I was born before the middle of the last century. Not this one but the previous one. So, you can understand why a year labeled "2023" looks like I have blundered into a Flash Gordon comic strip. I know I have been using those digits for more than half a year but it still feels like I am falling for a joke. I do appreciate that the year designation changes slowly, once every 365 days, unlike the silly name of the day or even the month. For them, I just get used to a number or a name and the damned thing is quickly outdated, laughable, incorrect.
I imagine that if you are 40 or younger, you don't know that name Flash Gordon, just like I don't think I have ever read a Buck Rogers comic strip. I practice trying to focus on the present and not wander into the past much and the future even less. In graduate school, back before Apple and related companies and products, our major professor wanted us to learn a little coding. He gave us a bit of a vague assignment: give him a computer program in punched card, one instruction per card, written in the coding "language" Fortran. It should take in any two dates he provides and give him the number of days between those dates. Excel, the Microsoft spreadsheet, can do that instantly. I just did it and learned that today, I am more than 30500 days old. Being that old, I can be expected to be cynical.
