T w e n t y S i d e d

Daylight savings time is an absurd prank, and after 35 years I think I’ve had my fill of this. Steven recently said he wasn’t doing it. Admirable. I wish I could take that route. Right now my phone, my computer, and this server all disagree on what time it is. The server is an hour behind. My phone is an hour ahead. All three were in harmony until this goofy clock-changing business.

Here is the latest version of the Microsoft Timeserver.

Making things worse is the fact that Microsoft’s “time” server is on drugs. I was on the phone with a friend in Boston, and both of us hit “synchronize” at about the same time. Except, the time it reported to me here in Pittsburgh was about three and a half minutes slower than the time it gave to my friend in Boston. What is the rationale for a service to keep your clock correct if it reports different times to various people in the same time zone? Even more odd is the fact that it takes the server almost 30 seconds to respond. 30 seconds!

My friend and I tried to imagine how the time server could be so useless. We eventually concluded that the time “server” must be some sad, middle-aged guy sitting in a windowless room with no clock somewhere in the bowels of the Microsoft offices. When someone queires the server, he gets a popup dialog asking the time. Then he has to run upstairs to the break room, look at the clock, and then run back and type it in. The accuracy of the system varies depending on whether or not he’s in the middle of a game of minesweeper.

Recently several people have linked to me or left comments that were directly or indirectly insulting or irritating, and instead of letting it roll off I’ve been tempted to respond with a salvo of excoriation. That’s no way to live. If you get mad every time you see someone being rude or idiotic on the net, you’ll spend your life in a state of perpetual Defcon 1 rage. At first I thought that perhaps the number of ankle-biting nitpickers had somehow multiplied, but then I realized I was just getting riled up more easily. I’ve been in a horrible mood and I’m taking things more personally than I should. Looking back, I can see I’ve been this way since the clocks changed.

Each evening I sit down to write one of the posts for the following day, and lately all I can come up with are rants. Not my usual semi-humorous rants, but bitter, angry rants that wouldn’t amuse anyone. Thankfully, so far I’ve had the wisdom and self-control to toss most of them. I’m glad I have a few DM of the Rings already written, because I don’t think I can make any funny in this condition. I’m thinking that “D&D is stupid, players are all idiots, DMs are all jerks, Peter Jackson is a hack, and I HATE THEM ALLLLLLLLL” isn’t really the right frame of mind for writing comics. It isn’t likely to lead to anything that will make people smile, at any rate.

I can’t blame the mood on DST for sure, but it seems a likely culprit. I’ve had some other problems this week that could also be the root of the problem, (trips to the hospital) but I’ve weathered much worse with a good deal more grace in the past. Whatever the reason for my foul temper, this week would have been a little less miserable if I wasn’t getting up an hour earlier every morning.

Harumph!

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

The baby boomers had their revolution. They got their rock and roll, fought The Man, sang songs about freedom, changed the world, brought about peace and love, or whatever. But damn are those same people eager to pass laws regulating and outlawing video games now that they hold the reigns of government.

I usually avoid writing about this sort of thing because the subject makes me too angry to write with any sort of temprence. This business is frequent enough that I could write about it nearly every day, but it would turn my blog into a great boiling cauldron of profanity and purple-faced invective. So I try to avoid that.

Dear boomers: You’ll notice that in our generation’s Woodstock, we manage to plan ahead, show up with enough food, shelter ourselves, pay for stuff, keep the hard drugs and communal sex to a minimum, and even raise some money for charity. Which puts us a few miles ahead of where you idiots were at our age. Maybe you could trust us to take care of ourselves (and our kids) when we go shopping for videogames? Hmm?

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.