Wednesday, 12-Dec-12 21:31
12/12/12

Finally! The last one of these darned ambiguous dates that have given me headache, well, for a long time. One of my first blog entries back in 2003 is reproduced here under permission:

03-03-03

Two things about the date (even though the date is gone): First of all, I was trying to configure a new software, and it was using some sort of a strange US date format. So, I go to Preferences, and try to set it to our normal dd/mm/yy. I am presented with these options:

Please choose your date format

  • 03/03/03
  • 03/03/03
  • 03/03/03
  • 03/03/03
  • 03-03-03
  • 03-03-03
  • 03-03-03
  • 03-03-03

Um. Err. Do I actually have to wait for a frigging day to figure out which one of these is the day and a whole month to figure out which one is the month? This kind of a configuration might have been useful in the last century, but certainly not now... Well, at least I can choose whether I want to have a dash or a slash as the separator :-).

The other thing: when my (probably never-to-appear) grandchildren ask what I did on this grand day, at 3:03, I can tell them that I was sitting on the toilet. Hooray for magic dates.

For the record, when my grandchildren ask about 12/12/12 12:12:12 I can tell them I was looking at the world in infinite detail, bending it to my will. Or to be precise, tweaking ThingLink's source to do something I've never attempted before. Then again, most of software development is doing stuff you've never done before - or possibly nobody has ever done that before. Which is precisely which makes it so interesting and frustrating.


Private comments? Drop me an email. Or complain in a nearby pub - that'll help.



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"Main" last changed on 10-Aug-2015 21:44:03 EEST by JanneJalkanen.