Learning with the Fang

I nearly didn’t make it through my first few months working at Microsoft (back in1996). Being the direct link between the Microsoft Exchange team and one of the world’s most ambitious messaging projects at the time, I tore my hair out trying to figure out why the Minister for IT and the Premier of the State had appointments in their calendars that were an hour out. Turns out it was all due to the fact that our little town of Adelaide changed the dates for daylight savings (for a motor race), the bad architecture of storing daylight savings transition info in every computer and the joys of working with dates in code - especially recurring appointments. I did some investigative work with an intern, we made some suggestions and developed a reputation for being the ‘whinging Aussies with the timezone problem’ among some rather senior members of the Exchange and Windows teams. At first I thought I was just too dumb to understand the issue and therefore didn’t deserve my job at Microsoft. After a while I knew I was right but could not get anybody else to see the issue - (until a US Navy aircraft carrier experienced these issues a few years later) - I felt horribly alone. Now I feel warmly self righteous every year when I see articles like THIS ‘Daylight savings change creates time bug‘ in the press!!

Maybe I deserve a gravestone like Spike Milligan:
‘I told you …’

Fang - Mike Seyfang

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