Category Archives: Misc

Microsoft Bugs

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There is an old Disney urban legend that Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen and, when medical technology has evolved to cure his cancer, he will be thawed out and cured. In modern internet times, this tale really took off with Disney fans, leading to several books and even a movie:

The Further Adventures of Walt’s Frozen Head (2018) – IMDb

If I recall, my name is in the credits of that movie … because I backed it on Kickstarter or whatever fund raisingsite it was using at the time. ;-)

But I digress…

It has been claimed that Disney’s “ice princess” movie was released under the title Frozen so when people web search for “walt disney frozen” the search engines will return hits about the movie Frozen instead of the urban legend. “Ah! It’s a cover up! It must be true!”

And this is clearly not true, because if you web search for that, you get a bunch of front page results about the urban legend, well before you get to anything about the animated movie.

What Would Microsoft Do?

But this does give me an idea. Microsoft has released a number of games for Windows over the year, such as Microsoft Solitaire, Microsoft Freecell, Microsoft Minesweeper and Microsoft Pinball Arcade.

I propose Microsoft create a new game for Windows called “Bugs” — perhaps some modern update of Dung Beetles (known as Mega-Bug on the CoCo).

That way, when you web search “microsoft bugs” you get results about the game, and not about the frustrating thing that just got pushed to your PC in the latest Microsoft Windows Update.

Just a thought…

Until next time…

Steve Bjork in the movie Rollercoaster (1977)

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My late friend, Steve Bjork, had quite an interesting life. While I do not know anything about his childhood an upbringing, he did share tidbits about his later years. In the 1970s, he worked for Magic Mountain (known as Six Flags Magic Mountain after 1979) in Valencia, California.

A number of movies have been filmed at Magic Moutain over the years, including National Lampoon’s Vacation which used the park as a stand-in for the fictional Wally World. It was also used in one of the Beverly Hills Cop movies.

But long before those 1980s classic was: Rollercoaster.

Filming on this epic 1977 disaster (?) movie began in 1976, according to the wikipedia entry on the film. Steve had mentioned he was an extra in this movie, and I had thought maybe he just went down and lined up to audition. (That is how it worked when me and some friends “auditioned” in high school for a movie that was filmed in East Texas.)

Steve mentioned he was in a scene loading a roller coaster. I wondered if we could find him. Thanks to the help of Eric, who was able to locate where I could watch this movie, I began scrubbing through the film looking for any scenes showing a roller coaster load area.

Finally, at around the 1:44 mark near the end of the film, we found him. Ladie’s and gentlemen, a young Steve Bjork!

Steve Bjork in Rollercoaster (1977) at about the 1:44 mark.

As the coaster car pulls back into the station, several costumed park workers quickly go to the car to start unlocking the lap bars so the riders can get out. At the far back of the room is Steve. The movie stars are riding in the back and you get to see Steve in two different clips of this scene.

For comparison, here is the earliest public photo of Steve I could find, which appeared in the January 1983 issue of SOFTLINE magazine:

Steve Bjork in SOFTLINE, January 1983, p54.

I have not checked to see if he can be spotted elsewhere in the film, so if you decide to look for him, let me know if you find something new.

Thanks for helping me find this, Eric!

Five nines and 99% uptime

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How reliable is your internet provider, or webhost provider?

Many years ago during my Microware era, I had some outsider exposure to the wireless communications industry. This was a long time ago. Cellular phones were still mostly analog, other than the GSM network. (After a layoff, I spent about a year selling cellphones from a now-defunct “leader in wireless activations” and I think it was VoiceStream or something that had GSM phones in our area. Few customers wanted them because the digital coverage was pretty limited to just large cities at the time.)

But I digress.

A term I learned was “five nines”. This was a level of reliability expected out of these cell phone towers. Five nines is 99.999%.

Do all those extra decimal places really matter? We were told that even promoting 99% was terrible, and 99.% still was problematic if the service was important.

This stuck with me, and years later I would see claims of reliability from high-speed internet providers (initial cable modems for my area; I had the first install of one in my neighborhood, but that’s a story for another time). 99% sounded great to me, but the reality was … less great.

