Oh, the silly things I spend my time on...

The deed is done. My little program recorded the time at exactly 01:02:03 on 04/05/06 today. For some reason, it capture the a.m. event, but not the p.m. event. But at least I got one.

It's funny what triggers my memory. Yesterday, I surmised that I must have missed the 12:34:56 7/8/90 incident, but while I was sorting out the files after today's run, I discovered there was, indeed, a file on the drive - a screen shot of my big digital clock - from exactly that time. In the a.m. My memory was jogged by a combination of finding that file, and missing the p.m. event today. As I recall, I had a problem with the program during the p.m. event of 12:34:56 7/8/90. I also remember being upset about it, and I was contemplating setting the computer clock back and creating a screen shot after the fact, but decided against it, knowing that it would bother me to live with the knowledge that it wasn't actually captured during the actual event.

What is it about that?

Anyway, so I have one from back then, and one from today, and TWO screen shots from the original 01:23:45 6/7/89 event. Whoopie!

Here's the proof:



The four screen shot files are DIGCLK1.SCR thru DIGCLK4.SCR, in chronological order. The system does not display the time stamps on the files in seconds, but you can see the dates and times up to the minute. The interesting thing to note is the source file, DIGCLK2.PAS, has a time stamp of 12:35 on it. I just missed 12:34:56 on that day, trying to make a last-second fix to the program to capture the event. That's the one I missed (nearly 16 years ago).

I have a display program, 012345.EXE, that displays all the screen shots that were recorded. I made some composite images, below, so you can see them, too.

For this one from 1989, the two screens looked the same, so I'm just showing one here:


And here is the one from 1990:


And, finally, here is the one from today (oops! I just noticed the display says PM, but it was actually the AM one that got captured - I'll have to fix the prompt):


How silly is that?

You want silly? I just realized today that I have an opportunity to do this every year for the next eight years. And, in light of that, I have set out to make it my mission to record the date & time on each of those eight events...with the same computer and save them to the same floppy disk! This may require some effort to maintain the computer to keep it running. But that's the idea - I want to see how long I can do this with this computer. And, oh, by the way - that's the same monitor, too!

So, be on the lookout for the following dates:
02:03:04 05/06/07
03:04:05 06/07/08
04:05:06 07/08/09
05:06:07 08/09/10
06:07:08 09/10/11
07:08:09 10/11/12
08:09:10 11/12/13
09:10:11 12/13/14

Talk about a time capsule. I'm actually saving times!

What do you do with your time?

UPDATE:
I had another one of my usual quirky brainstorms and realized there are a lot more sequential opportunities to capture - and one that I missed on 04/05/06. If I reverse the order of things (put the date first, use descending numbers, etc.) I find there are numerous additional opportunities to capture some "time sequences" over the next eight years. Including:

04/05/06 07:08:09 (which I missed)
05/06/07 08:09:10
06/07/08 09:10:11
07/08/09 10:11:12
08/09/10 11:12:13
09/10/11 12:13:14
08/07/06 05:04:03
11:10:09 08/07/06
09/08/07 06:05:04
12:11:10 09/08/07
10/09/08 07:06:05
11/10/09 08:07:06
12/11/10 09:08:07
And if I include 24-hour time:
10/11/12 13:14:15
11/12/13 14:15:16
12/13/14 15:16:17

That's 23 total opportunities over the next eight years. And that's just the sequential numbers. I haven't even considered other patterns, like 06:06:06 06/06/06, or 07:07:07 07/07/07, or other sequences that appear in other formats, like 01:23:45 6/7/8 or 12:34:56 7/8/9 etc. I probably won't concern myself with those, but I would like to capture 11:11:11 11/11/11. I'll be lucky if the computer is still working when that time comes.

We'll see!