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View Full Version : Are you ever going to fix the time zone bugs?



fredrik
07-31-2010, 10:40 PM
I have reported these bugs a couple of times before. Every six months or so, I try out the settings in the latest version of HEM to see if you have finally fixed the time zone bugs, and every time the result is the same. There is no way to get the "today" or "this month" filters to actually show the hands played today or this month in my time zone, and I always have to enter "last 10 hours" to get the last 4 hours. Am I really the only one who finds this really frustrating? (The one I find the most annoying is "this month"). HEM has had these bugs for years, and they can't be that hard to fix. So why don't you?

I had some hopes this time because of the "adjust site import times" setting that didn't exist the last time I tried this. So I set the adjust parameter for Full Tilt to 6 (I'm in Sweden), and played an orbit at a 1/2 NL 6-max table at around 3:35 AM on August 1, Swedish time.

Today shows no hands played.
Last 1 hour shows no hands played.
This month shows no hands played.

Then I noticed that HEM still has a "day starts at" setting. (The one that used to be the only time zone related setting in HEM and that has never actually worked). It doesn't make any sense to me to have two places where you can configure time zone related stuff, but whatever, I decided to try changing that setting too. I set it to 6.

Now Today shows the hands I played, (but I'm assuming that it still gets ****ed up at 18:00 the way it always used to in the past, since you don't seem to have actually fixed anything)
but Last 1 hour shows no hands played,
and This month shows the entire month of July! :confused:

I don't think the "adjust" feature works at all. Not that I really know what it's supposed to do. The hands I see on the reports tab have timestamps around 21:35 (July 31).

I also noticed that there's an "archive hand history files older than" setting, which is set to 15 minutes by default. It doesn't seem to work either, since nothing has showed up in the archive folder for 45 minutes. (I tried shutting down HEM and starting it again a couple of times, just in case it's supposed to do the archiving on exit or on startup).

I think there should only be one setting for the time zone stuff, the "day starts at" setting. And if I set it to 6, the "today" filter should match hands played between 00:00:00 and 23:59:59 today in my time zone. In other words, it should match hand histories timestamped between 18:00:00 the day before and 17:59:59 today. The "this month", "this year" and "last x hours" should behave the same way. If I use the "this month" filter right now (August 1, 4:30 AM), it should match hands with timestamps between 18:00:00 July 31 and 17:59:59 August 31. This can't be too hard to do. The most difficult step would be to read the computer's date and time, and figure out the date of the day before.

_Loki_
07-31-2010, 11:21 PM
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Hi fredrik

I'm only commenting on one aspect of your post - I hope it's OK to do that :)

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Both time-related functions have their place. I don't see how they can become one function

the change day starts at
It's for those players who find their daily session is split across two dates because they play through midnight which can mess up how they analyse their day in reports
This setting only effects the day-based filters & doesn't change any information in the hands

Adjusting the site import times actually changes the time stamp on the hands according to THE SITE & is especially useful if you play more than one site at one time where the two sites have different lobby times
This way a session across two poker sites will show up correctly together in sessions etc
Of course if you play just one site it's useful as well because then you can have the times the same as in your time zone if the poker client doesn't allow that adjustment

If your habit is to play multiple sites at once with different lobby times AND you play one session across two days (because you play each side of local midnight) you might need both functions at once - therefore they cannot be made into one function

###

fredrik
08-01-2010, 01:41 AM
I'm only commenting on one aspect of your post - I hope it's OK to do that :)

Of course. Thanks for the clarification. That makes sense. I didn't even think about the fact that different sites are in different time zones. The ones I've been playing at are all using US east coast time. I would have chosen to handle the different sites in different time zones problem by just having a different "day starts at" setting for each site, but if people prefer to have their hand history files edited so that the timestamps show the times in their local time zone, I don't have any objections to that. I just want a "day starts at" feature that actually works for one site.



day starts at
...
This setting only effects the day-based filters & doesn't change any information in the hands

Unfortunately it doesn't do it correctly even for the "today" filter*, and it makes no sense to me that you guys seem to have chosen not to use this setting with all the time-based filters. I find it really annoying that "this month" misses the first 6 hours of each month.

*) After 18:00 Swedish time, "today" doesn't match anything at all, if "day starts at" is set to 6. At least this is how I remember it, but it's been more than a year since I looked at it, so I might remember it wrong.

_Loki_
08-01-2010, 02:57 AM
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Some fun Swedish breakfast reading while listening to ABBA:
>> FAQ - Hold'em Manager Poker Tracking Software :: Miscellaneous Options (http://faq.holdemmanager.com/questions/194/Miscellaneous+Options+)

This option allows you to set the time you want your day to start for all “Today” based filters.

North America Users
* East Coast Time = Leave it alone
* Central Time = 1 Hour
* Mountain Time = 2 Hours
* West Coast Time = 3 Hours

For users in other countries, add the hours between North American East Coast time and the time in your region. The difference is what you want to use here.

