Show Time is running out to update computer JL clocks Michelle Quinn r Los Angeles Times Springing forward in the computer age just got more complicated At 2 am a.m. Sunday Daylight Saving Time starts three weeks earlier than usual in a federal effort to save energy But millions of computers servers and networks are programmed to move the hand hands forward on m the first Sunday in April So information technologists are racing against the computer clocks to make the software fixes Otherwise heat and lights in some buildings could come on an hour later than they should Meeting rooms might be double booked Sprinklers might go haywire Doors might lock and unlock when they arent aren't supposed to People could be late to meetings with their bosses if their computerized calendars in time arent aren't tweaked u People will start associating anything that happens wrong that day with the change in Daylight Saving Time said Bruce Vincent Stanford University's chief technologist whose staff of six spent two weeks on onI I fixes Moving Daylight Saving Time up three weeks isn't producing anywhere near the anxiety did heading into the year 2000 Doomsayers then were predicting havoc I because computers would not recognize the 00 But the technology industry mobilized fixed problem the and fears ended when the ball finished dropping in Times Square This time around the threat is at best mayhem lite Few alarms have been sounded in part because the fears are more subtle Meetings off by an hour isn't a calamity and people still can still check their watches For most people at t home who do not tap into work email email email e- e mail or a network the new start for Daylight Saving Time could pass virtually unnoticed TiVo and other digital video recorders rec have made fixes Those with older computer systems might have to hunt online for software fixes called patches or endure having havinga a clock out of sync for three weeks Still Kevin Watne Vatne president of Generation IX a Los Angeles technology consulting company has a novel solution for Californians if all else fails Set their haywire technology techno logy on Mountain Standard Time for three weeks Buys you time he said Congress' Congress rationale in making the time shift was to give people more daylight hours in the late afternoon and evenings cutting their electricity needs Its It's similar to the argument Ben Franklin made in the late when he suggested people save money on candles by taking maximum advantage of the sunlight In 1966 Congress passed the Uniform Time Act which established Daylight Saving Time as beginning the last Sunday in April and ending the last Sunday of October The federal government extended it during the 1973 Arab oil embargo and in 1986 pushed up the start date to the first Sunday in April Small businesses could be vulnerable since many lack access to technologists who can make fixes Generation IX has spent hours working with high schools and small companies to fix everything that has an internal clock such as accounting systems electronic punch cards fax machines fire walls and even shredders and In big organizations making fixes is proving considerably harder than nudging forward a clocks clock's hands Patches from Microsoft Oracle and other firms finns have not been enough The computers all talk to each other about time said Shelton chief information officer at the University of California Berkeley It is more complex than people in Washington considered For information technology professionals the challenge has been figuring out how to synchronize the myriad of devices and computers people have then testing whether it worked in the me least disruptive way I 1 have to go find peoples people's mobile devices and fix each one said Andrew Laurence systems analyst at the University of California Irvine Some institutions have quickly applied patches and moved on But for some those patches have created new problems such as making some appointments appear to be an hour later 1 u u f 7 I- I r e ek I V r k is i i Hf i 1 v ter f Jil Los Angeles 1 Times photo by b Allen J. J consultant Generation IX fix a Eric Fowler right and Chris Reeves of technology clients client's server to avoid problems with ith the early start to daylight saving than they should You have no idea what the original time of the event was said Dave executive director of Cal Connect a consortium of individuals and companies focused on electronic calendar and scheduling problems At Stanford information chief Vincent balked at telling people at the university they would have to correct the calendar themselves as software companies have instructed But he worried about the looming tech support nightmare if he didn't act fast On On campus andoff and andoff andoff off computers computers' are registered roughly three per person including mobile devices like and smart phones So on a recent Sunday Vincent and his staff shut shutdown shutdown shutdown down the campus calendar for 12 hours installing software programs they wrote themselves Vincents Vincent's I change was a success although some of the ways I people color code their appointments didn't survive i ithe the fix We Ve avoided that train wreck he said But it has highlighted that we have to take action ourselves instead of hoping the I software companies will fix i things |