[time-nuts] 20th year of time nuts mailing list

[Wes]

Congratulations Tom!  Happy, prosperous and healthy New Year to you and all of 
the other nuts.

Wes Stewart,  N7WS

On 12/31/2020 10:02 PM, Tom Van Baak wrote:
> Hello time nuts,
>
> Ah, it is 2021-01-01 (JD 2459215.5, MJD 59215) which is nice because that 
> means it's not 2020 anymore.
>
> One reason I've been looking forward to 2021 is that it's now officially the 
> 20th year of the time nuts mailing list. So this is a note to say *thank you* 
> to everyone for making it so amazing over the years. I get comments all the 
> time about this mailing list; its depth, its high SNR, its focus, its vast 
> archive of quality postings, and especially, the community that evolved around 
> the list.
>
> On the web the phrase "time nut" is now a proper noun, sometimes an adjective, 
> or occasionally a diagnosis or disease. Never in my wildest dreams did I think 
> any of this would happen. I thought my early interest in nixie tubes, clocks, 
> electronics, and precise timing might be a passing phase, and that the 
> frequency of eBay purchases would fade. But no. This turns out to be an 
> incredibly wide, deep, interesting, and rewarding hobby. The mailing list 
> started with 6 people (half of whom are still active) and we now have 1850 
> members. [1]
>
> Speaking of history, and also to put time-nuts into perspective, I'd like to 
> mention that leapsecond.com (tvb) and febo.com (jra) predate Y2K (2000), 
> wikipedia (2001), facebook (2004), youtube (2005), twitter (2006), reddit 
> (2006), iPhone (2007), duckduckgo (2008), gmail (2004, 2009), eevblog (2009), 
> instagram (2010), snapchat (2011), outlook (2012), and literally millions of 
> other web sites and mailing lists.
>
> When this all started for us it was WWV on short-wave, ACTS by phone, Loran-C, 
> GOES, WWVB, GPS, Win98, dial-up, and my search engine was altavista.dec.com. 
> It's scary to think how much has changed in 20 years. Fun fact: I started 
> leapsecond.com so I could post the results of a Y2K Colorado visit to NIST. If 
> the world was going to crash I was going to be at ground zero, with a camera. [2]
>
> Anyway, stay safe, stay healthy, stay timely. Here's to a new decade and a 
> happy new year to all of us.
>
> /tvb
>
> [1] http://leapsecond.com/time-nuts.htm#history
>
> [2] http://leapsecond.com/y2k/