Thursday, April 27, 2006

Hey, Kids! What time is it?

That used to be how Buffalo Bob Smith opened the Howdy Doody show on Saturday morning TV.
I recently rented a DVD with 4 episodes just to refresh my memory about that cultural icon of the 1950s - the show ran from 1947 to 1960. It was a struggle to get through all four episodes and the only thing that kept me engaged was the cultural anachronisms like the gravel-voiced Chief Thunderthud and the bizarre ADD/HD behavior of Clarabelle the Clown and the commercials in which Smith told kids to ask their moms to buy Wonder Bread and Hostess Twinkies.
But I bring up that opening line today because I just noticed, for about the 10th time in the last few weeks, that my Windows XP (SP2) refuses to recognize that Indiana is observing Daylight Savings Time.
For many years, certainly since the Uniform Time Act of the 1960s, Indiana and Arizona were the only states that did not observe Daylight Savings Time. When the rest of the country fiddled with its clocks to "spring ahead" an hour in the spring and "fall back" an hour in the autumn, we dwelt in the Land that Time Forgot and did nothing. Consequently, our neighbors in Ohio and to the east fell into step with us in the colder months and the folks from Illinois to western Kansas were in synch with us in the warmer months.
Our new governor, Mitch Daniels, decided this was somehow hampering Hoosier commerce with customers in other states - I never could understand why - and persuaded the Legislature to put us on DST starting this year.
But the folks at Microsoft apparently haven't gotten the word. They reach out and tweak my Windows XP with updates on a regular basis, but they haven't gotten around to addressing the time change issue.
So when I glanced at my computer clock in the bottom right corner of my monitor a few minutes ago, it read 10:35 a.m., when it was actually 11:35 a.m.
I can't imagine than no one from Indiana has e-mailed them about this issue, but just in case, I think I'll suggest they fix it.

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