Time zone time warp

Lately I've been on-the-go quite a bit...travel, wedding-to-attend, more travel, another wedding-to-attend next weekend, work workshop, travel.

Between weddings, I've had a few days in one place and wanted to try to catch up on things Hive. However, for the past two days I've been wrestling on my laptop to carry out actions on chain. An annoying and action-stopping red message kept popping up whenever I tried to do something. The message basically said, "Nope."

"Please try to broadcast it again." So polite, that angry-red "Nope" message. I tried again. Nope. Again. Nope. No matter what I tried to do, red error. Nope.

Troubleshoot...

Network connection? Everything worked fine otherwise.
Blockchain issues? Browsing worked fine. On my phone, everything worked fine. Must be a laptop issue.
Browser issue? Shields down on Brave...same issue. Switch to Firefox...same issue.
Front end issue? Changed from PeakD to Ecency...same issue. To hive.blog...same issue.
Account issue? RCs are good. Changed to another Hive username...same issue.

Hmm. I dunno.

For the past two days I've managed to do what I wanted to do by juggling devices. I worked mainly on my laptop, then, whenever I needed to take an on chain action, I'd do that action using my phone. It worked, but I may as well had also thrown in a running chainsaw to juggle as well.

The problem with nuisance red error messages is that I (and I think most people) don't actually read them. Frankly, I don't get past red-is-bad before clicking out. Today though, something in my little chipmunk brain told me to focus on time or timing. There had been something in that nuisance red message about "expired." I've got an old library card that's expired. I've got a Subway card with enough hole punches for a free 6 inch sub, but it's expired. I've got a parking ticket from college still hanging out, I hope that's expired. Expired has to do with time. Then, it suddenly hit me...

Time Zone, stupid.

In my travels, I moved one time zone westward to my current location...one hour earlier. When I first started my up laptop in the new locale, I changed the time. For some reason, the option to let the computer automatically update the time has given me troubles, so, I just manually change the time. I manually decreased the clock's hour by one so that the little laptop clock in the screen's corner showed the same time as the watch on my wrist.

Big mistake.

I failed to change the time zone! Instead of changing the time zone, I had decreased the hour. My time zone was still set for my old location, which now thought it was one hour earlier than it actually was! Although things looked fine (the laptop clock showed the same time as my wristwatch), it caused problems.

Too bad that red error message didn't truly reflect what was going on. An accurate error message would have shown: PEBKAC Error

After this epiphany of Time Zone!, I went back to the laptop's date/time, corrected the time zone, and increased the hour by one. Now, I have the correct time and correct time zone. And I can do actions on the blockchain. Solved.

I'm still a bit confused as to what was happening time-wise. To my chipmunk brain, this is some type of Back to the Future mind meld. My laptop said one time, then it thought about the old time zone it was set at, which was an hour ahead of where I was, however I'd manually turned it an hour back, and then I tried to apply whatever time that back-and-forth eventually ended up as with the Hive blockchain, which had its own time. In all this, my action had evidently expired. And it said, "Nope."

Now, I'm even more confused. But, time zone, stupid.

Summary

When interacting with the Hive blockchain (and likely others), it's critical that have your local device synced to the correct time. Otherwise, wonky things can happen.

Lesson: change the time zone, not the hours.