To help you visualize how reliable “99%” is, I made this spreadsheet:

DaysHoursMinutesPercentMin DownHours Down
3072043200994327.2
307204320099.943.20.72
307204320099.994.320.072
307204320099.9990.4320.0072

You can see that a service offering 99% uptime would be down over 7 hours per month.

At 99.9%, you only lose 43 minutes per month. Much better. Clearly, an extra decimal place goes a long way.

And the industry standard of “five nines” would allow a service to have less than 30 seconds downtime in a month.

Here is the wikipedia page that discusses this, with even more stats:

High availability – Wikipedia

With that in mind, what do you think the uptime is of your high-speed internet provider? :) And what do they claim?

Until next time…

m

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As I drove to work one morning, I noticed some interesting abbreviations being used on my traffic report phone app. (I’d normally say “GPS app” but then folks always say “you need your GPS to get to work?” No, it’s not about navigation. It’s about traffic reports, police incidents, closed exits and other things.)

But I digress…

In America, “m” is an abbreviation for “miles.” For example, mpg (miles per gallon) and mph (miles per hour).

“m” is also an abbreviation for meters, as in mps (meters per second) or 3m (three meters).

When I see “5m” I assume this is meters.

But “m” is also an abbreviation for minutes. If you see this:

4h3m30s

That clearly looks like hours, minutes and seconds. And if someone sends a text saying:

BwoopyBob: be there in 3m

…that seems to mean minutes.

Context is everything.

My navigation app shows speed, distance and time. All of these things are “m” words: miles per hour, miles to go, and minutes until arrival.

So naturally, they have to alter the abbreviations.

Minutes is shortened to “min”, which we usually assume means minutes or minimum, and miles is “mi” since, I assume, the app also supports metric distances and would use “m” for that. And miles per hour is displayed as “mph” as I’d expect.

I wonder what other “m” units are displayed by this thing?

  • m
  • mi
  • min
  • mpg

Seeing one alone is not enough to understand what the “m” means, and even having a numeric unit may not help… Is 30m thirty miles or thirty minutes or thirty meters? Or something else?

I guess my point is, when abbreviating, always add context. Your users/readers will appreciate it.

Until next time…

Branson, Missouri…

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Any CoCo folks near Branson? There is a place there called Retromania which is an 80s themed “attraction” with some 1980s arcade games, a few pinball machines, an 80s horror movie themed haunted house, VR and lots of 80s memorabilia. While I didn’t see any CoCo related stuff on display, I did see some Atari and Odyssey hardware. I kinda want to bring a CoCo ROM-PAK to donate to the display next visit ;-)

Website hosting…

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I have been doing website hosting as a hobby since the mid-1990s. I just set up a “business card” site for a local cafe (Douglas Cafe in Urbandale) we frequent. We’ve also done projects for them including making new menus, table top signs, window vinyl lettering, and street signs. To help boost their new website, I just wanted to post it here for the search engines to find:

https://www.douglascafe.com

While I do not actively persue website hosting anymore, I still have about 75 sites hosted here. My web hosting account is going up 25% my next renewal, so I may very well have to re-activate this as a business that takes money.

More to come…

My early 90s CoCo room.

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Forty years ago, this is what my room looked like… UPDATED with photos!

Allen's room (so far):
 
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
-      | VCR,Jag,Etc.| | | CM8/VCR | |   TV   | || | C= Mon.|               ||
.\     |_____________| |_|_________|_|________|_||_|________|_______________||
. \                    |  _________ ______  ___ ||____ ____________ ....... ||
.  \                   | | .CoCo3. | MPI  ||Dsk||| HD |  Amiga500  | mouse  ||
-                      |_|_________|______||___|||____|____________|________||
|------|                       CHAIR                    CHAIR        |_____| |
| Boxes|                                                             |Term.| |
|      |                                                            _|_____|_|
|______|                                                            |  Ans. ||
|Shel| ______                             Floor Space!              | |---| ||
|-ves| |file|                                                       | |DMP| ||
|    | |thng|                                                       |_|___|_||
|    | |____|            -----------------------------------------------------
|____|                   |                                            |      "
|                        |              My Double Bed                 |      "
| /\                     |                                            |      "
| \K\                    |___________________________________________________-
|# \4\                        | Term.|                              | Lamp/  |
| # \/                        |      |                              | Radio  |
+----|.......|---------------------------------------------------------------+
 
Door into room on top left, closet on bottom left, window on bottom right.
Going clockwise:
 
Starting at top, metal "erector set" shelving containing misc. junk on top
shelf, two VCR drawer cabinets and Jag on second, SVHS and editing gizmos on
third, fourth has complete Sega Genesis/CD setup, and below is Sub-Etha
Software stuff (paperwork, software, etc.)
 
