In March of this year, the U.S. began a new Daylight Savings Time (DST) schedule, which was set forth in the energy bill passed by Congress in August 2005. This Bill provided for three extra weeks in the spring, and one in the fall in an effort to conserve energy. So, this year, instead of setting our clocks back on the last weekend in October, we will be making that transition on Sunday, November 4^th.

Earlier this year, IT professionals diligently worked on patches for calendars on our computers and electronic devices. While it was perceived to be the next Y2K disaster, the transition for most was pain-free, and nothing more needs to be done for the fall turn of the clock. However, if you have purchased a used piece of equipment recently, whether from a vendor, e-bay, or other source, make sure these patches have been put into place. If they have not, your appointments and any automations triggered by date and time will be affected that week of October 29^th through November 4^th, and you will have problems in the spring of 2008 as well.

In the same respect, if you have a PDA that you will be synchronizing with your used piece of equipment, make sure you do this after downloading the patch and also do it regularly. As far as making sure you have the patch in place on your PC, you can do this by going to your “Start” menu and clicking on “Control Panel”, then open up the icon labeled “System”. From there, you will see the tab for Automatic Updates where you may select to receive those by clicking in the appropriate box. If you are using an operating system other than Windows, instructions may vary, and if you are using open source software, patches are available for that as well. You can check for that at www.gnu.com, or just do a search for “DST patch”.