Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Leap Day

I was going to write some fun information about February 29th including a story on Sadie Hawkins Day, which I thought was today.  Apparently not although the premise of role-reversal (where the woman can ask the man) is the same. I ended up in a gopher hole reading all about the origins of Sadie Hawkins’ Day coming out of the Lil Abner comicstrip.  I used to read that strip faithfully and I loved that particular storyline because it was always so humorous.  Isn’t it amazing how comics can influence our culture?  After the original story appeared in November 1937 it became so popular around the colleges and high schools in the United States that they had  Sadie Hawkins’ Dances.
       A person born in a Leap Year may be called a leapling but only if you can run very fast.  In some areas by law the leapling must change his birthday to February 28th or March 1st (at least they have a choice).  In the Pirates of Penzance the poor apprentice pirate who was a leapling discovered that he was bound by his actual birthday for 21 years (tricky pirates)!
       But enough about leap year traditions.  As I was navigating through the web looking for leaping information I stumbled on what is supposed to occur in 2012, and from thence, I stumbled upon FLOPS.  Yes, you may well sit with your mouth open!  The world of computers has always been baffling, amusing and frustrating to me.  The books on computers are definitely sent to try a person of normal common sense, what with their ill-written instructions and acronyms.  But this one, well, I had to stop and read more. 
       What is a FLOPS, you may well ask?  It is a measure of FLoating point OPerations per Second for a super duper space computer (notice the selectiveness of picking up initials?).  I clicked on FLOPS and viola! there was a complete item on FLOPS.  I diligently began reading but after the third line “it did not compute”.  But I am practicing on bringing the acronym into normal conversation.  How is this for size,
“By next leap year I plan to run the Sadie Hawkins’ Day race so fast they will need to measure by FLOPS.”

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