First computer desk is CoCo system with CM8 on VCR, and TV to the right.  A
set of medium sized powerer stereo speakers sits on the CM8 and another on the
Amiga monitor for great stereo seperation.  Dual power strips below this, too.
 (One with modem line and CoCo on it, the other is on "all the time" for VCRs
(clock) and TV).
 
Amiga desk is metal frame (not wood like CoCo) and has Amiga setup and
monitor, and TONS of books on shelves below right of desk.  A pull out sliding
"table" at the right has a WYSE terminal on it w/CoCo cube stored below it.
 
Next is a printer table (came with the desk) with the Friday and printer and
power strip.
 
Bed.
 
Table with clock, radio, and lamp.
 
Another table with hardware terminal (so I can hack while in bed, via serial
port on CoCo).
 
K4 keyboard setup with amp/speaker, sequencer, Midi disk drive, etc.
 
Bookshelf with magazines and misc. junk, and filing cabinet (on wheels, lid
opens from top).
 
Storage bins (used to lug CoCo stuff to 'Fests) stacked three high, full of
junk.
 
And this, my friends, is my room.  <whew>
 
          Allen

And here is me, in all my nerdy glory.

And this is what the other wall looks like, after returning home from a CoCoFest.

Don’t panic! The room didn’t always look like that…

Until next time…

Our magazine ads, before they were typeset…

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While going through some random disk images, I found some text files that seem to be the Sub-Etha Software ads, before we took them to the printshop to have them typeset by a professional.

First, this looks like the first ad we planned to run in Rainbow magazine, before we got a deal to do a quarter page inside. Note the company name was going to be Forty-Two Technology and the phone # listed was before I had a dedicated line.

Multi-Basic-- Ever wonder why, with 128K or 512K, you cannot use even 32K under RS-Dos?  Well now there's MultiBasic, making possible, without adding ANY commands, the use of ALL of your CoCo3's memory by basic.  Have several programs loaded in memory at once, able to call subroutines from each other, move between each other, even load other programs from disk, all without variable loss or interruption of program flow.

Shadow BBS-- Finally, a CoCo3 RS-Dos BBS with power, speed, and flair.  Uses RS232 Pak or serial port. Features include full ANSI, X/Y Modem, 28 line 40/80 column support, 240 byte onscreen status window, software clock, up to 255 independently numbered message areas, borderlines, one-liner discussions, surveys, auto-messages, doors to external programs, user profiles, full sysop utilities, much, much more! See for yourself, call ShadowBBS HQ at (409)63-REALM.  Order thru BBS or thru: Forty-Two Technology, PO Box 4242, Lufkin, TX 75901. (409)637-7604.

Next up is the prototype for the ad we did run, featuring MultiBASIC and SHADOW BBS by Terry Todd. We didn’t have a dedicated phone number yet, so the 632-4200 was just a made up one for the mockup.

 _____________________________________________________________
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 | MULTIBASIC - Use all 128K/512K of your CoCo 3 without     |
 | learning ANY new commands!  Have several programs loaded  |
 | at once sharing subroutines and variables!  Load programs |
 | without losing variables, and more!  INTRO. PRICE: $24.95 |
 |                                                           |
 | SHADOW BBS - An RS-Dos BBS with Power, Speed, and Flair!  |
 | ANSI, X/Y Modem, Clock, Surveys, AutoMessage, Up to 255   |
 | Msg Areas, User Profiles, Doors, Borderlines, Full SysOp  |
 | Utilities, and Much, Much More!  Runs on 128K CoCo 3 with |
 | Disk Drive(s), Serial Port OR RS232 pak!  Call and see    |
 | for yourself!  (409) 63-REALM        INTRO. PRICE: $34.95 |
 |                                                           |
 | Sub-Etha Software          Call or write for information! |
 |  P.O. Box 152442           Add $2.00 S&H and $3.00 C.O.D. |
 | Lufkin, TX  75901          Texas residents add 8.25% tax. |
 |  (409)  632-4200                   "Don't Panic!"         |
 |___________________________________________________________|

Next, another prototype… Much closer to what ended up being typeset and published – and even has the real phone number. These blank spots at the top where were the logo was going to go. I did these ASCII ones to show them exactly what we wanted.

