Scheduled maintenance
 

Is 12 am (per Fodors message) 12 midnight or 12 noon?

12am is always 'midnight'...

Hi sheila,

12 AM is midnight (0000 hrs).

12 PM is noon (1200 hrs).

((I))

Actually chaps, could I just point out that the "m" in am or pm is "meridian" and thus neither should appear with the number 12 when referring to time. I have been waiting for the site to go off for the last 15 minutes, but it would appear I need not have worried.

Of course you are right Sheila :) But we often say 12pm for noon and 12am for midnight around these here parts :) So at 12 MIDNIGHT New York City time you will [I trust] be tucked safely into the land of nod.

But, but but, but...

how do you KNOW!!?

The announcement said the site would be down Jan. 16. After midnight will be Jan. 17. It was an entirely confusing announcement. Also, they are always down longer than the time they say they'll be down. So after all this, when and for how long they'll be out of service will end up being a surprise anyway.

I find Fodors'/Random House's/Bertelsmann's use of US East Coast time to be irritating. How about GMT? So, the site will be inop at 0500 Zulu on 17-Jan-2005 until...er...

>The announcement said the site would be down Jan. 16. After midnight will be Jan. 17.<

0000:00:01 is after midnight on Jan 16.

((I))

Doesn't tomorrow start immediately after midnight, which follows tonight? I thought today started immediately after midnight, which followed the p.m. hours of Jan. 15.

Sheila -- how do I know what??? :D
Maybe the site is down right now and we don't know it ;)

How do you know if someone means midnight or noon- OK, sometimes the context allows, but when it could be either, like this time and it's just plain wrong.

If a tree falls in the forest and there's no-one there to see it,.....?

The use of the "24-hour clock" eliminates any confusion about whether or not it is noon or midnight or one second thereafter.

OTOH I'm not sure what it takes to raise the intelligence quotient or the boredom threshold.

I checked in late last night pacific time and it was down - so its all over and done with. Big notice on the home page "temporarily down for maintenence, thank you for your patience yada, yada . . . " And the "talk" page was toally off line.

The message says 12:00 am which is midnight, no? until 6:00 am Monday. Which means that it has not happened yet, right?
And as far as I have been given to understand, Fodors (Random House) goes by NYC time- Eastern Daylight Savings Time at the moment..right?
LOL

Scarlett: That is what I though too, but last night (11 p.m. PST) when I logged on I got the "sorry we are down for scheduled maintenence . . ." message. Maybe they plan on being down twice -- or maybe there was a mistake in their message.

Could they have meant Sat/Sun and not Sun/Mon?

I just looked back and there is an approx 2 hour gap in posts btw 2:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. EST.

And it wasn't the normal big blue Fodors logo we get when they are having unexpected problems - but a "we are doing maintenence" message. But it sure wasn't down the 6 hours they estimated - so it is still a mystery . . . . . .

Fodor's was ambiguous in its announcement. I think they mean midnight tonight.
And for those who get upset about Fodor's using EST in its messages, please keep in mind that they apparently do that because their home base in located in EST territory.

Did they change the announcement since yesterday? It now pretty clearly states that they will begin around 12AM Sunday evening which would mean tonight. But who in their right mind would say that something starting at midnight on the 16th, is scheduled for the 16th. Wouldn't it already be the 17th when they start?

That's what I said, Patrick. No one seems to agree.

That's why I said that Fodor's comment is ambiguous. They obviously meant tonight, so it should have read 12 a.m. Monday!

Another who thinks it is 12:am Monday.

Anyway, it's <i>meridiem</i>.

what date is midnigt seems to be a common problem for many people. Many people just don't get it that the day ends at 11:59:59 PM and the new day starts at 12:00:00 AM. It's one of my pet peeves. As far as using Eastern Standard time, I have no problem with that, BUT, it would be common sense to mention that in their announcement. They do deal with people from all over the world!

When I worked for a company in their computer department, they would often leave it to the programming staff to post the maintenance announcements. Unfortunately, the programmers spoke computer-ese better than English, and all too often the announcements were even less clear than this one from Fodors. Nobody in management seemed to grasp how annoying this could be to customers -- or maybe it just wasn't on their radar. At least the Fodors' message is spelled correctly, which wasn't always the case in that company. (It's since gone out of business, by the way.)

I get semi-hysterical everytime I open this thread! How many Fodorites does it take to change a lightbulb...er figure out the scheduled maintenance time?
:-D :-D :-D

In the past, the time posted to return on-line has sometimes been a bit optimistic, so the site may not be up and running tomorrow morning at the stroke of 9:00 am.

Wouldn't it be neat if the site came back with 1) the ability to delete your own posts and 2) external hot links?

I think it would be fantastic if it came back Troll free and Troll proof :D

OK, it's now after 11 PM EST, Sunday night. Has anyone else noticed that the little maintenance advisory at the top of the topics column has now disappeared?

Hmmm...Good eyes, Patrick! Sort of like watching the ball fall on New Years eve, isn't it?

Ah Patrick, it is now 8:26pm PST here and the maintenance schedule is still showing. Strange!

Guess we will all know if in awhile? We should have had a pool going about when the maintenance was going to take place.
And it did late Sat. evening - confusing for sure! Take good care. ((*)))

UPDATE !!! It is now 8:34PM on the West Coast and the Maintenance Sign is GONE !!! Mike

D'ya think we might also wake up tomorrow feeling refreshed, a little quicker, a bit more sharp? Sort of a maintenance by association? :)

((F))

Things are working very quickly here now- I think we have been maintained!
11:34pm, Sunday Florida, USA time :)

I'm scared to go to bed. Will there be a new color scheme to replace the dreaded lime and cobalt in the header?
Will thousands of stored trolls reappear when Fodors dusts out the cobwebs? When I get up in the morning, will my computer be sitting here with sparks and smoke coming out of it?
No, I think I'd better stay up all night and sit and watch.

still working

Patrick, very funny! Now I will be wondering what I will find in the morning...
back to my Paris restaurant list.
BTW- the brick wall came out even better than we hoped for, creamy glossy Linen White.

9:02pm PST time, the maintenance message is gone, the site is still up and since sometimes this afternoon this site has come up much quicker than it has in the past 4 weeks or so. I don't know if the maintenance actually got done, but things are sure better than before.

As I posted earlier, I saw a &quot;temporarily down for maintenence&quot; message at 11:30 p.m. PST on Saturday. So can we assume their message really meant 12:01 a.m. EST Sunday til sometime later Sunday morning?

Oh well, I guess we'll never know whe---or if--they actually did the maintenance!

I was online Saturday night shortly after midnight and couldn't retrieve anything. I don't recall exactly how the announcement was listed, but I can tell you they must have meant 12:01 am Sunday, Jan 16.

And quite honestly, I though that the minute before 12:01 am on January 16 should be referred to as 12:00 am on January 16. And the minute before that as 11:59 pm on January 15.

In my daily life (in medical records for example), I pretty much refuse to use ANY designation pinpointing an action to midnight on the dot, for this very reason - - I fudge in some way and refer to 11:59 pm or 12:01 am (which I typically write as 23:59 or 00:01) on the pertinent date.

And this may an &quot;affliction&quot; that doesn't occur worldwide as much as it does in some US settings, i.e., hospitals, but I think that the final hour of the day seems generally immune to 24 hour clock confusion - - which seems particulary prone to occur at 17:xx (too often read mentally as 7:xx pm) and 20:xx (seems to be read as 10:xx pm). But I have never seen any confusion when I write 23:30 or 23:59 - - somehow, it's just very clear when those times are.

Best wises,

Rex