SI you- nit

This is a sick joke my physics profs made when they wanted to introduce us to System Internationale Units. These professors were extremely entertaining and funny individuals which is really the only way to teach a pretty boring subject.

I have a pet peeve. It is the way people write dates, more the various ways people write dates.

Today for example is August 26, 2010. This can be written as 26.08.2010; 08/26/2010;26/aug/2010. I could go on, the permutations are endless. This is a concern for me because I write dates several times a day, and occasionally have to fill in patient birth dates on forms.

That is why 20 years ago, I decided that I would follow the SI convention of writing dates as YYYY.MM.DD or YY.MM.DD (we are far enough into the century now). This may not be best or most logical solution but they did make a decision and I have chosen to follow it.

While I realize that the US decided not to use the metric system, Canada and most of the world did and I can't understand why we are unable to figure out a consistent way of writing dates. Every time I fill out a form now, I have to look at how they want the date configured. Worse is when you are copying from one form with the date in one format to a form with the date in another format.

Come on people even in the US we are not dosing in grains and minims anymore.

SI You Nits!