 _____________________________________________________________
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 | Ever  wonder  why,  with a 128K or 512K CoCo 3 you cannot |
 | even use 32K under RS-Dos?  Well, now there's MultiBasic, |
 | making  possible  without  adding ANY commands the use of |
 | your CoCo 3's "hidden" memory  by  Basic.   Have  several |
 | programs   loaded   in   memory  at  once  able  to  call |
 | subroutines from each other.  Move  between  programs and |
 | load  other  programs  from disk without variable loss or |
 | interruption of program flow.  A "must-have"  utility for |
 | Basic programmers!                                        |
 |                                                           |
 | INTRODUCTORY PRICE ............................... $24.95 |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |                      /) Shadow  BBS (\                    |
 |    Complete RS-Dos BBS with Low Hardware Requirements!    |
 |                                                           |
 | Finally, an RS-Dos CoCo 3  BBS  with  power,  speed,  and |
 | flair!   Uses  RS232 Pak OR serial port! Features include |
 | ANSI, X/Y Modem file  transfers,  28  line  40/80  column |
 | support,  240  byte  on-screen  status  window,  software |
 | clock, up to 255 independently  numbered  message  areas, |
 | borderlines, one-liner discussions, surveys, automessage, |
 | doors to external programs,  user  profiles,  full  SysOp |
 | utilities,  and  much,  much  more!  And unlike most BBSs |
 | you've seen, no hard drive, RS232 Pak, or memory  upgrade |
 | is  required!  Shadow  BBS will run on a 128K CoCo 3 with |
 | one disk drive and a modem, yet it is capable  of  taking |
 | advantage  of  all  the hardware your system includes.  A |
 | full appreciation of Shadow BBS comes not, however,  from |
 | it's many features or it's low hardware requirements, but |
 | from the flair and smoothness of the program itself.   We |
 | want  you  to  see what this incredible BBS can do.  Call |
 | The Shadow's Realm, the official Shadow BBS HQ system, at |
 | (409)  63-REALM  (300/1200  Baud,  24  Hrs.)  and see for |
 | yourself!                                                 |
 |                                                           |
 | INTRODUCTORY PRICE ............................... $34.95 |
 |                                                           |
 |                                                           |
 |   Sub-Etha Software        Call or Write for Information! |
 |    P.O. Box 142442         Add $2.00 S&H and $2.50 C.O.D. |
 |  Lufkin, Texas 75915       Texas residents add 8.25% tax. |
 | (409) 639-ETHA [3842]              "Don't Panic!"         |
 |___________________________________________________________|

And this one, AD4.txt, is another variation:

