Sun.com Customer Experience and Stuff: Notes from the Sun.com customer experience team.

Some of the more amusing reading in the code for Solaris and other UNIX distributions is the zoneinfo files, describing various rules for Daylight Savings Time. There are pretty complicated rules about which countries switch to DST, and when, and some of the colorful history is captured in these UNIX source files.(See below)

Time zone humor: Yet another reason to look forward to the coming postings on OpenSolaris.org!

(And see Norbert's comment attached about the source of all of this... the time zone database of which I was blissfully ignorant.)

For instance...

zic:australasia

# New South Wales and subjurisdictions have their own ideas of a fun time.
# Based on law library research by john @ basser.cs.su.oz, who notes:
#	In Australia, time is not legislated federally, but rather by the
#	individual states.  Thus, while such terms as ``Eastern Standard Time''
#	[I mean, of course, Australian EST, not any other kind] are in common
#	use, _they have NO REAL MEANING_, as they are not defined in the
#	legislation.  This is very important to understand. 
#	I have researched New South Wales time only; . . .I hope that perhaps a
#	resident of each state could be found to do it for their own state. 
#	(And I can guarantee that Victoria and NSW are different, so the link
#	between them in the current australasia file must be broken.)

australasia 7.51 (from http://www.ludd.luth.se/~ams/djgpp/cvs/djgpp/zoneinfo/src/australasia )

# Tonga

# From Paul Eggert (1996-01-22):
# Today's _Wall Street Journal_ (p 1) reports that ``Tonga has been plotting
# to sneak ahead of [New Zealanders] by introducing daylight-saving time.''
# Since Kiribati has moved the Date Line it's not clear what Tonga will do.

# Don Mundell writes in the 1997-02-20 Tonga Chronicle
# <a href="http://www.tongatapu.net.to/tonga/homeland/timebegins.htm">
# How Tonga became `The Land where Time Begins'
# </a>:

# Until 1941 Tonga maintained a standard time 50 minutes ahead of NZST
# 12 hours and 20 minutes ahead of GMT.  When New Zealand adjusted its
# standard time in 1940s, Tonga had the choice of subtracting from its
# local time to come on the same standard time as New Zealand or of
# advancing its time to maintain the differential of 13 degrees
# (approximately 50 minutes ahead of New Zealand time).
#
# Because His Majesty King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV, then Crown Prince
# Tungi, preferred to ensure Tonga's title as the land where time
# begins, the Legislative Assembly approved the latter change.
#
# But some of the older, more conservative members from the outer
# islands objected. "If at midnight on Dec. 31, we move ahead 40
# minutes, as your Royal Highness wishes, what becomes of the 40
# minutes we have lost?"
#
# The Crown Prince, presented an unanswerable argument: "Remember that
# on the World Day of Prayer, you would be the first people on Earth
# to say your prayers in the morning."

# From Paul Eggert (1999-08-12):
# Shanks says the transition was on 1968-10-01; go with Mundell.

# From Eric Ulevik (1999-05-03):
# Tonga's director of tourism, who is also secretary of the National Millenium
# Committee, has a plan to get Tonga back in front.
# He has proposed a one-off move to tropical daylight saving for Tonga from
# October to March, which has won approval in principle from the Tongan
# Government.

# From Steffen Thorsen [straen@thorsen.priv.no] (1999-09-09):
# * Tonga will introduce DST in November
# 
# I was given this link by John Letts <johnletts@earthlink.net>:
# <a hef="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_424000/424764.stm">
# http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_424000/424764.stm
# </a>
# 
# I have not been able to find exact dates for the transition in November
# yet. By reading this article it seems like Fiji will be 14 hours ahead
# of UTC as well, but as far as I know Fiji will only be 13 hours ahead
# (12 + 1 hour DST).

I keep hearing from all sides that "Barry Bonds is the biggest jerk in baseball" and I guess if you discount Ty Cobb, Roger Clemens, Pete Rose, George Steinbrenner,  then that's true given his recent media performances.  And, it's probably a good thing that he has declared a moratorium in speaking to the press.

But let me tell you a story about the kindness and patience I saw firsthand last year when this sports superstar was away from the flashing cameras and the microphones stuck down his throat.

Last year I was in Aspen with my family at Boogies, a local burger joint. Next to us was a huge table set up for probably 12-14 people. We had just ordered, when an entourage entered, and then close behind a huge athletic guy.  We did a double-take... "Who is that?  Wait... is that Barry Bonds?  Cool!"  We whispered to ourselves. They sat down at the big table. Barry was sitting almost in our laps.

Now, there's an unspoken rule in Aspen that you don't molest the celebrities. They're there trying to escape the glare LA, or New York, or Riyadh, or wherever else they come from. So, if you see Jack Nicholson outside trimming his hedges or Kelsey Grammer walking down Hyman street or Bill Joy reading his email at a coffee shop, please don't take pictures or ask for an autograph. While you can nod or do a slight wave, it's considered more polite that you pretend not to recognize the celebs at all.

OK, a lot of visitors apparently don't know this rule about the celebs.  Because as soon as Barry sat down, a woman and her two kids came over her her camera, and made him get up, walk around the table, and pose for a pic with the little ones.  Then she made someone in the entourage take a picture of the four of them with her in it.  Oh... and could Barry autograph his napkin, please?  So now Barry has no napkin, but at least he can sit down again.

He begins to look at the menu.  But up ventures another tourist, kids in tow. "Mr Bonds, could we get your picture?"  Barry gets up, poses for 5 or 6 shots, then sits down again.  This exact scenario repeats for several more minutes, and somehow Barry and the rest of the table manage to order and get soft drinks and shakes brought over.  With every other sip of his soda there was a new visitor requesting autographs, pictures, or both.  A line forms.  At this point, Barry gives up and just drinks his soda standing up so he can pose for all the pictures.

The food arrives.  Barry takes a bite... and another fan comes up.  Could he pose for a picture?  "Not, not at the chair... the background's wrong... how about over to the side of the table instead... great, thanks so much Mr. Bonds."

I hope that Barry was able eventually to finish his lunch.  We had to go, and in true Aspen style just gave a knowing smile and a slight wave as we departed. And wondered what it would be like to have to put up with this kind of non-stop attention morning, noon, and night.

Now, ask yourself: If this was your life, where you couldn't finish a meal without being accosted continually and now when the fans and media give you the same treatment, accelerated, on a topic you probably don't really want to talk about... wouldn't you be a little grumpy too?