1825: "7 Eleven"

[Aiwendil]

It always bothers me that these places say "open 24 hours" instead of "open 24 hours a day".

[Arcorann]

I'm still waiting for the Sidereal vs. Solar Day flamewar. C'mon, folks!

OK, I'll bite. Solar time is time measured with respect to the Sun's apparent motion in the sky, while sidereal time is measured based on the apparent motion of the 'fixed' stars in the sky. Since planets orbit around the Sun, there is apparent motion of the Sun relative to the 'fixed' stars, and hence these are not equivalent. According to Wikipedia, a sidereal day on Mars is 24h 37m 22.663s while a solar day (sol) on Mars is 24h 39m 35.244147s, so the comic refers to the sidereal day, which would imply 7-11's opening times shift backwards a little over two minutes each sol. In other words, if they opened at midnight one sol, they'd be opening at noon after exactly half a Martian year (~334 sols, or ~343.5 Earth days).

Also, as pointed out by Wikipedia, NASA divides the sol into 24 hours for their Mars missions, which would render the comic's joke moot.

[heliosfa]

With the large 24 hour stores not able to open long hours on a Sunday, this leaves the awkward window between midnight-7am where a British person mustn't run out of milk.

Excuse me but I think you mean English person - just because those of you south of the border have such archaic restrictions does not mean that all of us are so encumbered. I quite enjoy shopping at the local (large) Supermarché at 2am on Monday Morning. Just remember, Britain is more than just (little) England...

[da Doctah]

While I have never encountered a 7-eleven (even though they do exist "nearby" in Denmark, Norway, Sweden), I've always thought the 7 was for 7 days per week and the 11 for 11 hours a day.

When I moved to the US in 1998, it took a while before I understood what 7-Eleven meant, and when I finally did, I was struck by how anachronistic that was, since all the grocery stores (supermarkets) around here (NJ, not far from NYC) are open at least 16 hours a day. In fact, many were open non-stop, although that appears to have been a passing fad, most went back to a 6 AM to midnight or similar schedule eventually.

For an even more anachronistic name, look up Motel 6. That 6 used to stand for $6 a night!

Decades ago, in one of those little filler items at the bottom of the page in Readers Digest, someone had sent in a story of taking her old granny to town for an infrequent shopping trip and having her see a 7-Eleven for the first time. Granny marvelled at how "inflation has even hit the five-and-ten!"

[Soupspoon]

I quite enjoy shopping at the local (large) Supermarché at 2am on Monday Morning. Just remember, Britain is more than just (little) England...

It's 2am on Sunday (and obviously in the morning, if it is "am" ) when the "open 24 hours a day except for Sunday, when it is closed up at either end so as to be open 10am-4pm or thereaouts" scheme is necessary.

I've specifically waited until after the trailing midnight of Sunday (i.e. into Monday AM), just to go to the supermarket I didn't get to in the prior early afternoon. Although as there is a smaller (non-24 hour) supermarket which is "7-11ish", if it's before 11pm on the Sunday and I'm not looking for something that only the larger place stocks (the bread selection is wide, at the small place, but not quite wide enough to properly satisfy me, and I can only get a NERF gun or a USB memory stick or a pair of dungarees for a 2-year-old at the large place) then there's only ⅓rd of one of the seven days (aside from Easter and Christmas closures, that may additionally apply) that entirely exposes my lack of foresight or ability to schedule an emergency top-up shop.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have lived the dream, and it is random retail experiences at ungodly¹ hours of the day or night!

¹ Obviously taking the largely unobserved Sabbath into account..

[DSYoungEsq]

Really, the only honest 24-hour stores are the ones in places like Arizona and Hawaii (sic), and many of them are still wrong in certain years

Why Arizona and Hawaii? I am missing something about the alt text.

DST.

Why did OP add “(sic)” though? The spelling is correct.

It is currently chic to spell the name as if it were a Hawaiian word: Hawaiʻi

[squall_line]

Really, the only honest 24-hour stores are the ones in places like Arizona and Hawaii (sic), and many of them are still wrong in certain years

Why Arizona and Hawaii? I am missing something about the alt text.

