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Beckman time

As we're now enjoying the longer daylight hours, in honor of daylight savings time, here is a cute email that was sent last year at this time by a Beckman Inst. administrator:

Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 08:10:19 -0600
From: "Wiltzius, Pierre" wiltzius [at] beckman.uiuc.edu
Subject: [BI Announce] Time change

Having grown tired of the upcoming annual ritual of changing time for Standard to Daylight Savings I decided that the Beckman Institute would henceforth have its own time zone. In what will be known as the Beckman Standard Time (BST) zone we will not change our clocks forward or backward, a process which Indiana farmers know leads to all sorts of confusion among cows.

So when you come to work next Monday, or Sunday for the very eager ones, do not change your wall clocks. Unfortunately, the computer industry, over-reaching as it is, will reset your computer clocks automatically. You will have to undo that ingression. Since I realize that not everybody will know right away how to perform this, I hired a consultant that will assist you. Money well spent. Also, since we cannot entirely decouple from the rest of the campus, which will continue the foolishness of changing clocks, dual wall clocks will be displayed in all seminar rooms. You are permitted to have a second clock in your office, if this increases your productivity. Send me the bill.

At this point I would like to thank the members of the BST committee for their hard work on this task. I had assembled a group of highly productive faculty, staff, and students with representation across the Institute, work many hours on this clandestine endeavor. Now that we have reached this momentous milestone, all committee members can resume their normal tasks.

Long live BST. Beckman Institute - always leading.
Pierre

Director, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
Professor, Materials Science and Engineering Department and Physics Department
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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