I was walking on my lunch break as I oft do and I saw sign with "11-1-11" scribbled on the back. This reminded me of the big stink that nerds raised last year on 11-11-11 and how it was the "last binary date of our generation".

But, nerds. You should know this wasn't true.

Yes, 111111 is 63 and, no, we're never going to encounter a date like that again in our lifetimes or in the next thousand years, for that matter. But for any nerd to try and assume that 11-11-11 is a valid date is stupid. There was this little thing a few years ago called Y2K.

You may recall it.

The whole issue with Y2K, for those who don't recall or never knew, was in the data depiction of years in a date. The first two digits were discarded and only the last two saved. Computers automatically stuffed a "19" in front and called it a day. Obviously, when those two stored digits were "00", all the dates would read 1900 and there would be mass pandemonium.

But, since the crossing of the (almost) new millennium, we've had to differentiate by storing the entire date, meaning all years would be stored/displayed as a four digit number.

So, in nerd terms, there never was a 11-11-11, just 11-11-2011 (or, 20111111 if you like being able to sort your dates numerically). And now that we can store dates ranging from 1/1/0001 to 12/31/9999, there was no excuse for the "whooaaahh" moment.

Now, January 19, 2038 03:14:08? That's something to look forward to.