If I don't shame him, he'll never learn

_posts/2011-11-28-time-is-hard.markdown

@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: Time is hard
+tags:
+- miscellaneous
+---
+
+One of the developers that I follow on Twitter, [Pablo
+Villalba](http://mobile.twitter.com/micho) (@micho), posted [this update
+today](http://mobile.twitter.com/micho/status/141196098474745856):
+
+> "And then there's that spec which fails only at the end of the month.. cause it asks the date picker to select the date '5 days from now' :)"
+
+Which [reminded me of a
+bug](http://mobile.twitter.com/agentdero/status/141197899315949568) that
+[we](http://www.mylookout.com/about/jobs) caught in our
+[Jenkins](https://www.jenkins-ci.org) server right around Daylight Savings
+Time.
+
+Writing software that revolves around time can lead to hard to reproduce,
+sporadic test failures. Between varying timezones, politicians arbitrarily moving hours around,
+different numbered months, leap seconds/minutes, and a few other things that
+affect "time," it really does seem like a very simple but difficult concept to
+work with.
+
+I wish I could say this was an interesting post about programming "time," but
+it's not. All that fluff is to try justify some of my travel experiences from
+last week.
+
+---
+
+Last Tuesday, after a long day of work, I cleaned the apartment, packed my
+suitcase and headed to the airport for my red-eye flight. After having some
+initial troubles with the check-in kiosk I managed to get a hold one a customer
+suppport person to figure out why I couldn't find my reservation.
+
+She couldn't find my reservation either! As soon as she finished her sentence I
+realized what had happened and immediately excused myself.
+
+My flight was at 12:25 *that morning*. I interpreted "12:25 a.m. Nov 22" as
+"midnight after the 22nd."
+
+One of the problems with consistently staying awake until 1 or 2 a.m. means
+that I have a (bad) habit of lumping those hours in with the previous calendar
+day.
+
+
+What's more, this is actually the second time this happened this year. I made
+the exact same mistake with my return bus ticket from LA->SF last January.
+
+After over 40 minutes on the phone with an airline representative who was
+not very good at hiding his indian accent, I had purchased a new ticket for the
+early next morning.
+
+
+Having spent 5 hours overnight outside security at the airport, and instantly
+doubled the cost of my entire Thanksgiving trip, I'm hoping I've now learned
+from my mistake.
+