Not unlike the millennium rollover and the "Y2K" bug, ensuring computer systems across campus correctly make the switch to daylight-saving time Sunday has been a sizable task for University Information Technology Service's User Support Department.\nUITS has worked since late January to make sure the campus community is prepared to switch to daylight-saving time when it rolls around after 1:59 a.m. Sunday, said User Support Director Sue Workman.\nWhile mobile phones should correctly register the time automatically after the DST jump, personal computers and most other electronic devices need to be manually updated, she said.\nMachines running a Windows, Macintosh or Linux operating system have a separate time zone setting for Indiana. Users must change the time zone to Eastern Daylight Time. UITS has published step-by-step instructions on the Web site kb.iu.edu/data/atnt.html.\nUsers of the Exchange planner program for Microsoft Outlook -- which includes many IU administrators and faculty -- must manually update each calendar entry to reflect DST. To help in this task, UITS programmers coded a time zone checker tool. The program and instructions on how to update exchange are available at kb.iu.edu/data/atqr.html. \n"When I ran the tool against my own calendar, I had to change 150 appointments," Workman said. \nUITS realized the problem with updating Exchange about a month ago when it contacted Microsoft and other software makers about programming patches and updates to help the DST switch, she said.\nManually checking and changing each calendar entry, which is the only way to make sure each appointment is in order, can be time consuming, but Workman said the UITS tool can help expedite the process.\nAs of 4 p.m. Thursday, 4,546 unique users across IU have used the program to update 51,289 Exchange appointments, she said.\nAt the institutional level, UITS and IU are ahead of the DTS conversion game, Workman said. Several other Indiana universities and many businesses have requested the update tool. But she said she fears many faculty and staff members across IU's eight campuses haven't caught up, risking being an hour late for appointments and general confusion come Monday.\n"People just need to make sure they make the changes on their personal computers, their laptops and their faxes," Workman said.
Indiana bars to get extra hour to adjust to time\nStudents can temporarily regain their lost hour Sunday morning simply by walking into any central Indiana bar. Gov. Mitch Daniels issued a statement Thursday allowing Indiana restaurants and taverns to set their clocks forward an hour later than the rest of the state. \nAfter 1:59 a.m. Sunday clocks in most of Indiana will spring forward to reflect daylight saving time for the first time since 1972. Under Indiana statute, bars and restaurants must stop serving alcohol at 3 a.m. The switch to DST will skip over the 2 a.m. hour and would have caused Indiana bars to lose one of their busiest business hours. \nAllowing bars to observe DST later gives them this hour back.\nMike Black, who owns the Video Saloon, 105 West 7th St., said his bar does about 25 percent of its Saturday and Sunday business between midnight and 3 a.m.\n"I'm tickled to death that they decided to do this, because it's in everyone's best interest," he said.\nBlack said he suspects Daniels made the decision to allow bars to stay open because Indianapolis businesses stood to lose a lot of money from visitors in the city for the NCAA Final Four this weekend.\nThe governor's spokeswoman Jane Jankowski said the decision was not specifically based on that premise.\nBlack and Nick's English Hut co-owner Gregg Rago said they believed the lost hour of business for bars was an aspect of the DST switch that legislators overlooked.\n"We are just one of the industries that fell through the crack that they didn't think about," said Rago, whose own bar won't be affected by the switch since it typically doesn't stay open until 3 a.m.\nBlack said he hopes the General Assembly will take up this issue in the next legislative session to plan for years to come.
