Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Time. Show all posts
Monday, March 12, 2012
Anybody Know What Time It Is?
Go here. You'll find the exact time, and it will tell you how far off your computer's clock is. I have a Mac, so it's using NTP out-of-the-box and the clock setting is darned near perfect (0.008 seconds off)...
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Time Synchronization...
Geek Post Alert!
If you are not a geek interested in synchronizing the clock on a Linux or Windows host, then you should avert your eyes from this post, as it may cause damage to your brain.
If you've ever implemented NTP peering (the NTP daemon, in other words) on a Linux system, then you know it's quite easy to keep the Linux host's very accurately synchronized to atomic clocks. Really the only challenge is to locate some good NTP servers – and now a project has come along to solve that problem by creating known good NTP server pools. The member NTP servers in these pools are continuously checked, so you've got much better assurance that you're synchronizing to good NTP servesr than was previously possible. See the NTP Pool project's home page for more details, and this Wikipedia article for some background.
Using the NTP pool is almost ludicrously simple. In your ntp.conf file, today you might have several entries like this: “server a.b.c.d” (with real IP addresses, of course). To use the pool, you simply replace those entries with “server 0.pool.ntp.org”, “server 1.pool.ntp.org”, etc. That's all there is to it – after restarting your ntp daemon, you're using the NTP pool!
While reading through the information on the NTP Pool's home page, I came across something else that looks very useful: a full-on port of the ntp daemon to Windows (where it becomes a Windows service). So I tried it, starting from the port's download page. At this point I've only tried it on two Windows hosts (both running Windows XP Pro), so I certainly can't claim to have exhaustively tested it. But…unlike an earlier port I tried, this one worked first time after a flawless installation with a very professional looking installer. Better yet, an accompanying utility gives you a nice GUI-based monitoring tool. And even better, the whole thing is open source and free! Beats the heck out of the standard (but perverted) Windows Time Service…
If you are not a geek interested in synchronizing the clock on a Linux or Windows host, then you should avert your eyes from this post, as it may cause damage to your brain.
If you've ever implemented NTP peering (the NTP daemon, in other words) on a Linux system, then you know it's quite easy to keep the Linux host's very accurately synchronized to atomic clocks. Really the only challenge is to locate some good NTP servers – and now a project has come along to solve that problem by creating known good NTP server pools. The member NTP servers in these pools are continuously checked, so you've got much better assurance that you're synchronizing to good NTP servesr than was previously possible. See the NTP Pool project's home page for more details, and this Wikipedia article for some background.
Using the NTP pool is almost ludicrously simple. In your ntp.conf file, today you might have several entries like this: “server a.b.c.d” (with real IP addresses, of course). To use the pool, you simply replace those entries with “server 0.pool.ntp.org”, “server 1.pool.ntp.org”, etc. That's all there is to it – after restarting your ntp daemon, you're using the NTP pool!
While reading through the information on the NTP Pool's home page, I came across something else that looks very useful: a full-on port of the ntp daemon to Windows (where it becomes a Windows service). So I tried it, starting from the port's download page. At this point I've only tried it on two Windows hosts (both running Windows XP Pro), so I certainly can't claim to have exhaustively tested it. But…unlike an earlier port I tried, this one worked first time after a flawless installation with a very professional looking installer. Better yet, an accompanying utility gives you a nice GUI-based monitoring tool. And even better, the whole thing is open source and free! Beats the heck out of the standard (but perverted) Windows Time Service…
Friday, July 20, 2007
A Ponder...
Driving in my truck yesterday, I happened to notice the odometer was getting close to 150,000 miles. My 1996 Toyota T100 has given me nearly flawless service since I bought it more than 10 years ago. Just recently I had the first expensive maintenance in its entire lifetime, and I expect that to be the last for at least another 50,000 or so miles.
But I got to pondering another significance of that 150,000 miles. All but a very few miles of that were driven by me – so that 150,000 miles represents a whole bunch of my personal time. If you figure I averaged 50 MPH over they entire life of the truck (that's optimistic), that means I have spent something like 3,000 hours driving my truck. And that doesn't even count the time I spent driving our other vehicle!
Three thousand hours on the road. I know where most of this came from: until five years ago, I had a job that required me to commute to the office every day. Until two years ago, I traveled to the office once a week. The past two years I've worked from my home, with no commute at all.
Back in the bad old days when I was a manager, we used to figure that a normal employee worked 2,000 hours per year (50 weeks at 40 hours per week). So that 3,000 hours is equivalent to a year and a half of employment. If you figure in the fact that the vast majority of my commute time in this truck happened over just six years of employment (when I was commuting every day), a year and a half of wasted time starts to be significant.
The bottom line is that both I and my employer are gaining from the absence of my commute. I'm a salaried employee and don't formally keep track of my hours – but I guarantee you they exceed 40 hours per week (ask my wife!). I gain personally as well – no more frustrating rush hour commutes, and some more free time to spend with my family, on my hobbies, or on my honey-do list (I'll let you guess where the priorities are <smile>).
I love it that my Toyota shrugs off the 150,000 miles … but I hate it that I had to waste all that time driving to find that out!
But I got to pondering another significance of that 150,000 miles. All but a very few miles of that were driven by me – so that 150,000 miles represents a whole bunch of my personal time. If you figure I averaged 50 MPH over they entire life of the truck (that's optimistic), that means I have spent something like 3,000 hours driving my truck. And that doesn't even count the time I spent driving our other vehicle!
Three thousand hours on the road. I know where most of this came from: until five years ago, I had a job that required me to commute to the office every day. Until two years ago, I traveled to the office once a week. The past two years I've worked from my home, with no commute at all.
Back in the bad old days when I was a manager, we used to figure that a normal employee worked 2,000 hours per year (50 weeks at 40 hours per week). So that 3,000 hours is equivalent to a year and a half of employment. If you figure in the fact that the vast majority of my commute time in this truck happened over just six years of employment (when I was commuting every day), a year and a half of wasted time starts to be significant.
The bottom line is that both I and my employer are gaining from the absence of my commute. I'm a salaried employee and don't formally keep track of my hours – but I guarantee you they exceed 40 hours per week (ask my wife!). I gain personally as well – no more frustrating rush hour commutes, and some more free time to spend with my family, on my hobbies, or on my honey-do list (I'll let you guess where the priorities are <smile>).
I love it that my Toyota shrugs off the 150,000 miles … but I hate it that I had to waste all that time driving to find that out!
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