jmpp’s blog

Are you by chance a Mac user who lives in Venezuela (with your timezone set accordingly) and uses iCal? If you meet all these conditions you might have wondered why this nifty little app is exhibiting this very strange bug of skipping over January 2008 and taking you straight from December 2007 to February 2008 and back the same route.

If you look a little closer you’ll notice that January 2008 is actually being shown, albeit a little disguised. Take a calendar like Google’s for the same month and compare it to iCal. When does January 2008 begin? Tuesday 1. What’s the date right before it? Monday, December 31 2007. This looks just fine in any calendar but iCal (or any other application using the OS’ time & date services, for that matter). How does it look for us iCal users? Notice that Monday, December 31 2007 followed by “Tuesday, December 31 2007″, and then by an accurate Wednesday, January 2 2008, all under the “December 2007″ title. Yes, that’s right, this alleged “December 2007″ is actually *January 2008* with a minor glitch in the starting date, other than the obviously mistaken title. Dashboard’s Calendar behaves a little differently, not exhibiting this particular start date glitch but still disguising January 2008 under the “December 2007″ title. In either case, all you need to do to confirm it is actually January 2008 is to go back one month from this alleged December to encounter, yes, you guessed it, the *real* December 2007.

Now, why is all of this happening, you might wonder… Well, regardless of political inclinations, it seems to me that it does have to do with the questionable time shift that took place here in Venezuela on Sunday, December 9 2007 (yes, I do particularly believe it was not only completely unnecessary, but actually nothing more but a bluff and quite detrimental, in fact). On that date Venezuela changed it’s official hour to an at-the-time inexistent -4:30 UTC timezone, from the long standing (and *standard*) -4:00 UTC timezone we had since practically the start of the 20th century. Being the only country in this fractional timezone (from :00 to :30 — 0.5 of an hour — ), it is possible that many time & date services (including the OS’, of course) aren’t aware of it and in calculating a particular date (presumably the year change on December 31, 2007) understandably so jump over it in what could probably be an integer only calculation: integer part of 1.5 is 1, for example.

I don’t actually know the iCal innards and I doubt anyone outside Apple does, so who knows how much inaccuracy there is in this speculation. But I’m sure it’d be hard for anyone to argue against its plausibility from the mathematical standpoint. So I guess this is just another of those things we have to thank you, you know *who*, for… sigh!

All in all, I hope this posts helps to clear up the confusion in those Venezuelan iCal users who, like me, for long wondered what was causing this strange and very particular date “bug”.

-jmpp

So, yes…. I’ve been trying for the last full day to convince myself that it didn’t happen… and when failing to do so, to convince myself to “take it easy”, as they say… even more miserably failing to accomplish *that*! How do you even accomplish that, by the way…? I mean, my iPod was stolen yesterday, there’s nothing that will undo that (not in *this* country, at least) and I’m simply pissed out of my wits!

So I’m driving back home close to 1 in the morning after dropping my girlfriend off at her place… and I happen to take a wrong turn… Murphy will never let you down, you can count on that! I’m so lucky to get stopped by three cops on bikes (”Metropolitana”, for those of you in the know) AT GUN POINT!!! The other day a cop got shot in the *neck* point-blank with a shotgun (!!!) simply for asking a kid to stop harassing his guests at his house (that among 20+ other violent deaths in a single weekend!)… and I get stopped AT GUN POINT (!!!) for taking a wrong turn at 1 in the morning, with no one else on the street. Want to figure this country out…? Be my guest!

So I get out of the car and receive my standard-issue frisking, of course, can never do without it. Meanwhile, one of three cops opens the back door of my car, looks around and pulls out my Koala, these very handy little hip-strapped bags for which we have that very funny name here. Too late, when I stepped over to keep an eye on my belongings, my dear iPod already had a new owner… put it in my Koala on Saturday night, on Sunday night it’s no longer there after getting stopped by “Police” AT GUN POINT (!!!) for taking a wrong turn. Do let me know if you still want to try figuring out this country!

In the mean time, I can only wish ungodly things-that-I-do-not-care-to-mention to my dear iPod’s new owner, enjoy it while you can… As they say, what goes around comes around!

My dear-who-kept-me-happy-in-traffic-during-so-many-of-the-*gorilla*-in-chief’s-”cadenas” iPod, farewell, you shall be missed and remembered for times to come! (and I’m telling ya’ sista’, those “cadenas” can be *ass*-long!!!)

-jmpp

PS: And no, being grateful that nothing else happened to me doesn’t cut it! “Thank you for robbing me and not stealing my car (or beating me, or killing me)”… not my particular choice of a cheer (ever heard the term “ranchificación”??? Non-spanish speakers may ask; others, wake up and smell the coffee!).