Although there is an answer to my concern posted on Stack Overflow[1], I thought I'd run this by the Python group to just get a read on it, since it strikes me as a concern.
To summarize the issue: In an application, I have been using Python's datetime module to get the current time. But it seems that, at least with Windows (XP), whatever time zone your computer is set to when you start the application, that's what datetime will use--the time zone will *not* be updated in the application when you update it manually with Windows. So, if you change the time zone (say, after traveling with your laptop), all datetimes will be incorrect as compared to your system clock. The S.O. page has an answer that uses ctypes and Kernel32's GetLocalTime, and I've found I could do that, though it seems it would require me to substitute this for all uses of Python's datetime...and that is not a happy consideration at all. If I'm not using datetime, I am not using dateutil, not doing the same kind of date math, tons of rewriting... Not good. I haven't thought things through too well yet, but I was thinking I could get the correct system time via this ctypes based approach and then take that and turn it into a Python datetime to preserve all the benefits of datetime, but even that is going to be a lot of work for this corner case. Are things regarding this issue basically as I've understood them? I hope not. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4360981/make-python-respond-to-windows-timezone-changes) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list