_____________________________________________________________
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|                                                           |
|___________________________________________________________|
||                                                         ||
||                    *: MultiBasic :*                     ||
||   More Memory for Basic without Learning New Commands!  ||
||                                                         ||
|| Ever  wonder why, with a 128K or 512K CoCo 3 you cannot ||
|| even  use  32K  under  RS-Dos?    Well,   now   there's ||
|| MultiBasic, making possible without adding ANY commands ||
|| the use of your CoCo  3's  "hidden"  memory  by  Basic. ||
|| Have  several programs loaded in memory at once able to ||
|| call  subroutines  from  each  other.    Move   between ||
|| programs  and  load  other  programs  from disk without ||
|| variable loss  or  interruption  of  program  flow.   A ||
|| "must-have" utility for Basic programmers!              ||
||                                                         ||
|| INTRODUCTORY PRICE ............................. $24.95 ||
||                                                         ||
||                                                         ||
||                     *: Shadow BBS :*                    ||
||   Complete RS-Dos BBS with Low Hardware Requirements!   ||
||                                                         ||
|| Finally, an RS-Dos CoCo 3 BBS with  power,  speed,  and ||
|| flair!  Uses RS232 Pak OR serial port! Features include ||
|| ANSI, X/Y Modem file transfers, 28  line  40/80  column ||
|| support,  240  byte  on-screen  status window, software ||
|| clock, up to 255 independently numbered message  areas, ||
|| borderlines (quotes),  one-liner  discussions, surveys, ||
|| automessage, doors to external programs, user profiles, ||
|| full  SysOp utilities, and much, much more!  And unlike ||
|| most BBSs you've seen, no hard  drive,  RS232  Pak,  or ||
|| memory  upgrade  is  required! Shadow BBS will run on a ||
|| 128K CoCo 3 with one disk drive and a modem, yet it  is ||
|| capable  of  taking  advantage of all the hardware your ||
|| system includes.  A  full  appreciation  of  Shadow BBS ||
|| comes not, however, from it's many features or it's low ||
|| hardware  requirements,  but   from   the   flair   and ||
|| smoothness  of  the program itself.  We want you to see ||
|| what this incredible BBS can  do.   Call  The  Shadow's ||
|| Realm,  the  official  Shadow  BBS  HQ system, at (409) ||
|| 63-REALM (300/1200 Baud, 24 Hrs.) and see for yourself! ||
||                                                         ||
|| INTRODUCTORY PRICE ............................. $34.95 ||
||_________________________________________________________||
|                                                           |
|    Sub-Etha Software      Call or Write for Information!  |
|     P.O. Box 152442       Add $2.50 S&H and $3.50 C.O.D.  |
|   Lufkin, Texas 75915     Texas residents add 8.25% tax.  |
|  (409) 639-ETHA [3842]    "Don't Panic -- We Ship Fast!"  |
|___________________________________________________________|

I guess by this next one we trusted the typesetting person, since it was just the raw text:

Happy Holidays From...

 SUB-ETHA SOFTWARE

"In Support of the CoCo"

Thanks to those who stopped by our booth at the CoCo Fest!

 *: MiniBanners :*
 Multiple Line Banners on ANY Printer!

NEW!  Create single or multiple line banners with adjustable heights and
widths.  Up to 16 lines of text with independently sized characters.  Even
works with daisy wheel and non-graphic printers!  Includes over 30 fonts!

INTRODUCTORY PRICE ................................................ $14.95

 *: MultiBasic :*
 More Memory for Basic without Learning New Commands! 

PRETTY NEW!  Tired of being limited to 22K for Basic?  We were too, so we
created MultiBasic, a utility which allows you to use the "hidden" memory of
your CoCo 3 without learning ANY new commands.  Load multiple programs, disk
chain, share subroutines and variables, all without interrupting program flow.

HOLIDAY PRICE ..................................................... $24.95

 *: Shadow BBS :*
 Complete RS-Dos BBS with Low Hardware Requirements!

ALSO PRETTY NEW!  Finally, an RS-Dos BBS with power, speed, and flair.  Uses
RS232 Pak OR serial port.  Does not require a hard drive or memory upgrade! 
Features:  SysOp Utilities, Up to 255 Msg Areas, X/Y Modem, ANSI, Status
Window, Clock, AutoMessage, User Surveys and Profiles, and too much more to
mention here!  A full appreciation of Shadow BBS comes not, however, from it's
many features or low hardware requirements, but from the flair and smoothness
of the program itself.  We want you to see what this BBS can do.  Call the
Shadow's Realm, the official Shadow BBS HQ, at (409) 63-REALM (300-2400 Baud,
24 Hrs.) and see for yourself!

HOLIDAY PRICE ..................................................... $34.95

I wonder what else I will find as I go through these things…

ISO 8601 for dates and times

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In a comment on my recent post about C and concatinating strings, there were some very cool suggestions about ways to handle creating a string full of comma separated values (like a .csv file to open in a spreadsheet).

The always helpful MiaM asked:

“Why slash for dates? ISO 8601 specifies the minus/dash sign :)”

-MiaM

In my posted example, there was a date/time at the start of each entry like this:

2024/10/18,12:30:06,100,0.00,0,0,0,902.0,902.0,928.0, . . .

I recall these log files certainly had date/time in them before I ever touched the code, though I do not recall what the format was back then. In the USA, the standard convention for a date is month/day/year using slashes, such as 10/21/2024.

When I started using the OS-9 operating system on my Radio Shack Color Computer, it would prompt for date/time on startup using a different format — yy/mm/dd:

OS-9 Level 1 on a 64K Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer (emulated).

