I recently discovered something that's been irking me ever since. I have three official countdowns to my 30th birthday: one on this blog, another on my iGoogle homepage (which is the one I copy/paste for each timestamp), and another on my laptop desktop background. (Gotta keep Operation 30 top of mind.) What I recently discovered is that they're not all synchronized with each other. And I don't just mean they're a few hours or minutes off from each other. We're talking +/- a day. Weird, huh?
For example, it's now Sunday, April 3rd at about 10:00pm and here's what my countdowns are telling me:
So, my hypothesis? First I checked which one is accurate. With a little help from Excel, the winner is: my laptop desktop countdown! Wow - who would've put money on Windows applications? Not me. Anyway, the other two countdowns only seem to be a few hours off from each other, which I'll chalk up to different time zone assumptions in each of them. But why a full day difference from the official countdown? If I'm not mistaken, next year is a leap year. Perhaps my iGoogle and blog countdown haven't factored in this extra day. Hmm...curious, but a reasonable explanation. Obviously, no matter what the countdown says, my 30th birthday is still going to come on May 8, 2012. No sense worrying more than needed about whether it's 401, 400 or 399 days from now.
So, what to do about this countdown glitch? Quite honestly, I feel better just knowing which is the accurate countdown and think I can survive with a minor inconsistency for a little while. (I'm hoping they might automatically correct themselves once February 29th actually comes. Then again I'm not sure they necessarily will...) Regardless, having things a little off is probably good for me psychologically. Conceding to non-perfection is healthy, and something I need to learn to be satisfied with anyway. Thank you misaligned countdowns for helping me with this important life lesson. :-)
Current semi-official timestamp:
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