DST.

Why did OP add “(sic)” though? The spelling is correct.

For reference, the OP is a pedant who believes in retaining diacritics and other punctuation in spelling, even if the government chooses not to (although not pedantic enough to use the correct diacritic; I still use a basic apostrophe to type Hawai'i). I frequently leave the apostrophe in Hallowe'en, as well.

[speising]

i feel this comic would have been better (in a double-takey way) without the caption. don't pander to lazy readers, Randall!

[orthogon]

I quite enjoy shopping at the local (large) Supermarché at 2am on Monday Morning. Just remember, Britain is more than just (little) England...

It's 2am on Sunday (and obviously in the morning, if it is "am" ) [...]

Well, technically it's the morning, but it's also the night. This is one of those things where learning a foreign language can be a curse because one starts to lament the absence of the mot juste in one's native tongue: in Spanish it's the madrugada. (Though I'm not sure whether it's the madrugada of Sunday or Monday Saturday or Sunday in this case).

Edited: corrected the confusion over days, which I blame on heliosfa for leading me astray . I'd never actually considered how 24h supermarkets must reopen at midnight at the end of Sunday - where I live (in south London) we don't have big 24 hour supermarkets, so the issue doesn't arise.

[Soupspoon]

Indeed. But just to clarify, it's 2am on Sunday (morning), or what might be best deemed 26:00hrs on Saturday night, when I personally could not get milk. Short of a quick trip to an actual field of cows, hoping that I do not annoy the cows (or the farmer) in the process.

2am on Monday (Sunday 26:00) is a comparative doddle. In this version of the quest, I only annoy the farmer by perpetuating the supermarket's pricing and purchasing policy mostly being at the expense of the producer. And I'm less prone to be in any range of a shotgun. Although it might depend which parts of which city I'm travelling through as to whether I've got additional (non-agricultural) firearms within at least ricochet range...

[gwkp]

shouldn't it be thirty-nine minutes? That's the correction for the Mars solar day. The thirty-seven that Randall used is to the sidereal day. Would businesses on Mars really want to follow sidereal days? Noon would move around the whole day once every year....

[jello34543]

ETA: Another issue with the city-based timezone identifier is that it can seem metrocentric. Why should a company proudly based in, say, Liverpool organise its meetings in the "Europe/London" timezone? And where are "Europe/Edinburgh" and "Europe/Cardiff" for that matter?

You have no idea (well, you will soon ) how much this annoys me. Every time I see "America/Chicago" on my computers in Wisconsin, it makes me want to start throwing bricks at people. What was wrong with letting me configure "US/Central"? *mutter* *mutter* *mutter*

... when I personally could not get milk. Short of a quick trip to an actual field of cows, hoping that I do not annoy the cows (or the farmer) in the process.

Annoying the cows and/or farmer isn't the only problem, milk is pasteurized for a reason. True story (as far as I know): A little over a year ago, West Virginia made it legal to drink raw (unpasteurized) milk. On the day the law went into effect, the agitators and their political enablers got together for a photo op/publicity stunt, and all took a big swig of raw milk in front of the cameras.

They got sick.

[PinkShinyRose]

ETA: Another issue with the city-based timezone identifier is that it can seem metrocentric. Why should a company proudly based in, say, Liverpool organise its meetings in the "Europe/London" timezone? And where are "Europe/Edinburgh" and "Europe/Cardiff" for that matter?

You have no idea (well, you will soon ) how much this annoys me. Every time I see "America/Chicago" on my computers in Wisconsin, it makes me want to start throwing bricks at people. What was wrong with letting me configure "US/Central"? *mutter* *mutter* *mutter*

Why not just UTC-x? I mean, why do people expect others to know what their obscure time-zone name refers to?

[GlassHouses]

ETA: Another issue with the city-based timezone identifier is that it can seem metrocentric. Why should a company proudly based in, say, Liverpool organise its meetings in the "Europe/London" timezone? And where are "Europe/Edinburgh" and "Europe/Cardiff" for that matter?

