Where IS the Millennium FT party???
Sep 20, 1999 | 11:08 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Feb 1999
Location: Sacramento area, CA USA
Programs: UA Gold Million Miler, HH Gold, Marriott Gold
Posts: 2,858
Where IS the Millennium FT party???
If not a cruise, what then? I can't believe FTers would stay home on such an auspicious night! Let's cook up some ideas...
Sep 20, 1999 | 3:57 pm
#4
In Memoriam
Join Date: May 1999
Location: PVD
Posts: 1,560
I am working on using my miles to find first class seats on a flight to anywhere as long as it is in the air at midnight on 12/31/99. The destination is not important--the fun will be in the journey.
This will be (for me) the equivalent of riding a roller coaster with my hands in the air (which I am too chicken to do).
This will be (for me) the equivalent of riding a roller coaster with my hands in the air (which I am too chicken to do).
Sep 20, 1999 | 4:29 pm
#5
In Memoriam
Join Date: May 1998
Location: Seattle
Programs: Ephesians 4:31-32
Posts: 10,690
TravelWeary,
You are thinking of running away and I am thinking of spending 12/31/99 at The Stardust Club's black tie Party of the Century Dance, at "The State" in Beautiful Downtown Olympia.
Forget Y2K and remember YU2 Dance!
[This message has been edited by Punki (edited 09-20-1999).]
You are thinking of running away and I am thinking of spending 12/31/99 at The Stardust Club's black tie Party of the Century Dance, at "The State" in Beautiful Downtown Olympia.
Forget Y2K and remember YU2 Dance!
[This message has been edited by Punki (edited 09-20-1999).]
Sep 21, 1999 | 10:36 am
#8
In Memoriam
Join Date: May 1999
Location: PVD
Posts: 1,560
Punki: This is too funny. We have been subscribers and contributors to Harlequin Productions for many, many years, so I also received this invitation. The theater is beautiful and would make a great venue for a party such as this, but where's the little thrill of danger and adventure I can get drinking champagne at 30,000 feet at the very moment doomsayers foretell all computers will fail?!
[This message has been edited by TravelWeary (edited 09-21-1999).]
[This message has been edited by TravelWeary (edited 09-21-1999).]
Sep 21, 1999 | 11:57 am
#9
Commander Catcop
Join Date: May 1998
Posts: 10,259
Hoping that work does NOT say that I have to work. There are TWO DAYS I DON"T WORK: Christmas and New year's Eve (my BIRTHDAY!)
So I expect to spend my 34th at home in JERSEY CITY with the cats drinking champaign (and water for them, the last time Eddie has a lick of Champagne YIKES!) I don't want to spend thousands to celebrate the alleged millenium.
So I expect to spend my 34th at home in JERSEY CITY with the cats drinking champaign (and water for them, the last time Eddie has a lick of Champagne YIKES!) I don't want to spend thousands to celebrate the alleged millenium.
Sep 21, 1999 | 12:13 pm
#10
Join Date: Jul 1999
Location: SEA
Posts: 3,178
Well, Catman...your birthday is our wedding anniversary.
We generally spend New Year's with a quiet dinner with friends & family and celebrate at home.
BTW, while we're discussing the millennium, here's some interesting reading for all of you (sorry it's a bit long, but fun):
The hype and nonsense around January 1st, 2000 AD is a bit crazy as the first day of the new millennium is completely arbitrary. Our original calendar was known as the Julian calendar because it was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. That calendar allotted 365 days for the year
with every fourth year a leap year of 366 days.
The problem with the Julian calendar was that it was too long by about 11 minutes. This amounts to a total of about one day every 128 years.
This bothered the Christian church because they needed to compute an accurate date for the death and ascension of Jesus for their Easter festivals. Pope Gregory 8th remedied this problem by coming up with a new modified calendar which became known as the Gregorian Calendar. In 1582, he decreed that the day after October 4th should be reckoned to be October 15th. So, in effect he wiped out 10 days, making up for all the extra 11 minutes per year that had gone past since the time of Julius Caesar.
Pope Gregory must have been quite a complicated fellow because he also decreed that future years that had a number ending in two cyphers should not be a leap year unless the number was divisible by 400. Nobody could quite understand what the hell Pope Gregory was talking about, so things
muddled along much the same with every fourth year a leap year.
In England and Scotland, things were further complicated by the fact that the legal year began on March 25th not January 1st. So during the reign of King George II in 1751 the English and Scottish Parliament decided to adopt the Gregorian Calendar and they passed a law saying in future the
legal year would begin on January 1st. So the Gregorian calendar became adopted around
the English speaking world.
The English Parliament decided that the day after December 2nd, 1752 should be reckoned December 14th. They then knocked 11 days off and nobody bothered with Pope Gregory's complicated system of dividing things by 400.
The other thing which is fun to think about is this: There are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute. But how long is a second? In olden days, they attempted to work it out astronomically. Since the invention of atomic clocks in the 1950's we have more accurately been able to determine how long a second is. In 1967, there was a general conference on weights and measures and it was agreed to base the definition of a second on atomic time.
