Did anyone else get just a wee zing of excitement at 11.30pm (GMT) last night? I will admit to raising my glass and downing a large Jim Beam Black in order to celebrate the fact that UNIX Time had hit 123 billion seconds. OK, so I am a geek, what can I say?
Other than, perhaps, I was most certainly not alone. Indeed, UNIX Epoch Time parties were springing up all over the planet, it would seem, in order to celebrate that milestone. What bloody milestone you might be wondering, and the answer is also a little geeky. You see Epoch Time started on January 1st 1971, at 00:00:00 of course.
Which means that at precisely 6:31:30 Eastern the UNIX Epoch time ticked over to 1234567890, which is enough to get any geek just a little excited.
Although not as excited as they might be come the year 2038 when 32-bit format UNIX Time will effectively expire courtesy of the UNIX Millennium Bug. Unless, of course, everyone gets updated to 64-bit systems before then in which case you will not have to worry about the end of Epoch Time as we know it for nearly 300 billion years or so.
I think that calls for another drink...
