Today, April 19th, The Second - Between Russia and Alaska

Today is April 19^th, The Second.

You may ask, “What the hell is April 19^th The Second?”

April The 19th, The Second April The 19th's Writing Spot

That means, when you are on a ship, traveling east, across the international dateline, you in fact experience a date twice. First you do say twenty-four hours, which you will call April 19^th, The First April The 19^th. Then, at some time, say at 3AM, on April the 20^th, you will fairly arbitrarily decide to change time from Samoa Standard Time (UTC+13) to Hawaiian Standard Time (UTC -10), and effectively, declare yourself now at 4AM, April 19^th, The Second April The  19^th.

For the humans onboard, we distinguish these days as April The Nineteenth, The First and April The Nineteenth, The Second.

As the network administrator, I have to tell you, as confusing as it is for the humans, it can be much more confusing for the computers. Some systems really don’t handle well doing a date twice.  We out right turned off a component of our provisioning system. And how exactly do you think we tricked our restaurant booking system into taking reservations for two different days, both referred to as April 19^th on a traditional calendar. (I could tell you, but then I wouldn't earn the big bucks.)

By the end of next week, I will have spent at least twenty-three hours in every time zone on earth. That is fairly cool. And April 19^th, 2013, well that was a hell of a long day for me. It was forty-four hours long, or I lived it twice, depending on how you look at.

Cool: Experiencing real life Groundhog’s Day. (Movie reference.)

Stupid: Trying to figure out all the system problems that will slowly trickle out from having lived April 19^th twice.