According to the Natural Physics Laboratory in Great Britain, a second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. In plain English, it is this: cesium atoms can be made to flick between two possible energies by illuminating them with microwaves tuned to a specific frequency. In a
cesium clock, atoms with one energy are sent through a chamber containing microwaves. The frequency of the microwaves is tuned until the maximum number of atoms flip from one energy to the other, showing it is equal to the value that defines it as 9,192,631,770 vibrations to one second.
The problem is even that isn't quite accurate enough. By international agreement in 1972, it was decided to use occasional leap seconds so that we could have a world-wide co-ordinated Universal Time. In fact, there have been 21 leap seconds added to the calendar in the last 25 years or so.
Now here's the fun part. Most historians conclusively put the birth of Christ at 4 BC, not at zero AD! If that is correct, you would have to subtract four years from our current calendar. And as approx. 250 years have passed since the act of Parliament in 1751 which fixed English and Scottish dates and thus America's and the rest of the English speaking world, it would seem to me that our calendar is now approximately four years behind (Jesus' Birthday), plus two days ahead of itself (the 11 minutes per year over 250 years).
Then because on January 1st, 2000 we'll be three quarters of the way through a four-year span prior to the next leap year (2001), our calendar on the great day will be 3/4 of a day behind the correct date
as the leap year will not have been added as yet.
I guess you have to subtract four years to adjust for the correct birth of Christ, then deduct two days because the calendar is going too fast by 11 minutes per year and then add a further 3/4 of a day for our position in the leap year cycle, as of midnight 1999, then knock off a few seconds for your atomic leap second adjustment, whatever that might be. At the end of these calculations, we realize that January 1st, 2000 AD took place just before the end of 1996. In fact, 1-1/4 days (minus a few as yet not added leap seconds) before the end of 1996.
In other words, the great moment - the beginning of the next millennium really took place at about 3 seconds before 6am on Dec. 30th, 1996. So it looks like we all missed the party. Shame, isn't it.
As to the Mayan calendar, they were very accurate in their calculations. Their fifth sun ends in the year December 23rd, 2010 AD, at which point the Mayan's predicted the world is going to end. The problem with the Mayan's is they ended first, so none of them will be there to say I told you so. They
may be right I'll let you know on December 24th, 2010 give or take a few leap seconds.
I hope this clarifies things. The point is, no one's got a clue what the real date is, or what time it is, and in the end what does it matter, as long as we are having fun.
[This message has been edited by shadow (edited 09-21-1999).]
We generally spend New Year's with a quiet dinner with friends & family and celebrate at home.
BTW, while we're discussing the millennium, here's some interesting reading for all of you (sorry it's a bit long, but fun):
The hype and nonsense around January 1st, 2000 AD is a bit crazy as the first day of the new millennium is completely arbitrary. Our original calendar was known as the Julian calendar because it was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. That calendar allotted 365 days for the year
with every fourth year a leap year of 366 days.
The problem with the Julian calendar was that it was too long by about 11 minutes. This amounts to a total of about one day every 128 years.
This bothered the Christian church because they needed to compute an accurate date for the death and ascension of Jesus for their Easter festivals. Pope Gregory 8th remedied this problem by coming up with a new modified calendar which became known as the Gregorian Calendar. In 1582, he decreed that the day after October 4th should be reckoned to be October 15th. So, in effect he wiped out 10 days, making up for all the extra 11 minutes per year that had gone past since the time of Julius Caesar.
Pope Gregory must have been quite a complicated fellow because he also decreed that future years that had a number ending in two cyphers should not be a leap year unless the number was divisible by 400. Nobody could quite understand what the hell Pope Gregory was talking about, so things
muddled along much the same with every fourth year a leap year.
In England and Scotland, things were further complicated by the fact that the legal year began on March 25th not January 1st. So during the reign of King George II in 1751 the English and Scottish Parliament decided to adopt the Gregorian Calendar and they passed a law saying in future the
legal year would begin on January 1st. So the Gregorian calendar became adopted around
the English speaking world.
The English Parliament decided that the day after December 2nd, 1752 should be reckoned December 14th. They then knocked 11 days off and nobody bothered with Pope Gregory's complicated system of dividing things by 400.
The other thing which is fun to think about is this: There are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute. But how long is a second? In olden days, they attempted to work it out astronomically. Since the invention of atomic clocks in the 1950's we have more accurately been able to determine how long a second is. In 1967, there was a general conference on weights and measures and it was agreed to base the definition of a second on atomic time.
According to the Natural Physics Laboratory in Great Britain, a second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. In plain English, it is this: cesium atoms can be made to flick between two possible energies by illuminating them with microwaves tuned to a specific frequency. In a
cesium clock, atoms with one energy are sent through a chamber containing microwaves. The frequency of the microwaves is tuned until the maximum number of atoms flip from one energy to the other, showing it is equal to the value that defines it as 9,192,631,770 vibrations to one second.
