3.1416

[230RN]

Regolith insisted,

mmddyyyy is the standard in the US

I don't know where you got that from.  As Ben pointed out, and since I worked for the dot -gov for many years, and got used to ddmmyy, I justifiably misinterpreted my expiration date.  Caught it in just enough time, so I didn't have to go through the whole rigamarole of re-licensing, but it did cost me a month of "nudity."

My current permit expires on a day greater than 12, so there's no ambiguity there.  Yes, I bitched about it a little, but not enough to cause prejudicial reactions to my application for renewal.  I could have been a prick and asked them for documentation as to their date policy, but I was happy enough to be able to legally carry concealed again, so I let it go.

I just feel sorry for the other 12 out of 31 slobs who might have fallen into the same trap.  (Dunno if that 12/31 is right, someone check me on that.)

Nevertheless, I, too, entered dates in my dot-gov computer records as yyyymmdd and printed them out by selecting the fifth and sixth digits and used a table lookup to insert the three-letter month for printing.

Moreover, and to boot, I note that many text editors, such as MS-Word, have quite a few choices for displaying dates besides mmddyy(yy), so how you can say it's standard for the US is beyond me.  It may be standard for a company or for local dot-govs, or in some style manuals, but it ain't "standard" for the US as far as I can tell.

If it is, it just demonstrates once again how backwards the US is in a lot of respects.  Why, hell, we even use fractions of some old King's thumb for measuring stuff, and the weight of an (Imperial?) pint of water as a weight standard.  

And why a "pint?" Beats the pants offa me.

Oh, oh! and grains of barley or wheat or whatever for measuring powder charges.  Or whatever grain it is that it takes 7000 of them to make 453.59237 grams.  

Oh, oh, oh! and come to think of it, even MS's lowly Notepad has a bunch of selections for date formatting.

Terry, 230RN

[KD5NRH]

[Perd Hapley]

 

[Regolith]

Regolith insisted,

I don't know where you got that from.  As Ben pointed out, and since I worked for the dot -gov for many years, and got used to ddmmyy, I justifiably misinterpreted my expiration date.  Caught it in just enough time, so I didn't have to go through the whole rigamarole of re-licensing, but it did cost me a month of "nudity."

My current permit expires on a day greater than 12, so there's no ambiguity there.  Yes, I bitched about it a little, but not enough to cause prejudicial reactions to my application for renewal.  I could have been a prick and asked them for documentation as to their date policy, but I was happy enough to be able to legally carry concealed again, so I let it go.

I just feel sorry for the other 12 out of 31 slobs who might have fallen into the same trap.  (Dunno if that 12/31 is right, someone check me on that.)

Nevertheless, I, too, entered dates in my dot-gov computer records as yyyymmdd and printed them out by selecting the fifth and sixth digits and used a table lookup to insert the three-letter month for printing.

Moreover, and to boot, I note that many text editors, such as MS-Word, have quite a few choices for displaying dates besides mmddyy(yy), so how you can say it's standard for the US is beyond me.  It may be standard for a company or for local dot-govs, or in some style manuals, but it ain't "standard" for the US as far as I can tell.

Terry, 230RN

It's "standard" in the way that English is standard: it's used by the overwhelming majority. I didn't know that the entire fed.gov had switched to ddmmyyyy, but AFAIK it's pretty much just them. My driver's license, any bill or statement I've ever had, whatever, it's all always been mmddyy(yy).

[Ben]

It's "standard" in the way that English is standard: it's used by the overwhelming majority. I didn't know that the entire fed.gov had switched to ddmmyyyy, but AFAIK it's pretty much just them. My driver's license, any bill or statement I've ever had, whatever, it's all always been mmddyy(yy).

The entire fed gov doesn't do it. I saw plenty of stuff come in with mmddyy. The ddmmyy format is more common in military and LE related activities and correspondence, and I think is the correct "formal" way to do it. I would expect to see it on anything from DoD, or heck, I think GSA even sent me stuff in that format. However somebody like an NPS biologist in a field office would more likely use mmddyy - especially in emails and such.

[230RN]

Well, it's just plain stupid.  

Should be either most significant grouping to least significant or the other way around, not all mish-moshed up.

There.  I said it and I ain't takin' it back.  

Today is 16/21/20/3.  How's that for a logical scheme?  

What the hell, all the right numbers are there, right?

The sixteenth year of the twenty-first century, and the twentieth day of the third month.  What's your problem with that?

Terry