When is midnight?

At the risk of demonstrating stupidity can somebody clarify this for me please...

I've ordered FTTC. I have a date of 19th for phone line installation.

I've just had a text saying activation will be midnight 20th.

Does that mean I can use it on the 20th or will it not be available to 21st. I'm guessing 21st but it seems strange that there would be a days delay between the two although the websites suggests activation comes 5 to 7 working days after the phone line install.

If we've confirmed the install date of the 19th, then that's when the account should be activated too. The message about the next day is an old piece of code that we're going to look at fixing as part of an upcoming project.

Thanks for the info - that makes a lot more sense to me.

I know the answer has already been provided, but i just have to say that i really bugs me when midnight is used when something is due to be scheduled. I work shift and I've lost count the amount of times i have had to ask the same question.

00:01 or 23:59 on the 19/12/13 is what we need.

Conventionally midnight (i.e. 00:00:00) is the beginning of a new day, though there is potential ambiguity in choosing midnight as a scheduled time. As you rightly say, it's better to state 23:59 or 00:01 to be certain which day is being talked about.

On the rare occasions when a leap second is added, UTC goes 23:59:59, 23:59:60 (leap second - the last second in the ending day), 00:00:00.

Even 12pm to me is meaningless.

As adslmax might say, ( at him), midnight and 12pm should be abolished.

As meaningless as 12 a.m.?

Yep. We need to convert all world arithmetic to base 12, then there would be no "12".

The pedantic can always follow the Military and Radio operators with the 24 hour clock - No confusion - Though still much confused PN code on the back burner!

Edited by professor973 (Wed 04-Dec-13 13:51:21)