The problem is even that isn't quite accurate enough. By international agreement in 1972, it was decided to use occasional leap seconds so that we could have a world-wide co-ordinated Universal Time. In fact, there have been 21 leap seconds added to the calendar in the last 25 years or so.
Now here's the fun part. Most historians conclusively put the birth of Christ at 4 BC, not at zero AD! If that is correct, you would have to subtract four years from our current calendar. And as approx. 250 years have passed since the act of Parliament in 1751 which fixed English and Scottish dates and thus America's and the rest of the English speaking world, it would seem to me that our calendar is now approximately four years behind (Jesus' Birthday), plus two days ahead of itself (the 11 minutes per year over 250 years).
Then because on January 1st, 2000 we'll be three quarters of the way through a four-year span prior to the next leap year (2001), our calendar on the great day will be 3/4 of a day behind the correct date
as the leap year will not have been added as yet.
I guess you have to subtract four years to adjust for the correct birth of Christ, then deduct two days because the calendar is going too fast by 11 minutes per year and then add a further 3/4 of a day for our position in the leap year cycle, as of midnight 1999, then knock off a few seconds for your atomic leap second adjustment, whatever that might be. At the end of these calculations, we realize that January 1st, 2000 AD took place just before the end of 1996. In fact, 1-1/4 days (minus a few as yet not added leap seconds) before the end of 1996.
In other words, the great moment - the beginning of the next millennium really took place at about 3 seconds before 6am on Dec. 30th, 1996. So it looks like we all missed the party. Shame, isn't it.
As to the Mayan calendar, they were very accurate in their calculations. Their fifth sun ends in the year December 23rd, 2010 AD, at which point the Mayan's predicted the world is going to end. The problem with the Mayan's is they ended first, so none of them will be there to say I told you so. They
may be right I'll let you know on December 24th, 2010 give or take a few leap seconds.
I hope this clarifies things. The point is, no one's got a clue what the real date is, or what time it is, and in the end what does it matter, as long as we are having fun.
[This message has been edited by shadow (edited 09-21-1999).]
Sep 21, 1999 | 2:24 pm
#11
Join Date: May 1999
Location: New York City
Programs: UA MM-1P, Hilton Life Diamond, Marriot Life Gold, ICH Spire
Posts: 4,080
Terrific, shadow! And it's all true. (Except that I can't verify the part about the Mayan calendar.) BTW, the rules concerning the Hebrew calendar (which has leap months) are even more complicated!
Next, you should explain about the cesium standards that are flown around the world to cross-correlate the different primary standards, and the relativistic effects that have to be incorporated into the correlations.
And it's all true. (Except that I can't verify the part about the Mayan calendar.) BTW, the rules concerning the Hebrew calendar (which has leap months) are even more complicated!Next, you should explain about the cesium standards that are flown around the world to cross-correlate the different primary standards, and the relativistic effects that have to be incorporated into the correlations.
Sep 21, 1999 | 2:46 pm
#12
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: SDF via MCO DFW, FSD, BDS, DSM, ORD, OMA
Posts: 612
All I know is that during the last millenium (1996) I was getting pleasantly bombed and looking forward to a newer, mo' bettah' year. This year, all vactions cancelled and we are all expected to be available and presumably sober should the need arise to call us in to work to figure out what 00-66 equals.
Cheers,
'toad
OMNI to Catman - Hopefully your organization isn't like the media in FL during Floyd... having to stand out in the rain to see if in fact the Great Blue Heron swimming in a street puddle would fly away. I can just imagine the media frenzy looking for death, mayhem and destruction when Y2K fizzles like an Alka Seltzer on New Years day; and you, dear scribe, will hopefully not be given the assignment to run around to ATM's checking account balances or, worse, booting up your PC 'on the air' to see if MS Word really still works!
Cheers,
'toad
OMNI to Catman - Hopefully your organization isn't like the media in FL during Floyd... having to stand out in the rain to see if in fact the Great Blue Heron swimming in a street puddle would fly away. I can just imagine the media frenzy looking for death, mayhem and destruction when Y2K fizzles like an Alka Seltzer on New Years day; and you, dear scribe, will hopefully not be given the assignment to run around to ATM's checking account balances or, worse, booting up your PC 'on the air' to see if MS Word really still works!
Sep 21, 1999 | 3:28 pm
#15
Join Date: May 1999
Location: New York City
Programs: UA MM-1P, Hilton Life Diamond, Marriot Life Gold, ICH Spire
Posts: 4,080
shadow: Please read your own post!!
You mentioned that the new worldwide definition of a second is based on the excitation of cesium atoms between 2 quantum states. You can buy a unit from Hewlett-Packard that does just that! They used to cost ~~$25K, I have no idea what they go for now. Output is an LED time readout, or 1 or 10 MHz (I think), accurate to about 3 parts in 10,000,000,000.
You mentioned that the new worldwide definition of a second is based on the excitation of cesium atoms between 2 quantum states. You can buy a unit from Hewlett-Packard that does just that! They used to cost ~~$25K, I have no idea what they go for now. Output is an LED time readout, or 1 or 10 MHz (I think), accurate to about 3 parts in 10,000,000,000.