CJ Eller

I always wondered what happened to cron jobs when something like Daylight Savings occur. Do they keep their time or waver with the hour? It seems like the answer depends on what flavor of cron you're using.

In my case, I am using Amazon EventBridge to schedule a Lambda function that publishes to my blog. Typically the posts publish Monday through Friday at 5:00pm EST. So my assumption was that AWS would adapt to the time change. Turns out they don't — posts now go out at 6:00pm instead of 5:00pm.

At first I was alarmed but now I am relived. That extra hour is actually a blessing in disguise. I start a new job next week, and God only knows that a 5:00pm publish time will be harder to hit while acclimating to new responsibilities. An extra hour will be all I need (at least I think...).

This reminds me of last Valentine's Day. I wanted to surprise my wife with some breakfast, so I scheduled the order online for Valentine's Day morning. As soon as I confirmed the order, the application glitched on me and said my order would be ready in 30 minutes! Panicking, I made an excuse to go to the grocery store. This gave me the alibi to grab flowers and goodies along the way to the restaurant — things I didn't get beforehand. I was able to hide everything, heat up breakfast in the morning, and still surprise my wife. All because the application didn't do what I initially wanted.

How curious are these glitches that turn out to be just what you needed.