Around 11:20 PM last night, it occurred to me that I had pretty much spent that I had pretty much spent most of the day doing computer stuff, so I figured that it would be good to go out and actually socialize with other human beings. (Yeah, I know: “Thanks, Captain Obvious!”)
So, I headed off to the Zone and had a pretty good time. I bumped into a co-worker, who was out with her parents. Just after midnight, I mentioned that when folks were talking about this being the new decade, it was not exactly accurate. (Although, obviously any date/time could be used as the start of an arbitrary decade – October 7, 1982 was the end of a decade that began 10 years earlier.)
When co-worker and I were talking, I mentioned about another co-worker who referred to January 1, 2000 as the start of the new century/millennium. I pointed out that since the years would have been denoted with Roman numerals, and since there is no Roman numeral for zero, therefore, the first year would have been the equivalent of a 1, not a 0, so 2000 was therefore the last year of the 20th century. (Assuming that when folks switched from Roman numerals to Arabic, they didn’t take into account that they were also changing what the lowest possible starting integer could be.)
The co-worker I was talking with went from talking about I (the Roman numeral) to i (as in the imaginary number representing the square root of –1.) I instantly knew what she was referring to.
Who says we geeks don’t know how to cut loose and be all wild and crazy?? I had a fairly good time chatting and dancing, so it was pretty good.
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