I don’t because I polished off a bottle of Korbel, but I’m told it was when everyone was worried that on New Year’s Eve, 1999, the time change to a new century would cause the world’s computers to come to a grinding halt.
When I was sipping my Bloody Mary on the morning of Jan. 1, 2000, my computer worked fine. I surfed the Internet and found that we had all survived Y2K. I smiled and looked for some more Bufferin.
Now the worry warts are wringing their hands again because we’re going to experience a similar phenomenon in little more than a month — a Leap Second.
According to the international timekeepers, the Earth’s rotation has slowed a bit, necessitating the addition of another second in order for all the world’s clocks to get back on track.
The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (they must have enormous business cards) has announced an extra second will be added on June 30.
The last time this happened in 2012, the change caused some websites to crash, including Yelp, Reddit and Gawker.
Just as an aside, who comes up with these names for websites? Yelp? Gawker? Yahoo? It’s like Dr. Seuss created the Internet. Or Ken Kesey.
The problem, it seems, is that when computer systems around the world receive word from the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service that an additional second has been added to the clock, they tend to freak out like HAL.
Quite frankly, I’m not worried about the fact that we could lose Yelp for a couple of hours. (The Russians are hacking your Sunoco card right now, and people are worried about Yelp.)
What does concern me is the reason for the need to keep adding seconds to the clocks. There have been 25 Leap Seconds since 1972.
The Earth’s rotation is slowing down. So what does this mean?
Do we need to get everyone in the world to face west and start running so as to get the Earth rotating faster? Where’s Carl Sagan when you need him?
In the meantime, Google, another stupid website name, has come up with a way to thwart any computer crashes June 30. It will, as reported by CNN, “add a couple of milliseconds to its servers’ clocks throughout the day — just enough to stave off disaster by the end of the day.”
Somehow, I conjure up this image of some geek with thick glasses and a pocket protector gently shaking a box of milliseconds into a funnel. I know that probably isn’t how it’s done, but it’s fun to think about.
I suppose I should stop worrying and embrace the news that we’ll all be getting an extra second on June 30.
I for one am going to use my extra second wisely. I will not waste, uh, a second of it.
In fact, I’m making a list of some things I could do with that extra time:
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Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.