(no subject)

[gfish]

Argh. I'm not doing well with horological oddities this year. First I miss the leap-second, now the 1234567890 timestamp! I suck.

ETA: To borrow a phrase: Epoch fail!

Comments

[niac.livejournal.com]

Just set your clock back and watch it again!

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

Someone on the leap-seconds list gave an hour's notice for it, but I decided it was kinda dumb.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

...but you're on a leap-second mailing list?

[ashley-y.livejournal.com]

OMG, the leap-second list (http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs). Basically there are two entrenched camps, software folks who would like leap-seconds to be abandoned entirely because they cause expensive problems, and astronomers who react with horror at the idea of civil time being permanently decoupled from earth time. The list is quiet for long stretches between flare-ups, which involve hundreds of messages a day for a few days, mostly rehashing existing positions.

Also, there's a huge amount of pedantry, because the history, politics and consequences of time-scales turn out to be more complicated than one might imagine.

There's a certain amount of overlap with the time-nuts mailing list (which I'm not on), for people who are into constructing seriously accurate clocks (generally accurate enough that they get corrected for leap-seconds).

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

Epoch fail!

For that you should consider yourself bapped, young man.

Well played, Mr. Bond.

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Time stamp? On what?

Regardless, I seethe with jealousy that I did not make such a pun for the ages.

Re: Well played, Mr. Bond.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Timestamp on any real operating system, that is to say, one with a system account prompt of (or ending in) "#" .... Linux, Unix, even MacOS.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, I spent the Epoch-moment waiting in vain for my shuttle-van to show. Lucky for me, the boss lives mere moments from LAX and was happy to give me a ride...

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Also, there's a huge amount of pedantry

You don't say.