[clue] Just plain handy.

[David L. Anselmi]

Chris Fedde wrote:
>
> I have spent my share of debugging working out odd issues related to time
> and date offsets.  Many computer systems have bad clocks that are not
> synchronized to anything.  To say nothing about actual timestamp formats,
> timezones and so on.

Yeah.  Fortunately I can mostly ignore incorrect clocks (I don't really care what time it is and 
"system time" is the only one that matters).  I can also mostly ignore formats because the few I 
deal with are reasonably understandable.

But there's an XSLT function that seems to be used to convert from one offset to another.  Using a 
Java current time function that provides a time in UTC and comparing it to a time specified in the 
local offset (converted to UTC by the XSLT function) doesn't work.  Specifying the local offset in 
the Java function and comparing that does work though.  Sigh.

I have a really sad story about time on a ship but it will have to wait until you have a beer to 
keep you interested. :-)

Dave