. Your clock will be right this Sunday.

While not exactly the nefarious Y2K bug, where many predicted doom and gloom, some clocks, computers, digital cable boxes and, maybe, cell phones got hit with a daylight saving bug.

The reason? Software either wasn't updated or it was inadvertently removed.

The good news is that "it doesn't appear to be life-threatening," said Dave Thewlis, executive director for the Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium, a California think tank that promotes ways to create a scheduling program that works between all programs.

It's hard to tell how widespread the problem is because it's such a minor glitch, Thewlis said.

It didn't apparently draw even minor complaints.

Although some Tampa Bay residents said their digital cable boxes fell back an hour, officials with Bright House Networks said they didn't hear any mumbling from subscribers.

And the folks at Tampa International Airport say they didn't hear of anyone missing a flight because they had the wrong time, either.

"Everything rolled over fine here today - no issues with the computers and information displays," said Brenda Geoghagan, an airport spokeswoman.

The change stems from a sweeping energy bill Bush signed in August 2005 that lengthened daylight saving by four weeks. It kicked in this year with clocks rolling ahead by one hour on the second Sunday in March, rather than the first Sunday of April. They'd typically be set back on the last Sunday in October, but that changed, too, to the first Sunday in November.

So, just to be sure that you're not late for work, take a minute to make sure your clock is right.

[Last modified October 30, 2007, 01:07:25]