Daylight Saving Time (DST) is when certain timezones shift forward during the summer. Typically the shift is +1hr. Both the amount and the time of the change vary from region to region. As of this writing, the clock used by the RetroMUD server is about 15 min fast but otherwise is CST year round (Making it UTC-4:45) so regular events like Wars and Boot appear to be one hour later to those on DST. If you follow DST, you should be particularly aware of this when switching back to standard time as this will cause boot to be an hour earlier in your time. Most of North America shifts to DST at 2:00 AM local standard time on the second Sunday of March and shifts back at 2:00 AM local daylight time on the first Sunday of November. Most of Europe switches at 1:00 AM UTC on the last Sunday in March and Last Sunday in October. Because of the variation in start and end dates for DST, converting between local times can be quite unpleasant. This is compounded by a tendency by some people to use the name of their standard time offset to describe their time zone. For instance some people use ' CST' to describe the entire North American Central Timezone, even though a bit more than half of it spends more than half the year on CDT instead ('CT' is the appropriate abbreviation for those parts of the time zone that shift.) If you want to express a time in a form that people in other time zones won't have to deal with the particular DST rules in your zone as well as their own, UTC is the safest and fairest option. |