09-09-09

The world did not end yesterday, despite what predictions you may have seen on YouTube. I waited until it was "today" all over the world before announcing this, just in case. While I have never bought into numerology or astrology, the significance of this calendrical anomaly has caused me to stop and think a minute.

It represents the last set of repeating, single-digit dates that we'll see for almost a century(next one is January 1, 2101).

No matter how your culture writes the date, in the Gregorian calendar, it is the same all over the world. (In Europe for example we write date-month-year, in the US we write month-date-year, in some computer programs, data is sorted year-month-date.

Lots of folks got married yesterday. I mean LOTS of folks, all over the world. No excuses for those husbands to forget their anniversaries!

A few lucky children in the world turned 9 years old yesterday. Some of them even got their pictures in the paper because of it. How cool is that!

Apple iTunes 9 was launched yesterday. This new version supports Blue-ray technology. I know a number of technogeeks are celebrating.

All 13 albums of the Beatles were digitally remastered and released yesterday. Anyone got €200 to spare (about US$ 300) ? Now for me, this is reason to celebrate! And the video game the Beatles Rock Band was also released, for those who want to try and imitate these legends.

The significance of the number nine should also be examined. It is known that if 9 is multiplied by any other number, from 2 to 9, the two digits of the answer will add up to nine. For instance, 2 x 9 = 18. 18, made up of 1 and 8. (OK, yes, I am a math geek.)

Tim Burton released his new film "9," an animated tale about the apocalypse, yesterday. It is supposed to be the next cult hit.

In some cultures 9 is lucky, but in some it is just the opposite. For instance, in China, nine is associated with long life due to its similarity in pronunciation to the local word for long-lasting. While in Japan, the word for nine is a homophone of the word for suffering, so the number is considered highly unlucky.

One thing you couldn't do yesterday is look for LOLcats. It was declared A Day Without Cats. But you can find them again today!

Numerologists (please note, these are not scientists!) believe that mystical significance or vibrations can be assigned to each numeral one through nine, and different combinations of the digits produce tangible results in life depending on their application. As the final numeral, the number nine holds special rank. It is associated with forgiveness, compassion and success on the positive side as well as arrogance and self-righteousness on the negative. I have not yet heard their self-congratulations on how right they were...

Google, in its new tradition of creating logos for various occasions, marked the event at 9:09 in the US with a special logo . Some folks consider this further proof that Google is run by aliens.

Some biblical mystics also weighed in on this date as being very auspicious, as it is the upside-down number of "the beast" - satan = 666.

Internet marketing got a "boost" yesterday. Not sure if this is a good thing, but Stompernet has reduced its membership fee from $800 to $1.99 per month.

There was nothing significant that I noticed in my life yesterday. but if you had something in yours, please let me know.