And yes, that would have caused problems when Y2K came around, but by then we already had updated utilities that allowed four-digit years.

But listing year first seemed “weird and backwards” to me. Folks who started using PC-DOS on an IBM PC got used to it in a more “normal” way, it seems:

IBM PC DOS 1.00 | PCjs Machines

At some point, I got used to it, and learned a great reason to putting the year first: sorting! Over the past 28 years, I have taken hundreds of thousands of digital pictures. The default filename on my first camera was:

1031_001.JPG - taken October 31, image 001 of that day.

This was due to the 8 character filename limit that PCs had back then. If they had put the year in, like “103196”, there would only be room for a 2-digit number after it like “10319601”, “10319602”, “10319603”, etc. Considering the lack of memory on that early camera, that might have been fine for most folks. After UPGRADING the storage to 5MB, the camera could take 99 photos before you had to hook it up to a computer via an RS232 serial cable and download the images.

But I digress.

Once long filenames were a thing, I started naming photos with the full date. I could have used “MMDDYYYY_number.jpg” like this:

01011996_001.jpg - first photo taken on 1/1/1996
02011996_001.jpg - first photo taken on 2/1/1996
01011997_001.jpg - first photo taken on 1/1/1997
01011998_001.jpg - first photo taken on 1/1/1998

…but if you sorted those photos by filename, you would not get them in date order:

01011996_001.jpg - first photo taken on 1/1/1996
01011997_001.jpg - first photo taken on 1/1/1997
01011998_001.jpg - first photo taken on 1/1/1998
02011996_001.jpg - first photo taken on 2/1/1996

Above, you can see it shows me a photo from 1996, then 1997, then 1998, then 1996. Placing the year as the first number solves this, and allows files to be grouped by year, then month, then day. (I mean, I know we like “mm/dd/yyyy in the USA, but how often do we want to sort to find “all the files taken in January of any year” beyond looking for birthday or holiday photos, anyway?)

By doing year first, everything sorts as we expect:

19960101_001.jpg - first photo taken on 1/1/1996
19960201_001.jpg - first photo taken on 2/1/1996
19970101_001.jpg - first photo taken on 1/1/1997
19980101_001.jpg - first photo taken on 1/1/1998

Side Note: I gave up on image numbers waybackwhen, and use the format YYYMMDD_HHMMSS.jpg for my photos. See my theme park photos, and my Renaissance festival photos, for an example, though many of the earliest photos may still be in the old MMDD_XXX format. I highly recommend the Mac utility ExifRenamer for renaming photos to various formats.

Anyway . . . MiaM brought up ISO 8601:

ISO 8601 – Wikipedia

It specifies a universal standard for date/time values. This table was copied from the wikipedia page:

Date2024-10-21
Time in UTC11:24:56Z
T112456Z
Date and time in UTC2024-10-21T11:24:56Z
20241021T112456Z
Date and time with the offset2024-10-20T23:24:56−12:00 UTC−12:00 [refresh]
2024-10-21T11:24:56+00:00 UTC+00:00 [refresh]
2024-10-21T23:24:56+12:00 UTC+12:00 [refresh]
Week2024-W43
Week with weekday2024-W43‐1
Ordinal date2024‐295

The use of a dash in the year (2024-10-21) versus the slash like we tend to do in the USA would be a simple change. Yet, when I look at Excel, when you select the “short date” format, it defaults to “mm/dd/yyyy” (see image to the right).

I might expect slashes were used so the .csv file could import in to Excel, but Excel doesn’t seem to care. It figures it out. I also now wonder if using this format was intentional, and it may have originally been mm/dd/yyyy to match what Excel defaults to.

Speaking of defaults … in other parts of the world, the date/time format is different (such as dd/mm/year in Europe, which always message me up if the day is 12 or less since I cannot tell if 1/10/2024 is January 10th, or October 1st).

But now that I have been pointed to this standard, I think I am going to try to force myself to adopt the ISO 8601 standard when I start representing dates in software. No doubt, seeing the USA format in the Windows application I maintain may be odd to folks in other parts of the world. If I switch it to use the ISO 8601 standard, it might seem odd to some folks, but at least there is a reason that can be referenced.

The more you know.