An Unusual Day

Today's Leap Day... you know, the day that only comes around every four years. February 29th! Here's my first dedicated blog to Leap Day:

NERDY STUFF - A solar year is almost 6 hours longer than 365 days. Or 365.25 for the math people.... well actually it's 365.2425 according to the "experts" (you can think of it as 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds. How do they know this? They put a flag in space and wait to see how long it takes the earth to come back to that flag! After 365 days, we're still not quite back to the flag so they realized that there's an extra ~6 hours till we got back to that start. If you think that's an archaic way of doing the calculation, think of the guy that sits around waiting to see the flag again! Hopefully a comet hasn't hit the flag and we have to start all over! What I found interesting, is since it isn't exactly 6 hours, to make up for it: "days that are evenly divisible by 100 are NOT leap years, UNLESS they are also divisible by 400". So yeah, 2000 was a leap year - 2100 (for those of us still around) will not be a leap year.

If you need an algorithm to figure this out:

if year modulo 400 is 0 then leap
else if year modulo 100 is 0 then no_leap
else if year modulo 4 is 0 then leap
else no_leap

As for my personal feelings on Leap Day? I really don't like it... and it's all because those of us who work and are salaried - the corporate sector gets a "free day" from us. We don't get anything extra for working today and the business gets an extra day this quarter to work on revenue stuff. Interesting how this day comes in to play from a corporate standpoint.

Of course everyone wonders about kids being born on Leap Day - Rossini (composer who's music was used in a lot of Bugs Bunny Cartoons) was born on Leap Day (1792). As was Tony Robbins (the motivational guy)! Don't forget Ja Rule (1976) who technically is celebrating his 8th birthday! The first Playboy Club was opened in Chicago (1960) on this day! Sounds like a good holiday to me!

And for those who pay attention to the world of music - remember that Frederick from Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance was born on a leap year. This was critical to the plot as he was NOT allowed to leave his servitude to the Pirate King since he was technically only 5 (not 21). Nevermind the fact that he was supposed to be a PILOT, not a PIRATE. Guess you have to know the musical.....

Anyway - so HAPPY LEAP DAY! Hope you're celebrating in style.

Haiku of the Day
"Once every 4 years"
A Cyclones winning season???
NO!! An extra day

Entertainment of the Day - American Idol down to 8 and 8.... Not really upset at the people going home last night, but you still can see how the "Wheeler" theory holds true - different outcome week to week if you vote for the person that should go home! There is definitely a "final 4" group forming, see who the remaining 4 to go home next week are.

Weblink of the Day - A colored ball game.... click on the like colors, try not to have any leftovers. Then lose interest around level 8 or so.