<rantmode>
Well. The email I got says my linode will be rebooted on 2015-03-07 12:00:00 AM UTC
So what hour is that? I generally manage to figure out the AM/PM nonsense by thinking 'AM=after midnight' (yes I know it's meant to be some Latin). But 12:00:00 AM? Is it midnight or is it noon? Even a web search indicates it's ambiguous.
I'm sorted now because I just logged in to the linode manager and it says it's 11 hours left.
But come on, why use such an unscientific, stone-age time system? It starts out fine with '2015-03-07', standard date format and all, and then runs off into something that could as well be furlongs. Please, this is the 21th century, use 24 hour time formats!
</rantmode>

12:00:00 AM is 00:00:00

As I said, I figured that out already due to the '11 hours left' message. The point is, why send out emails with a time specified in that horrid am/pm format? Most countries (nearly everyone) in the world are not in am/pm land, and use a sane 24 hour clock. Likewise, Linode's customers are all over the world. Linode should be precise with such important information, and that means using a sane time format in their email communication. And no, that has nothing to do with language. My work is 100% international, nearly everybody communicates in English, and *of course* everybody uses a 24-hour time format independent on which language is in use.

s/everybody/almost nobody/

There, fixed that for you.

If Linode sent out an email saying the maintenance started at 03:00:00 then people would ask "is that am or pm?" Even though _I_ speak 24hr, doesn't mean the person sending to me does!

The answer, of course, is "00:00:01 am" and "12:00:01 pm"; always add that extra second

_________________
Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

I don't think so. If they sent a message saying the maintenance starts at "2015-03-06 03:00:00", people could easily infer from the year-month-day order that they are using the ISO format for the entire timestamp, not just for the day.

The ISO format does not have AM/PM. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 for details.

I also had to think twice about the hour when I saw "12:00 AM" so the argument that they somehow "have" to use AM/PM to reduce confusion does not hold, IMHO.

Linode is an American company, Americans use AM/PM. I work for an enormous international company based in NY. Almost everything that comes out is stated in AM/PM and in ET (US/Eastern time). Everyone else knows how to convert it.

A google is only ambiguous because some pedantic moron has butchered wikipedia to make it so. 12:00 AM is midnight, period.

As a random aside: a.m. is "ante meridiem", or before midday/noon, and p.m. is "post meridiem", or after midday/noon. So, conventions aside, "12:00 am" would logically be when the hour hand points at the '12' prior to when the sun passes closest to your local zenith on a given day. "12:00 pm" is still a crapshoot, of course.

Good news is that there's a nice countdown timer when you look at the overview page for your Linodes, so you can calibrate accordingly.

_________________

/* TODO: need to add signature to posts */

Easy way to keep it straight:

1am is in the middle of the night, therefore, 12am (1 hour before) is midnight.

1pm is the middle of the day, therefore, 12pm (1 hour before) is noon.

It's not all that hard, but I agree, 24hr time is much clearer.

_________________
Either provide enough details for people to help, or sit back and listen to the crickets chirp.
Security thru obscurity is a myth - and really really annoying.

By that logic, "11:59:59am is the middle of the day, so 12:00:00am should be the middle of day".

_________________
Rgds

Stephen

(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

all done in ~30 mins for me

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* Centmin Mod Nginx menu based auto installer (Nginx, PHP-FPM, MariaDB MySQL) :: Centmin Mod LEMP Stack - What's New

Almost an hour for me for a Linode 2 GB (the $20/mo plan). The reboot seems to be hung for the past 10 minutes though. I'll wait a bit longer, the host could just be busy.

Finished in less than 20 minutes for a Linode 1GB, nice work!

Except for those who don't know about such things.

Using AM/PM removes any ambiguity as to what's what.