You have no idea (well, you will soon ) how much this annoys me. Every time I see "America/Chicago" on my computers in Wisconsin, it makes me want to start throwing bricks at people. What was wrong with letting me configure "US/Central"? *mutter* *mutter* *mutter*

Why not just UTC-x? I mean, why do people expect others to know what their obscure time-zone name refers to?

When someone's computer asks them what time zone they're in, offering a choice of major cities is way more helpful than making people enter their UTC offset.

I don't live in NYC, but I do know that it's in the same time zone as the place where I live. When I go home to Holland, I can safely select Amsterdam, knowing it's in the same time zone as my home town, and again, the fact that I don't live in Amsterdam and never have matters not one whit.

I do know the UTC offsets, but first of all, lots of people don't, and second, the UTC offset doesn't convey the same information. Right now the UTC offset in NYC is the same as in La Paz, Bolivia, but that's only true while DST is in effect here.

[Soupspoon]

UTC isn't even a proper abbreviation/initialism, strictly speaking. It doesn't even stand for what most people think it stands for...

[airdrik]

UTC isn't even a proper abbreviation/initialism, strictly speaking. It doesn't even stand for what most people think it stands for...

It stands for Universal Coordinated Time, except in French where the last two words are swapped. In much the same way ISO stands for International Organization of Standards, but again from French and the last two words are swapped.

[orthogon]

UTC isn't even a proper abbreviation/initialism, strictly speaking. It doesn't even stand for what most people think it stands for...

It stands for Universal Coordinated Time, except in French where the last two words are swapped. In much the same way ISO stands for International Organization of Standards, but again from French and the last two words are swapped.

It does indeed seem to have been a compromise between English and French, as befits an international standard. It's a much better TLA than CUT (which is an English word already) and TUC (which is a consortium of UK trades unions and also a kind of biscuit).

Your post makes me wonder whether the "ISO/OSI" model is referred to as "le modèle OSI/ISO" in French where "OSI" is French for "ISO" and vice versa.

[Flumble]

[edit]ugh, there's always a ninja when you least expect it[/edit]

UTC isn't even a proper abbreviation/initialism, strictly speaking. It doesn't even stand for what most people think it stands for...

It stands for Universal Coordinated Time, except in French where the last two words are swapped. In much the same way ISO stands for International Organization of Standards, but again from French and the last two words are swapped.

On the contrary, UTC is a compromise between the English CUT and the French TUC. And ISO would be OIN in French.

Now don't blame the French for your laziness to verify your memories on the matter.

[orthogon]

Having said all that, I'm slightly disappointed that they missed the opportunity to have two standard timescales called TIC (Temps International Coordonné?) and TOC (Temps Officiel Coordonné?).

[niauropsaka]

I'm surprised that the Martian sol is so close to the Terrestrial day.

[jello34543]

ETA: Another issue with the city-based timezone identifier is that it can seem metrocentric. Why should a company proudly based in, say, Liverpool organise its meetings in the "Europe/London" timezone? And where are "Europe/Edinburgh" and "Europe/Cardiff" for that matter?

You have no idea (well, you will soon ) how much this annoys me. Every time I see "America/Chicago" on my computers in Wisconsin, it makes me want to start throwing bricks at people. What was wrong with letting me configure "US/Central"? *mutter* *mutter* *mutter*

Why not just UTC-x? I mean, why do people expect others to know what their obscure time-zone name refers to?

When someone's computer asks them what time zone they're in, offering a choice of major cities is way more helpful than making people enter their UTC offset.

I disagree with the assertion that a list of cities is easier than using the official time zone name. It only works if the first city you think of is in the list. At least in my experience, that is frequently not the case, and if that first city you think of isn't in the list it can be a challenge to find something that works. Also, there may be cultural/regional biases that make using the officially blessed city distasteful (both orthogon's and my examples, for instance). I won't claim that I'm normal, but I pretty much always know what time zone I'm in. I'd much rather just specify the time zone, which is almost never ambiguous or uncertain the way a cherry picked list of cities is.

[niauropsaka]

Having said all that, I'm slightly disappointed that they missed the opportunity to have two standard timescales called TIC (Temps International Coordonné?) and TOC (Temps Officiel Coordonné?).

