I remember my 21st birthday from deep in the mists of time we used to call 1978. Sad to relate, I don’t remember it well. I know for sure that I was there, but everything else is a little “fluffy around the edges,” as it were.

Last year, as you may recall, I celebrated the 21st anniversary of the 21st anniversary of my 21st birthday. In a blog pertaining to that august occasion — 21 + 21 + 21 = Eeek Alors! — I referenced the InternetLiveStats website where you can watch a depiction of the amount of “stuff” that is happening on the internet each and every second (it’s scary to watch the seconds slip by).

I also made mention of my Countdown Timer project, noting: “I still have 37 years to complete my Countdown Timer, whose task it will be to display the number of years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds remaining to the commencement of my 100th birthday celebrations.”

As fate would have it, I spoke too soon, because it recently struck me that in just two days as I pen these words, I will in fact be celebrating my 100th Birthday. Of course, this assumes we are employing the base-8 (octal) number system. For those unfortunates who are still chained to our grandparents’ base-10 (decimal) system, 100₈ = 64₁₀.

Of course, now I have Paul McCartney’s When I’m Sixty-Four song rattling around my noggin (speaking of noggins, does anyone else remember Noggin the Nog? In addition to the books, the TV series is considered to be a cult classic from the golden age of British children’s television). Did you know that Paul actually wrote this classic in 1956 when he was only 14 years old? It later appeared on the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967.

As Tom Burk alluded to in a comment to my 21 + 21 + 21 column, 63 in decimal is 111111 in binary, which means I’m in the final days of being able to use only six bits to represent my age. Soon I shall be able to stride around with the swagger of a 7-bit man.

Something else I just recognized is all the chances I’ve missed to enjoy previous 100th birthday celebrations. For example, 100₂ = 4₁₀, 100₃ = 9₁₀, and 100₄ = 16₁₀, but I was either too young to enjoy the occasion or too busy doing “stuff.” I should have availed myself of the opportunity with 100₅ = 25₁₀, 100₆ = 36₁₀, and 100₇ = 49₁₀, but I was young and foolish and the concept simply never struck me. Suffice it to say that, in addition to this year’s festivities, I will also be looking to my 100₉th = 81₁₀st birthday party as a warmup to the 100₁₀th extravaganza I’m anticipating in 2057 (mark your calendar).

As an aside, I recently ran across a jolly useful Base Number Conversion tool on the Extra Conversion website. If you visit this site, you’ll find a bunch of conversion calculators for all sorts of things, including Acceleration, Area, Energy, Length, Speed, Time, Volume, and Weight.

Meanwhile, my wife (Gina the Gorgeous) tells me that she is going to create a birthday cake that will make me squeal with delight. Some time ago, I mentioned that my Auntie Barbara used to make me awesome chocolate cakes on my birthdays when I was a kid, and I fear that Gina has taken this as a challenge. Strange packages containing curious cooking contrivances of unknown origin and nature have been arriving over the course of the past few days, all accompanied by crates of exotic ingredients from the far-flung corners of the globe. Also, Gina keeps on dropping words like “ganache” into the conversation in a menacing way.

And now I must away to perform my “limbering up” and “high-pitched squealing” exercises to ensure that I am fully prepared for the occasion of the 100₈th anniversary of the day I decided to grace this planet with my presence. I’m planning on making this a long weekend, so don’t expect any Cool Beans Blogs for the next few days (you can pass the time enjoying earlier Cool Beans Columns). I’ll C U on the flip side!