What's with all the bogus Birthdays?

[Dave Anderson NH]

I've never seen so many birthdays listed on the board and most of them seem to show up as being 34 years old. I know for a fact that Halsey is a "wee bit" over 34, say by abou 30+ years.

[Halsey MCCombs]

You are correct I don't know where that date came from. Plan to change it Halsey

[Mark Singer]

Dave,
I am still looking for a picture when I was in my 20's to post by my name! Problem is they didn't have digital cameras...my daughter said " they didn't have any cameras..."
Mark

[Mike Evertsen]

Dave,
I am still looking for a picture when I was in my 20's to post by my name! Problem is they didn't have digital cameras...my daughter said " they didn't have any cameras..."
Mark

there was cameras remember they held the powder above the camera,,,,LOL

[Bruce Page]

March 31st 1969, it was a dark and stormy night…..

[Ken Garlock]

If you look at the profiles for the people listed for having a birthday today AND have an age of 34, you will see that they all have a birth date of December 31, 1969.

As I remember, the Unix world started on that date. This means that all dates are stored as the number of days since 12/31/1969. Hence, the date can be stored as a small binary number. The problem is that in 2030 the binary number has an overflow, and becomes zero again and starts over.

A nice tidbit, but how does this get us to the birthdays today? I suspect that the people listed as being age 34 today, decided that they didn't want their birthday/age listed on the site. Good old Saw Mill Creek software took a zero value from their profile for the birthday and adjusted it to 12/31/1969 base, and came up with the group of people who are listed as being 34 today.

This is not the computers fault, but rather an oversite (aka bug) by the programmer who wrote the web server software used to make Saw Mill Creek happen. He/she should have checked specifically for no birthday listed.

Aaron, Keith, please correct me and fill in the blanks.

[Keith Outten]

I believe these are the people who left their birthdate empty when they joined SMC. The forum software probably defaults to the last day of the year so the database field isn't left empty.

[Ken Garlock]

Well, I did some more searching and found the following:

1) The UNIX EPOCH is defined to start at 00:00:00 on Jan 1, 1970.

2) Time is mantained internally in a Unix system as the number of SECONDS since the epoch in the form of a 32 bit word. This 32 bit word can comprehend all dates/times from December 13 20:45:52 1901, up thru Tuesday, January 19 03:14:07 2038.

3) SMC runs on Linux, a Unix clone.

If the SMC software records a "no entry" birthday as a minus one (-1), the birthday scan function would determine that the birthday is December 31, 1969.

Heck, I was only off one day, a mere 86400 seconds, or 1440 minutes. Not too bad for an OB.

Keith: Since everyone in question today is listed as age 34, it is clear that the software is determining their birth date as 12/31/1969, not just some default like the last day of the year.

This makes for an interesting discussion, but does nothing to make the saw blades turn....

Happy New Year. Count your fingers tonight, we want them to be the same number this time next year!

[Ken Salisbury]

If your birthday shows up wrong - you should go to your ,select "profile" and edit to the correct date. Make sure you click
"Submit Modifications" at the bottom of the page after editing.

[Aaron Koehl]

Ken,

You're right about the Unix Epoch and the 32 bit timestamp. However, the SMC software stores the times independently from the operating system, not as a 32-bit integer, but as a string (in the database). Thus, we can store dates as high as 12-31-9999.

In the case where people have a 12-32-69 birthday, this is where people left their birthdays blank when they registered. They have a zero-length string in the database. This is interpreted as the Unix epoch (01-01-1970), minus the timezone setting, making it the day before--Dec. 31, 1969.

I'll likely resolve the issue soon--I fixed it once with a hack before we upgraded.

_Aaron_

[Ken Garlock]

for clearing up the problem. I knew I was in the neighborhood, but just didn't have the exact details correct. Guess I will take a 70 on the test for being in the right book

Keep up the good work, and Happy New Year.

[mike malone]

[QUOTE=Ken Garlock]for clearing up the problem. I knew I was in the neighborhood, but just didn't have the exact details correct. Guess I will take a 70 on the test for being in the right book

http://preview.ussearch.com/preview/...ge=30&x=25&y=9

check this out...i have no idea where they get the info. type in your name, area and approx age. have fun
regards
mike