Leap Day, to me, means ...

It's amazing how much software ends up released with no, or wrong, leap year calculations. You'd think that they could get ordinary (YYYY % 4) right, but Nooooo.

The first one I ran into was the QX-PC card for my Epson QX-10.

Did you remember to accommodate the 400-year rule when counting?

I wish I had mod points, and I wish there was a "+1 Totally useless, but strangely fascinating" option.

There will always be comic book shops in major markets, even if there are no new comics. There will be stacks of old comics in droves that people can purchase or collect. And there will be stacks of bound collections, books, where companies take a handful of issues and press them into a hardcover book. Not to mention digital collections available on CD/USB and whatnot.

Not to mention the plethora of comic book themed stuff since Marvel and DC started going wild with big budget movies. Shirts, toys, video games, mechanical pinball machines, board games, and so on. That's how most comic shops are now anyways. You have sections of toys, board games, video games, and then a comic book section.

If Marvel and DC keep racking up interest in their characters and franchises with movies then they'll always be creating new fans for their comics and other merchandise.

It gets even more interesting.

Leap years aren't quite periodic under the Gregorian calendar, since every hundredth year isn't a leap year, but every four-hundredth is. This also makes the distribution of days uneven. There are actually more Sunday February 29s than Thursday February 29s. There are 14 Wednesdays in the 400-year cycle, so it happens on average once every 28.57 years.

Utterly meaningless, but interesting nonetheless.

Well, are you accounting for the yearly Slashdot 5DigitUID Impregnation Day every June 1?

Might be a correlation....and the reason they all look like Taco. B)

Well, it doesn't neccesarily have to be your own birthday.

I chose that option because my son turns four today on his first birthday.

Not necessarily your own birthday. Could be your spouse, your children, your parents, your friends, or any other loved ones.

The social scientists claim that an average person can make stable relationships with somewhere between 100 and 250 [wikipedia.org] people. So, it makes sense that it's 0.068 times about 100.

It's a self-selecting sample though - many people probably can't be bothered to vote (I haven't). Whereas on the 29th of February, people who were born on a leapday are likely to be far more sensitive to the word "birthday" than usual, and thus may be far more likely to vote for something which acknowledges that.

There's also the possibility that people are just picking it for teh lolz. But I would guess that some significant fraction of the people picking that option are actually leapers.

Do you note your time of birth and adjust 6 hours every year?

Despite being technically true this is easily the most moronic thing I've read this week.

While it's true that the 24th was the traditional leap day, this explanation of why is, shall we say, orthogonal to reality. If a full day of error accumulated so early in the year, the one day every four years intercalation would be much more wrong than it actually is; if there were no leap years, a full day of error would accumulate a few minutes before midnight on Dec. 31 of the fourth year.

In fact, the reason is that in the ancient Roman calendar the days of each month were counted relative to the kalends (first day of the month), ides (fixed day about mid-month, the 15th in March, May, July and October, and the 13th in other months) and nones (two each month mid-way between ides and kalends). Thus, the Romans would have called Feb. 24 in a common year ante diem sextum Kalendas Martias (the sixth day before the Kalends of March; in Latin one counts from one in such contexts, so Feb. 28 would have been ante diem secundum Kalendas Martias in a common year). See Wikipedia on months of the Roman calendar [wikipedia.org].

After Julius Caesar's calendar reform in 46 B.C., the leap day was inserted after the 24th, and called ante diem bis sextum Kalendas Martias ("second sixth day before the Kalends of March"); thus, the purpose of designating a particular day as the leap day at all becomes apparent in regards to the Roman calendar. At some point later on [wikipedia.org], the bis was attached to the first day of the two sixths (the 24th), leading to the custom of regarding the 24th as the leap day and the alternate terms 'bissextile day' and 'bissextile year' [wikipedia.org].

I'm salaried. I get paid every two weeks.

No, the salaried folks get overpaid less for February on a leap year. Most months have 31 days, and most of those that don't still have 30. So February is when these folks get paid more for doing less. The company is paying you as if you had worked the normal 30.6 days that an average month has, but you're only working 28, so that's 2.6 days you're not working, but still getting paid for. On leap year, that goes down to only 1.6 days you're unjustifiably paid for.

Actually, it's the contractors who are screwed by February in general, since they have fewer days available to work, but they still have to pay the usual amount for their monthly bills. And yes, they're less screwed on leap year, but that's still worse than the salaried folks, who merely receive less unearned money in a leap year.

do it. if he's smart he'll say yes so that he only has to worry about an anniversary gift every four years :)

I never understood the whole proposing business anyway (and yes, I am married).
What's the point in having one side being required to propose to the other one? The result, a mutual agreement to marry, is the same, whoever starts the process.

In your position, I would be sorely tempted to send a note today saying "hey, haven't talked to you guys in a while - how's your day going?"

(Sarcasm would vary depending on what terms you left the company.)

I think most of the efforts at reforming timekeeping systems revolve around the fact that you're counting by 12, then kinda-30, then 24, then 60, then 60, and also by 7. The real kicker is that a lot of that stuff dates back to the Sumerians, and some of the other peculiarities of the calendar (including when Leap Day is) had to do with decisions made by Caeser Augustus.

But hey, base 12 is just like base 10, if you happen to have 2 extra fingers.

No,it means one less working day rather than two.

I'm here for you ... "Yet ...reckoning by my natal day ... I am a little boy of five?" (now that tune will be stuck in my head all day...)