Today is the last day of the year 2009. Tomorrow is the first day of year 2010 which is really awkward to type. For the last ten years I have been typing two followed by two zeros when writing the year, and it will be really hard to break this habit. I mean, the two zeros just seem to belong there. It’s almost as bad as when we had to switch from 199x to 200x.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a picture of year 2010 for you:
Since I'm sitting at a windoze box right now, you get a screenshot of Cygwin
According to my intertubes, in the Chinese calendar 2010 is the year of the Tigger, with 2009 being the year of the Piglet which explain the swine flue outbreak. In the new year we can expect a tiger flu which is quite unpleasant. According to my sources (ie. the interwebnets) it works like this: every time you sneeze, a tiger appears behind you and mauls you for 5 minutes straight. Then it checks it’s watch, and says “Fuck, I’m late to my meeting – I’ll see you next time asshole!” and runs off. Unless of course it’s Wednesday – as everyone knows, tigers don’t work on Wednesdays, and so you can expect to be eaten alive on that day.
Worst part about tigers is that they are not lions and so getting in the car does absolutely nothing to prevent the mauling. In fact, some tigers will wait until you get in the car before they eat you.
Other interesting trivia about year 2010 is that it is exactly 28 years from the end of the internet, and therefore the world. In case you forgot, the internet ends in year 2038 due to an epoch bug in Ancient Mayan calendar. You see, Mayans expressed time in terms of seconds elapsed since the begging of the universe (big bang allegedly occurred on January 1, 1970). It’s not the most convenient method, but at least it’s consistent. Unfortunately the proud Mayans were short sighted (like literally – genetic defect caused by to inbreeding) so they used a 32 bit integer to store the time in most of their software.
In the year 2038 this integer will overflow causing a wrong date to be displayed in unpatched systems. Nothing else is expected to happen, but since the Mayans were ancient most people believe that they had some insight into the inner workings of the universe, and picked the 32 bit integer for a reason. That it was not just a poor design choice but rather a prophetic move. They knew the world will cease to exist after 2038 and so a larger integer was not needed.
A bit like early software developers in 60’s, 70’s and 80’s knew that the world ends in 2000 and so used 2 digits to denote a year. It was not lack of competence and lack of foresight but an infallible prophecy. But we don’t talk about that anymore because it didn’t come true.
Speaking of prophecies, wasn’t there another ancient civilization that had a calendar that ends in 2012? I’m almost certain it was either Norwegians, Canadians or Lesbians. Their prophecy is also true… Wait… Why are you snickering? Lesbians are the inhabitants of the Lesbos island in the Agean Sea – I really don’t know why you find it so funny.
Anyway, just for fun I recommend watching Strange Days today. You know, the movie that is set in the near future of December 1999. Bonus points if you have watched this movie for the first time when 1999 was still considered “the future”.
Happy new year folks! Stay safe tonight and watch out for Raptors. They can open doors.
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