Earlier this week I wrote about my adventures in Daylight Saving Time. In that post I mentioned that the Cingular support site said that my Samsung Blackjack didn’t need an update–that everything should be fine. That turned out not to be the case; I found the necessary patches and fixed my system. All worked out just fine.

Today, March 15, I received a text message from Cingular letting me know that we are going to change to Daylight Saving Time on March 11. Oh yes, my Blackjack will need a software update last Sunday. When I went to check this out on the Cingular Support Page, I found that the page had been updated to say that, yes indeed, I will need to update my Blackjack on or before the 11th.

I draw several lessons from this. First, it’s to Cingular’s credit that they did eventually figure it out and deliver correct information to their customers–I’m going to assume that other Blackjack owners got a similar message in their in-box today. Next, in a company the size of Cingular/AT&T you’d think they could find someone who has mastered verb tenses. They need some work on the whole past/present/future thing. Finally, while I give them credit for eventually sending out correct information, why wasn’t it available, oh, last Saturday (March 10th)? It’s not like this whole Daylight Saving Time were some last-minute surprise tossed at the phone company. There were announcements about this. It was in all the larger papers.

Of course, I shouldn’t complain too loudly, since Cingular is far from the only small business to have trouble with the shift to Daylight Saving Time. Yesterday when I flew back from San Francisco our Delta Air Lines 767 gave us the local time at our destination. Yep, their clock hadn’t gotten its new marching orders. It’s hard to explain just how much confidence that gave me as we soared into the sky. It was enough to make me forget all about my cell phone…

Categories: General computing, Media, Embedded, Consumer Technology