The upcoming temporal anomaly

I was perusing James Randi's newsletter tonight, and saw his mention (via his friend Scot Morris) that we have one of those calendar-clock oddities coming up early this Sunday morning. A few minutes after 2 in the morning, it will be 02:03:04 05/06/07.

Well, I thought this was cool, and decided to share it with my 16-year-old son when he came in from hanging out with his friends. When I informed him of the interesting tidbit, he nodded appreciatively for about 2 seconds, and then said, "It will be much better just after 8 o'clock."

This stopped me cold. "Why?"

"Well, then it will be 05/06/07 08:09:10.111213... and you can go on as long as you want."

Mind you, this kid hates math. And this occurred to him immediately. As Jimmy Durante used to say, I'm stupified.

A large number

Thirteen undecillion, two hundred fifty-six decillion, two hundred seventy-eight nonillion, eight hundred eighty-seven octillion, nine hundred eighty-nine septillion, four hundred fifty-seven sextillion, six hundred fifty-one quintillion, eighteen quadrillion, eight hundred sixty-five trillion, nine hundred one billion, four hundred one million, seven hundred four thousand, six hundred forty.

Just another number. Pretty far up the ol' x-axis, but still an ordinary (and ordinal) integer.

Just don't express it in base 16.