Yeah, I've noticed that when you pull a time from a service that uses NTP or UTC over HTTP, the clock can wobble. The jitter shows up as those tiny hiccups when the server's clock is just a few milliseconds off, and the drift is the steady walk away over hours. It's the same thing that happens when you open a file and it takes a split second to read the metadata. You can fight it with a local sync routine, but it's a pain to keep that routine exact; otherwise you just end up chasing a phantom error. If you want to be safe, check the timestamps in a loop and average them, or better yet, use a monotonic clock and sync it to the network only when you detect a drift bigger than a threshold. It keeps the system predictable, and you can stick to the schedule without having to rewrite the routine every time a server's clock gets a bit fuzzy.

Nice, that loop will do it. I’ve spent half a day trying to figure out why my clock was drifting by a few microseconds each hour, and the trick is to let the small jitter breathe. Just make sure the hysteresis isn’t too tight, or you’ll end up ping‑ponging between syncs like a nervous cat. If it starts feeling like a performance art piece, maybe tighten the threshold. Otherwise, you’ll have a steady clock without the paperwork of rewriting routines.

Sounds solid, but I still keep a manual log of the offsets for a week just to make sure the algorithm isn’t secretly leaking a few millisecond errors. If the numbers start to look like a random walk, I’ll pull the plug and re‑write the routine. Otherwise, the clock will stay as steady as a metronome in a quiet room.