New Time Zone Mayhem

Kinetic ERP
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Just setting up a new PILOT environment this morning in 2025.2.14

Some new time zones.

There is no more “Eastern Time (US & Canada)” or “Central Time (US & Canada)”.

Now there’s “Eastern Time (Detroit)” (which probably means that Daylight Savings Time is FOLLOWED) and “Eastern Time (Indianapolis)” (where Google says DST is ALSO followed… draw your own conclusions).

And “Central Time (Regina)” (DST is NOT followed) and “Central Time (Beulah, North Dakota)” (DST IS followed).

Not confusing at all.

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What about the “local datacenter time” zone? :slight_smile:

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Or IST - cloud team likes to use that. 10 hours and 30 minutes ahead of EST. I’m not used to timezones that aren’t off by an integer number of hours so I was surprised at first.

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ZULU Time, one time to rule the all.

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Newfoundland’s a half-hour off…I remember that much from Hockey Night in Canada ads.

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So I went to the “official” (well Wikipedia) Time Zone website

listngs:
“America/Detroit” supports both Eastern Standard and Eastern Daylight times
"America/Indiana/Indianapolis ALSO supports Eastern Standard and Eastern Daylight times
"America/North_Dakota/Beulah supports both Central Standard and Central Daylight times
“American/Regina” supports Central Standard time only

Problem half-cleared.

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That article probably 'splains why Indiana has a separate listing though they pretty much are almost normal now…

I live in Louisville, KY, and years ago we were flying out of Indianapolis (because it saved us hundreds of dollars to drive 2 hrs and fly out of Indy). Half the year, Indy was the same time as Louisville, and the other half, they weren’t. We ended up arriving an extra hour ahead of our flight. At least we didn’t arrive an hour later than necessary.

I know that parts of India are x hours and 30 minutes different.

And China… AI summary:

In 1949, Chinese leader Mao Zedong declared that all of China would operate on a single time zone, known as Beijing Time (UTC+08:00), following the Chinese Civil War. Implemented to promote national unity, this mandate forces the entire country, which spans five geographical time zones, to follow one clock, often causing sunrise in western regions like Xinjiang to occur as late as 10:00 a.m..

Key details regarding this decision:

Motivation: The move was primarily aimed at unifying the nation and creating administrative convenience, although it has historically created, and continues to create, significant time disparities.

Geographical Impact: Despite being roughly the same width as the continental United States, China uses only one time zone, whereas the U.S. has four.

Western Regions: In western regions like Xinjiang, locals sometimes operate on an unofficial, local time that is two hours behind Beijing time, or manage with a significant, awkward discrepancy.

Historical Context: Before 1949, China was divided into five distinct time zones.

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Time…I was thinking more like…
Morris Day GIFs | Tenor

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Date/time in programming is terrible and there’s no solution, only less bad options.

Leonard’s right, UTC should be used as a stored time reference. Surely UTC, being the common reference point is stable and predictable. LOL no but surely if the common reference point moves all the rest will move with it. Haha not even but it’s still the least bad option.

That’s not even getting into Epicor’s date/time storage. Sometimes it’s converted to the server’s local datetime at the moment of storage. Sometimes it’s stored at the company’s local datetime at the moment of storage. Sometimes it’s a plain integer of time units past midnight of one of those two, or maybe it’s the literal time and naive about DST variance. Sometimes it’s pivoted off of the Epicor Epoch 1953-10-30 in relation to one of those timezones and maybe you have to wonder if the function they’re using knows about how that timezone used to work differently in 1953 or not.

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What do you have against decimals? :winking_face_with_tongue:

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And Nepal is 5:45 from GMT!

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It’s a shame they don’t use the standard tz database time zones. I always select “Thunder Bay” because it sounds cool and has the same rules as where I live.

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Thunder Bay, ON is on the West of Lake Superior and is STILL in the Eastern Time zone with the rest of Ontario. In the summer, that sun is up late!

Ask me where I was for the Bicentennial.

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Louisville is close the the western edge of the eastern time zone, so we get later sunrises and sunsets.

I visited Portland, Maine in one December (far eastern edge of the eastern time zone), and the sun set just after 4pm! No, thank you!

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Yeah, I live near the eastern side of Central but grew up on the western side of Mountain. Sunset is so early here in the winter compared to what I grew up with.