The title of this post may confuse some of my readers. I don’t expect 2010 to be a particularly bad year, and I’m not particularly sad that 2009 is over, but I do want to briefly comment on one unfortunate thing about this new year. That is the date.
Those that have been following me for a while know that I like to do things differently than most people. Writing dates down is one of those things. Whenever a document, such as a check, contract, or other item, needs a date I like to abbreviate the date as short as possible. When it comes to abbreviating years, most people would assume that there is only one way to do it, and that is to omit the century. For example 1998 becomes “98”. Well for the past ten years the intuitive abbreviations have been 00, 01, 02, 03, and so on. Like I said, however, I like to do things differently, for the past several years I have abbreviated years using only one digit, i.e. 9, 8, 7, and so on. So last month I may have written a date down as 12/30/9.
I know I’m not the only one who does this, but I am in a minority. This is why I’m sad that it is now 2010. Now I’ll have to write two digit years like everyone else. I’ll still be writing one digit days and months when possible, so today is “1/1/10” none of this “01/01/2010” verbosity.