Who's Your Data?: Beware DSTY07 is fast approaching!

Avid readers of this blog (thanks Mom) know that I think the whole Y2K thing was a bit hyped. However, the real deal is upon us. In one of those late night top secret sessions that Congress is famous for, they had the audacity to move up the date for daylight savings time. They did this without consulting the geek patrol. Next Sunday night, March 11 we will experience what can go awry when mere computer programmers are allowed to manipulate the very future of the planet.

DSTY07 will be upon us. Some well meaning person proposed a change in Daylight Savings Time without thoroughly consulting the IT industry. The implications of changing the date of DST are enormous for the computer industry and for the world. It was done in the name of energy savings, when all reputable scientists know that there are so many calcified dinosaur bones that we have an almost unlimited supply of oil and gas. Sure, it will cost bazillions to extract, but we love our SUV’s.

And there is nothing we can do about DSTY07. It will infect all date and time data, the OS and network servers. The only remote possibility is for the President to declare a national emergency and dedicate unlimited resources and dollars to this project! It would be like President Kennedy declaring “we will land on the moon in this duh-cade” and then actually doing it in a week.

I can’t believe you are taking the time to read this! I can’t believe I am taking the time to write this! What will it look like?

Imagine this scenario…you come into work Monday morning March 12, believing it to be 8:00 a.m. Your computer indicates that it is 9:00 a.m. (is it Spring back, Fall behind or Spring ahead, Fall back?). In Japan, the financial markets fail to open on time. This causes a ripple effect in the Middle East. In London, the PM declares a state of emergency. In Colorado, 12 inches of snow fall within a 24 hour period (just like the week before and the week before that). From the ranch, Number 43 announces a worldwide ban on all timekeeping devices. Citizens are ordered at gunpoint to surrender their watches.

At an undisclosed location, the Vice President and Bill Gates are launched into space to colonize a secret planet discovered years ago to be habitable by up to two sentient beings. They will populate a New Earth. The mating part has not been worked out, but Bill will figure it out. The only remaining pocket of sanity on Old Earth is in Arizona where they had the great and good common sense to never adopt DST to begin with.

Beware the Ides of March!