I've commented in the past about enjoying the "status change" microblogging on Facebook. On Monday, I posted a humorous status satirizing the importance humans place on birthday celebrations, which are really rather random:
Michael is celebrating turning 36 years and 247 days today.
Yesterday, I continued the joke with a new yet barely different status:
Michael is celebrating turning 36 years and 248 days today.
Craig wrote a comment on that:
Happy Primeday!
Craig is one of my nerdiest friends. I think he might be as nerdy as I am, though he devotes his nerdiness to things mathematical and physical rather than chemical and biological. I therefore had a strong inkling of what Craig was calling "Primeday." Just to be safe, though, I did a quick Google search to ascertain that there's no common concept for the term. Nothing obvious presented itself.
In my 36 years, I have experienced 9 leap years. Good nerds know that leap years typically do not occur for years divisible by 100, but since 2000 was also divisible by 400, the leap year still takes place. That means those 36 years included 36 x 365.25 = 13,149 days. Adding the 248 days from my birthday to yesterday made yesterday my 13,397th full day on the planet. Good nerds know all the small prime numbers (i.e. prime numbers less than 1,000,000), so I just counted through them in my head until I got to the relevant neighborhood:
13339, 13367, 13381, 13397, 13399, 13411, 13417, 13421
Indeed, my 13,397th day on earth yesterday was prime. So happy Primeday to me! Thanks to Craig for the kind wishes. Sadly, none of my other friends or family was as thoughtful.
It's hard to get really excited about it, though. My next Primeday is tomorrow. I'd get pretty sick of Primeday cake if I celebrated so assiduously.
Michael is celebrating turning 36 years and 247 days today.
Yesterday, I continued the joke with a new yet barely different status:
Michael is celebrating turning 36 years and 248 days today.
Craig wrote a comment on that:
Happy Primeday!
Craig is one of my nerdiest friends. I think he might be as nerdy as I am, though he devotes his nerdiness to things mathematical and physical rather than chemical and biological. I therefore had a strong inkling of what Craig was calling "Primeday." Just to be safe, though, I did a quick Google search to ascertain that there's no common concept for the term. Nothing obvious presented itself.
In my 36 years, I have experienced 9 leap years. Good nerds know that leap years typically do not occur for years divisible by 100, but since 2000 was also divisible by 400, the leap year still takes place. That means those 36 years included 36 x 365.25 = 13,149 days. Adding the 248 days from my birthday to yesterday made yesterday my 13,397th full day on the planet. Good nerds know all the small prime numbers (i.e. prime numbers less than 1,000,000), so I just counted through them in my head until I got to the relevant neighborhood:
13339, 13367, 13381, 13397, 13399, 13411, 13417, 13421
Indeed, my 13,397th day on earth yesterday was prime. So happy Primeday to me! Thanks to Craig for the kind wishes. Sadly, none of my other friends or family was as thoughtful.
It's hard to get really excited about it, though. My next Primeday is tomorrow. I'd get pretty sick of Primeday cake if I celebrated so assiduously.
No need for complicated leap year considerations (although I went through exactly that logic myself). True nerds can do it on the shell:
ReplyDeleteecho "(`date -d '30 Sep 2008 UTC' +%s`-`date -d '26 Jan 1972 UTC' +%s`)/86400" | bc | factor
That's brilliant. I thought Craig was wishing you a happy primeday because of the largest prime number discovered recently.
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