That will be done in the future.

[pernishus]

It says "Open 24 Hours", not "Open 24 Hours a Day".

That means the store gets 24 hours total operational time. Then they have to bulldoze it and start a new one.

Reminds me of an old Michael Wright (?) joke where he shows up at some 24/7 convenience store and the door is locked.
He knocks on the door to get the clerk's attention.
Clerk comes to the door and says "We're closed."
Wrights says "But the sign says you're open 24 hours!"
Clerk says "Well sure, but not in a row."

[rim shot]

You mean the great Steven Wright, who is way too low-key to use a rim shot in his set

[PinkShinyRose]

ETA: Another issue with the city-based timezone identifier is that it can seem metrocentric. Why should a company proudly based in, say, Liverpool organise its meetings in the "Europe/London" timezone? And where are "Europe/Edinburgh" and "Europe/Cardiff" for that matter?

You have no idea (well, you will soon ) how much this annoys me. Every time I see "America/Chicago" on my computers in Wisconsin, it makes me want to start throwing bricks at people. What was wrong with letting me configure "US/Central"? *mutter* *mutter* *mutter*

Why not just UTC-x? I mean, why do people expect others to know what their obscure time-zone name refers to?

When someone's computer asks them what time zone they're in, offering a choice of major cities is way more helpful than making people enter their UTC offset.

I don't live in NYC, but I do know that it's in the same time zone as the place where I live. When I go home to Holland, I can safely select Amsterdam, knowing it's in the same time zone as my home town, and again, the fact that I don't live in Amsterdam and never have matters not one whit.

I do know the UTC offsets, but first of all, lots of people don't, and second, the UTC offset doesn't convey the same information. Right now the UTC offset in NYC is the same as in La Paz, Bolivia, but that's only true while DST is in effect here.

A lot of people don't know those weird timezone names or which city belongs to which timezone. Also, when you want to make an appointment or mention a publishing time/deadline you'd need to look up what time it is, instead of them just saying what time they mean (11:57 UTC-3 is clear, 11:57 PMST I'd have to look up, as would be the case with 11:57 Saint-Pierre time).

Setting the time for your computer is the only situation where city/country names would be useful. The time-zone letter codes are never useful and when written out usually confusing.

And mentioning these letter codes in computer software makes people use them as if people should understand what they mean.

[Copper Bezel]

I'd definitely find it a weird cognitive shift to start describing my time zone in terms of what the offset presently is as opposed to what actual time zone I'm in. Suppose I could compromise and say "UTC minus five or six."

[PinkShinyRose]

I'd definitely find it a weird cognitive shift to start describing my time zone in terms of what the offset presently is as opposed to what actual time zone I'm in. Suppose I could compromise and say "UTC minus five or six."

You usually only need to note the timezone on the relevant date (or just note the time at UTC, which would be even easier on the reader).

[rmsgrey]

My usual approach is to give my local time, and enquire the other party's local time, then give future times as "my time" or "your time" (which is fine until they move or clocks change in one or other location)

[Soupspoon]

Or their clocks move. Relativistically.

[Copper Bezel]

My usual approach is to give my local time, and enquire the other party's local time, then give future times as "my time" or "your time" (which is fine until they move or clocks change in one or other location)

That's my habit as well in practice. I'm on Chicago time, but another forum I spend a lot of time on is 70% New York time, and I just remember to always use the latter unless specified.

[PinkShinyRose]

My usual approach is to give my local time, and enquire the other party's local time, then give future times as "my time" or "your time" (which is fine until they move or clocks change in one or other location)

That's my habit as well in practice. I'm on Chicago time, but another forum I spend a lot of time on is 70% New York time, and I just remember to always use the latter unless specified.

Did you look up New York time in the beginning? Did you study a timezone map? I'm just wondering how other people deal with this. I can usually make an educated guess (USA is UTC-5-8ish), East and SE-Asia are UTC+7-9ish, Europe around the Baltic and Balkans are always an hour ahead of me (UTC+2-3) and the UK/Portugal are UTC or UTC+1 and Russia is UTC+4-9ish. Everything in between I extrapolate, as I do for the Southern hemisphere. But I could not give a sufficiently precise time for anywhere outside of Europe for either making appointments or for anything I care about.

