What is the matter with this Forum’s reported date and time? It currently reports July 17, 2006, 12:33:20 am, with no indication of time zone. I am in the US Eastern Daylight Time zone (UT - 4 hours) and it is about 09:17 (am) on the same date. The Forum time translates to something like UT - 13, and impossible result (never outside UT +/- 12 except for a modest summer time correction). Even Australia and New Zealand are not possible…they should alreadt be on 18 July, I believe.
The forum date and time are based on the location of the Forum itself not the user (i think). But you can fix this by going into your profile clicking Lock and layour Preferences, type 8.7 that should make up the difference and put you right on U.S. Eastern Time.
Thanks for the reply, Justin. Like you I thought the time was based on the forum’s location, but it cannot be! The time (as compared to mine) is earlier by 8 hours, 42 minutes, 4 seconds, that is, the location is west of me by that amount. My time is accurate, frequently synchronized with the US national time signals from Boulder, Colorado, and should be within a tenth of a second of the correct time. That time difference would put the forum more than 120 degrees west of here. Our reference meridian is 75 degrees west of Greenwich, so the forum should be more than 195 degrees west or equivalently less than 165 degrees East. But that longitude is east of the Date Line, so the date is wrong…it’s not early in the morning of 17 July, but early in the morning of 18 July. So what is it really? I conclude that the forum clock is not synchronized to any time standard: that would account for the fractional hour.
And, into the bargain, changing my profile (thanks for the tip) did not change anything, even after closing and restarting my browser.
Did you click apply the settings? You can’t just change it then leave, you must apply these settings. If you did apply them then I don’t know why it wouldn’t be working.
Well, guys, something has really changed now! Actually yesterday I was able to change my date/time format successfully, as the profile change “took” this time. It is still ok today.
But the forum clock has now been altered. Instead of a strange value, not corresponding to any real place (not even South Australia, India, Nepal, or Newfoundland, all of which are on 30 minute or 15 minute boundaries), but actually correct. It is now (to the nearest minute) exactly eight hours west of US EDT (UT - 4 hours). This corresponds to Wellington, New Zealand, although the date is off by one; it is already the 19th there. You can research all of this easily at www.timeticker.com.
All: Apologies - we had some issues with the server and forum synchronization of time zones and you caught us in the middle of correcting it. It’s all good now. Local forum time is EDT.
I want to thank the system administrators for getting this time business all straightened out! It’s nice to have have the right time showing now instead of trying to figure out where the server was located!
