Question

I have a problem related to timezone behaviour of a Rails 3.1.1 application. Here is, what I did on my console:

(rdb:1) Time.zone = "Amsterdam"
"Amsterdam"
(rdb:1) Time.zone.parse("Sun, 06 Nov 2011 13:05:18 +0000")
Sun, 06 Nov 2011 14:05:18 CET +01:00
(rdb:1) Time.zone = "Atlantic Time (Canada)"
"Atlantic Time (Canada)"
(rdb:1) Time.zone.parse("Sun, 06 Nov 2011 13:05:18 +0000")
Sun, 06 Nov 2011 09:05:18 AST -04:00

My object’s timestamp is UTC. In my timezone Amsterdam it was 14:05 when I created it. In New York City the timezone is “Atlantic Time (Canada)”. Parsing the timestamp in that zone results in 09:05. But thats wrong, it should be 08:05.

Besides that the time difference between both zones seems to be -4 -1 = -5 but is in fact -6 hours.

That behaviour completely destroy’s my apps behaviour. What am I doing wrong here?

Regards
Felix.

Answer 1

You are not doing anything wrong. The DST changed today, Nov 6, at 2 AM. So the time is 9:05, and not 8:05. Also, New York is in Eastern time, not Atlantic time.