[SuicideJunkie]

That's my habit as well in practice. I'm on Chicago time, but another forum I spend a lot of time on is 70% New York time, and I just remember to always use the latter unless specified.

So, it is a variant of 320 that runs on 10-day weeks?

[Copper Bezel]

Ha!

My usual approach is to give my local time, and enquire the other party's local time, then give future times as "my time" or "your time" (which is fine until they move or clocks change in one or other location)

That's my habit as well in practice. I'm on Chicago time, but another forum I spend a lot of time on is 70% New York time, and I just remember to always use the latter unless specified.

Did you look up New York time in the beginning? Did you study a timezone map? I'm just wondering how other people deal with this. I can usually make an educated guess (USA is UTC-5-8ish), East and SE-Asia are UTC+7-9ish, Europe around the Baltic and Balkans are always an hour ahead of me (UTC+2-3) and the UK/Portugal are UTC or UTC+1 and Russia is UTC+4-9ish. Everything in between I extrapolate, as I do for the Southern hemisphere. But I could not give a sufficiently precise time for anywhere outside of Europe for either making appointments or for anything I care about.

Honestly, I remember time zones I interact with. I think of my time zone as Chicago time despite not being in Illinois because I've installed Ubuntu and clicked on Chicago to set my time zone a bunch of times. I actually think of New York time as simply "East Coast time" but someone else said "New York time" in this thread and that seemed simpler. I have a sister in Seattle and sadly think of that instead of Los Angeles or Vancouver time, which are the cities for that zone in the time zone picker thinger now I've just brought it up again. I actually had an uncle in Denver who I used to communicate with on the telephone, so "Denver time" seems concretely relevant.

Through the site I mentioned, I do have friends on London time who live near London. I honestly only regularly interact with one person one person in Asia, two in Australia, and occasionally one in continental Europe.

So basically I'm the old person on the other end of the 783 phone call.

[mathmannix]

Oh, wait. 7/11 doesn't have any fruits and vegetables.

Ours sells bananas (a dollar a banana!) and samosas, which I guess are vegetableish. But this probably varies by region.

[PinkShinyRose]

Oh, wait. 7/11 doesn't have any fruits and vegetables.

Ours sells bananas (a dollar a banana!) and samosas, which I guess are vegetableish. But this probably varies by region.

Samosa as in deep fried pastry? You count that as almost a vegetable?

[orthogon]

Oh, wait. 7/11 doesn't have any fruits and vegetables.

Ours sells bananas (a dollar a banana!) and samosas, which I guess are vegetableish. But this probably varies by region.

Samosa as in deep fried pastry? You count that as almost a vegetable?

Never mind that; is it burritoform?

[Copper Bezel]

orthogon, has anyone recently told you you're the absolute best?

[Pfhorrest]

Pastriforms are a separate category from sandwiforms, including burritoform wraps.

And it suddenly occurs to me that chimichangas may pose a problem.

[orthogon]

orthogon, has anyone recently told you you're the absolute best?

Aw, thanks. I'm properly touched.

[mathmannix]

Oh, wait. 7/11 doesn't have any fruits and vegetables.

Ours sells bananas (a dollar a banana!) and samosas, which I guess are vegetableish. But this probably varies by region.

Samosa as in deep fried pastry? You count that as almost a vegetable?

Umm, yes? They have vegetables in them. Potatoes and peas, I think.

[PinkShinyRose]

Oh, wait. 7/11 doesn't have any fruits and vegetables.

Ours sells bananas (a dollar a banana!) and samosas, which I guess are vegetableish. But this probably varies by region.

Samosa as in deep fried pastry? You count that as almost a vegetable?

Umm, yes? They have vegetables in them. Potatoes and peas, I think.

Potatoes are dubious as a vegetable, they're mainly a source of carbohydrates. And containing a vegetable does not make it a vegetable, especially if it's wrapped in a carbohydrate heavy source. It would be more adequate to count it as a complete meal (although with too little vegetable and lacking a protein source).