time zone bugs

[tg2k]

I got a surprise when I traveled one time zone west. Suddenly all my
items due Thursday (with no time assigned) became due Wednesday night
at 11 PM. It seems to me that they should stay due on the same day if
there was no time assigned. I'm guessing that internally the system
used midnight to indicate "no time" but this doesn't work when you
change time zones.

When I returned, I synced, and the first time, I got an infinite loop
exception on Android.

I synced again and it went through. I made some other changes and got
the infinite loop exception again.

I haven't seen it a third time though after several more syncs.

Later though I noticed that a task I added today (after returning
home) showed a reminder time of 4 PM on Android but 3 PM on Windows.
No time zone changes were involved here. Are my reminder times
permanently hosed now?

Ironically this task I mentioned was a task to let the MLO folks about
the other time zone bugs.

I'm running the latest Android version (1.0.0.1782) on a Droid X, and
Windows version 3.6.1. I sync using wifi sync (no cloud).

--Todd

[tommy benton]

The trouble is that android assigns a fixed time zone to all calendar
times. By default this is the time zone you're in when you assign the
time, but can be set otherwise. When you change time zones, the due-
date times android gives are the times in the original time zone after
adjustment to your new time zone. Probably not what you expected or
wanted.

You can check "use home time zone" in the native calendar (or
calengoo, but not business calendar) to make the calendar app adjust
the due times back to the original time zone. You can't do this in
mlo, so all your task times remain in the original time zone, and then
android adjusts these to the time zone you're in.

Not a solution for mlo, but at least you'll understand how the times
are shifting. The times should display correct when you're back in
your home time zone.
An alternative is to turn off the automatic time sync for your phone
and make it keep operating in your native time zone, but then your
clock will be off.

-Benton

[tg2k]

Is this getting looked at? I got a similar problem this time around as well: When I went west, all the items with a due date of just the day now said that the previous day, 11 PM. I did this with my phone off. But coming back east, I left my phone on (in airplane mode, now that this is allowed) and MLO must have been loaded. When I returned to my home time zone, I got a mix of tasks that looked correct again and tasks that didn't. Maybe because I marked some tasks as completed while out west, but I know this isn't the case for all of them that are messed up.

So now I'm sort of stuck--I think I'll have to do a full synchronization and hope it fixes it.

I really don't get why MLO for Android can't just use the calendar date and not factor in the time, for tasks set with due dates; it seems like this should be a fairly painless fix (at least that's my point of view as a developer).

[tg2k]

Having seen the post that MLO for Android is nearing beta, I wanted to ask about this issue again. It's also posted in the main MLO group by others, at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mylifeorganized/zone|sort:relevance/mylifeorganized/OJjO55w1Qbg/-xJzwxw-R8MJ . Are we likely to see a fix soon? It's an annoyance every time I travel. I have a lot of frequent recurring tasks, and these all get hosed when I travel and mark them completed from another time zone; returning then even the desktop version gets hosed (I use wifi sync) and must be reset.

Another thing that happens is that, when traveling west at least, the day shown on the TODO Items is the day before, so this can make it seem as though the due date is a day early. In certain cases this can be rather bad (think of the case where this convinces you to take a non-daily medication too early).

As this issue has been outstanding for three years, can I ask where it is on the priority list?