If you’re still having problems with the “Today” filters, try the following:
1. Play poker hands until 23:59 or 11:59pm
2. Set your filter to filter hands from the last 24 hours. (Note your earnings or number of hands)
3. Now set the filter to filter hands from “Yesterday”. If your time of day is set correctly, your earnings and hands in the Reports Tab will be the same as the filter from the Last 24 hours###
>> http://forums.holdemmanager.com/manager-bugs/28882-setting-morning-start-day-counterintuitive-single-day-filtering.html
>> http://forums.holdemmanager.com/poker-site-support/29199-adjust-time-full-tilt-pacific-standard.html
>> http://forums.holdemmanager.com/manager-general/22230-day-starts.html
>> http://forums.holdemmanager.com/manager-bugs/17569-set-day-starts.html

###

fredrik
08-01-2010, 04:33 AM
Thanks. Never been much of an ABBA fan, I'm afraid. :)

According to this, I need to set "day starts at" to 18, not 6. (I know I've tried the correct setting in the past (http://forums.holdemmanager.com/manager-bugs/3973-time-zones.html#post18314)). I tried that, and now "today" matches the hands I played at 3:35 today, but "last 8 hours" doesn't and "last 14 hours" does. (It was less than 7 hours ago). I also tried changing the time on my computer to 17:59:40, and hit refresh in HEM. I could still see the hands. I waited for the time to pass 18:00:00, and hit refresh again. Then the filter matched nothing. (I don't know if it would match hands that I play now).

So "today" only matches 18 hours of the day if you live in Sweden and have "day starts at" set correctly. This is clearly a bug, and so is the fact that the "day starts at" setting is ignored when I use other time-based filters, like "this month" and "this year".

By the way, the first time I reported these bugs was in November 2008.

fredrik
08-01-2010, 10:19 PM
I found another bug. I'm writing this at 04:15 on August 2, Swedish time. When "day starts at" is set to 18 (the correct setting for Sweden), the "this month" filter doesn't match the hands I played on august 1 between 10:58 and 12:52 Swedish time (04:58-06:52 server time). It does however match the hands I played an hour ago.

So the setting isn't completely ignored by the other time filters as I thought. It's much worse than that. :)

netsrak
08-02-2010, 03:38 AM
Can you please send us some screenshots documenting the problem and the hands we need to reproduce this. Please also add your holdemmanager.config file and your settings for "Day start at" and "Adjust site import times".
Please add a link to this thread and an explanation too.

support@holdemmanager.com

fredrik
08-02-2010, 06:07 AM
I don't want to go through this whole thing again. I reported this in november 2008, as you can verify by clicking the link in #5. This problem has existed in all versions of HEM since then, and almost certainly all versions before that too. This is not a minor bug. The "day starts at" feature has never worked and needs to be completely rewritten. So I can't imagine that you need me to replicate the problems. If you try and the problems don't show up, I will of course do whatever needs to be done.

(I only care about the bugs related to the "day starts at" setting, since that's the one I'd like to use. I don't care at all that the "site import times" setting had no effect when I tried it, because I don't want to use it. I changed it back to 0. I also don't care that the "archive hands older than" seems to do nothing, because it's irrelevant to me when the files are archived).

Summary:

There's a 6 hour difference between my computer clock (Sweden) and the site's time. Their time is 18:00 when it's midnight here. So I'm setting my "day starts at" to 18. I still have to choose "last 10 hours" to get the last 4 hours. "This year", "this month", "between" and other time based filters other than "today" don't match hands played during the first 6 hours of the specified period. "Today" seems to work fine until my computer clock hits 18:00:00, and then the filter doesn't match any hands played during the day. Also, "this month" (and maybe other time based filters as well) can behave even more strangely than that, because at 04:15 August 2 Swedish time, "this month" didn't match any hands from the session I played on August 1 between 10:58 and 12:52 Swedish time (04:58-06:52 server time).

How it should work

Every time based filter has a start time S and an end time E. For example, when the filter is "this month" and the computer says its August 2, S is 00:00:00 August 1 and E is 23:59:59 August 31. When "day starts at" is set to 18, every time based filter should match the hands with timestamps between (6 hours before S) and (6 hours before E). Yes, to figure out how to subtract 6 hours in a way that gives the correct result regardless of what S and E are requires some thought, but it can't be so hard that it makes sense to keep ignoring that the feature doesn't work. If "day starts at" is set to e.g. 3 instead, you want the filter to match timestamps between (3 hours after S) to (3 hours after E). So if "day starts at"=n<12, you add n to S and E, and if "day starts at"=n>12, you subtract 24-n from S and E. I'll leave it for you to figure out what to do when the user sets "day starts at" to exactly 12.

By the way, if you get this to work, it seems to make more sense to me to have different "day starts at" settings for different sites than to have a feature that actually rewrites the hand history files. (Just my opinion).

Edit: I deleted a sentence in the "how it should work" section that I thought was confusing.

netsrak
08-03-2010, 04:20 AM
Ok, i'll forward this thread to our support manager