Comments on: DIY: Billion Second Birthday

By: Shannon

Shannon — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:24:20 +0000

Old Joe – Welcome!!! So nice to ‘see’ you here! 730, huh? Man, that’s a lot of months! I guess you are pretty old!!
(Just kidding – we love you – thanks for stopping by and commenting!)

By: old joe

old joe — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 15:38:59 +0000

Since we are talking birthdays, (the calendar DAY of one’s birth) today is my 730th.

old joe

By: Britt

Britt — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 01:57:20 +0000

George, I have some punch cards – they have 80 columns. That is over 64, so maybe you can calculate 1 trillion using the punch cards. Instead of Ruby, maybe Emerald will work, especially if you drink a lot of Java. Hope this helps.

By: Christy

Christy — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 14:48:34 +0000

George, I have no idea what you are talkng about. Does that make you a nerd or me out of it?

By: George

George — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:53:34 +0000

Hmm, well I tried to figure out my 1 trillion second birthday, but it no worky. Threw an out of Time range error. So I was curious and dug a little deeper.

Turns out that it’s using a 32bit size integer to store the seconds value. That means the largest possible value is 2^31—1 (aka 2,147,483,647 ). Since date calculations are made based on Jan 1, 1970 (the epoch), the most you can go is to Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038. That’s with starting at the epoch. If you start past the epoch, then it’s even less.

In Java we do date calculations using a 64 bit value. That’s 2^63—1 (or 9,223,372,036,854,775,807), so I won’t run into this problem for some time.

Ok, now bring on your nerd comments. I’m secure in my nerd-hood.

By: laura

laura — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:59:31 +0000

Ok, here’s a scenario, pretend it’s April Fool’s Day 2014. If I told you I was a billion seconds old, would I be telling the truth or playing a joke on you???

By: Christy

Christy — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:27:46 +0000

My billion second birthday was Tuesday May 11, 2004 at 11:18:40 pm. Now, bonus points for anyone who does not already know my birthday if they can figure out when my birthday was!