This isn't about MLB.com. This is about lots of news sources who do the same thing. But MLB is a good example to use. Here's the page with their latest news. Click on any of those articles from Sunday forward. You'll notice at the top of each one they give the time of day, followed by "EST." This stands for Eastern Standard Time. But as you hopefully know by now, (almost) all of us here in North America switched over to daylight time early Sunday morning. Therefore the time here in the eastern time zone should be shown as "EDT," Eastern Daylight Time.

This isn't a case of "oh well it just switched, give 'em a couple days, it's like accidentally writing the previous year on your checks (my what?) in January." This happens everywhere, year round. I think a lot of people might think "EST" stands for "eastern" as opposed to being an acronym, because they'll always say EST, no matter what time of year it is. That and people are forgetting to update templates.

One way to never get it wrong would be to just use "ET" (eastern time) all the time. Yet people seem to want to specify, despite the fact that they don't know or care that they're getting it wrong.

I admit that this can't actually cause confusion. It's not like I'll see EST on a schedule during daylight time and show up an hour earlier. The time isn't affected by putting EST or EDT or EQW after it--it's only that first letter that can actually change when something happens. As long as you say the right time zone, you can call it "eastern cannibalism time" and people will still know the time you mean. But if you are gonna choose between the two acceptable ones, get it right! There's no "standard" time right now through November 6th. It's like 8 f'clock. It doesn't exist.

As for MLB, I'm sure it's their template that's at fault. I see last November they did know to make a switch, but they went from plain ET to EST. And now we've gone to daylight and they've stuck with EST. Like I said, lots of sources all around the 'net are guilty of this. Do a news search and you'll see what I mean. I just searched a random stretch of time that's completely within daylight time (7/1/2009 through 8/31/2009) for the term "7:00 pm EDT" and came up with 6 pages worth of Google results. In that same stretch, I searched "7:00 pm EST"--and 9 pages came up! That's 60% wrong--I'd be pissed at 10%!

Even with the last company I worked for, I noticed that all their web meeting things had times listed and they just went with "EST" all year long. I tried to tell them to change it but they didn't seem to understand--then they finally changed it only on the page I showed them as an example. (And I was the proofreader so I was supposed to be finding mistakes. But they fired me anyway.)


To completely change the subject, since I (I mean my mentor Tobiasson) have recently visited two abandoned New England amusement parks and posted pictures, I thought it would be cool to show you a picture of me at another old park, from around 2002. I'm pretty sure this completes the series, but if I think of another dead park site I've been to in the past or go to another one in the future, I'll let the Internet know.

Three odd things about this photo: 1. The half-fro-hawk. 2. Seriousness. It's rare I make a serious face as opposed to doing the "hey it's a camera so I'll be purposely wacky since seriousness would surely appear contrived" look. (Though just having that haircut and posing in front of a ferris wheel imply wackiness anyway.) 3. A fucking shirt and tie! Weddings and funerals only, if that, my friend. I think this was after a wedding in the Salisbury Beach/Hampton Beach area, but I can't find any reference to this ferris wheel online. Photo by Lys Guillorn.