Tomorrow morning, shortly after one a.m., a once in a thousand years moment will roll by on our digital clocks. If you, like me, take pleasure in watching simple odometer alignments in the family car, then you may want to stay up for this momentary temporal signifier as the clock strikes:
01:02:03 04/05/06
Thanks to Greg Humphrey for emailing about this.
Over here that’s May 4… 😉
So it happens twice this year, then not again for a thousand years!
…til the next once-in-a-thousand years moment, next year, may sixth, round about 02:03:04…
…til the next once-in-a-thousand-years moment, namely next year, may 6th, oh round about 02:03:04…
And if you want to sleep through the first event you can catch the it again at 1:02:03 PM with a clock that doesn’t use 24 hour display.
My VCR’s will still be off by 1 hour due to the recent daylight savings adjustment and the mental effort required to navigate through the menu’s.
I wuz counting up from one, Charles Trubblemacher.
Frank,
here’s a simple-pleasure photo for you
http://www.savory.de/1234567890.jpg
Stu
Good one Stu. You must have had to pull off the road to snap it. (I did a double-take on the km/h metric too… don’t see many speedometers that go up to 260 around here!)
Hi. Having just read about this on Betsy Devine’s blog, I e-mailed her to point out, and then figured I might as well mention the following here.
“01:02:03 04/05/06″ will take place again nine more times this millenium, in 2106, 2206, 2306, etc. No?
Maybe there’s something I’m missing here; I must be, because I can’t see how this isn’t a once every one hundred years thing (it’s also purely arbitrary according to just a single calender, but that also seems obvious).
Anyway, apologies for missing whatever I’m missing.
Frank, you and I are sooo busted. I quoted your “millennial” comment in my blog. Just got email from Gary Farber (http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/ ) pointing out that we’ll see the same thing in 2106, 2206, 2306, etc. So what does that make this…a centurial moment?
Nobody should ever credit me with being a deep thinker. Thanks Gary! I’ll slap my forehead and say “duh…” for each century. But, well, it SOUNDED true.
Great job, Gary. My official line is that my instincts were whispering that this smelled funny, but I was too lazy to think it thru.
Riight. I’m about as deep as a teacup saucer.
Anyway, next auto I buy, I’m going to keep a camera (and fresh batteries) in the glovebox just so I can catch a shot like Stu’s. For real, that’s a keeper.
You know what surprises me… I have to say it here because Betsy’s not allowing comments… what surprises me is not that I took this pretty much at face value, but that Betsy Devine, a certified smart woman, went along with my dumbness.
Anything that Frank Paynter and Betsy Devine think is cool is worth reading about… based upon a few hundred blog posts.
I’m considering re-setting my computer’s system clock to enjoy this special event a few more times before just moving on: “Nothing to see here, folks. Move on.”
Your post did remind me of the dozens of odometer events that I’ve anticipated over the years… only to notice miles later that I didn’t see the actual roll over event. Short on attention span… long on comment.
McD