Saturday, October 26, 2013

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - How Many Days Old Are You?

It's Saturday Night - 
time for more Genealogy Fun! 




NOTE:  If math befuddles you, use the Age Calculator at



Here's mine:

1)  I was 70 years old on Wednesday, 23 October.  My birth time, according to my birth certificate, was 4:58 PM.  Hmm, was there Daylight time in October 1943?  (WolframAlpha said Daylight Savings Time was not observed in California in October 1943!).

2)  I calculated my age (as of 5:58 PDT today) by multiplying 70 times 365 (=25550) and adding 18 for calendar leap days (1944 to 2012) (=25568) plus 3 more days since 23 October 2013 = 25,571.  

24 hours a day gives 613,704 hours.

60 minutes per hour gives 36,822,240 minutes.

60 seconds per minute gives 2,209,334,400 seconds.  Over 2.2 billion seconds.  Wow.

3)  Some thoughts:

*  2.2 billion seconds is almost 2.2 billion beats of my heart - all on rhythm (thank God!) and without stopping.  However, there are now ways to keep it beating if you get treatment, or to a hospital, in time!  

*  That's more than 25,571 wakeups (more because I love to take naps in my recliner!) - my brain went to sleep, regularized my breathing, stuff kept happening (digestion, healing, dreams), and then came to life after sleeping for minutes or hours.  

*  Of those 613,704 hours, I was awake for about 400,000 of them.  What have I thought about?  How many hours have I read books, newspapers, reports, papers, web pages?  

*  How many hours did I work and earn a salary in my life?  I figure 8 hours a day for 5 days a week for 50 weeks a year for about 38 years = 9,500 days, and about 76,000 hours, and about 4.56 million minutes.  I wonder how many minutes I goofed off or daydreamed?  

*  How many hours have I worked on my genealogy research, reading, writing, presenting, meetings, etc.?  I started in 1988, and worked on my genealogy perhaps 2 hours a day on average, until 2002, when I retired from working for a salary (I went to the local FHC nearly every Saturday during that time for 4-6 hours).  Since then, I've devoted an average of 7 to 8 hours a day to genealogy work.  I calculate about 40,000 hours devoted to genealogy efforts.

*  I wonder about longevity and mortality.  A lot.  My father died at 71, my mother at 82.  My grandparents died at 66, 80, 85 and 79.  That average is 77.  WolframAlpha says the average life expectancy (50% chance of attaining it) for a male aged 70 in the USA is 84 years old.  There is a 2.4% chance I'll live to be 100 years old.  That's if i'm "average!"  

4)  I just did - above!!  Can you tell that I'm a numbers type of person?  :)

The URL for this post is:

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver



Enjoyed your number, Randy. Thanks for sharing. I have a few more, a little over fours years more, but what are a few thousand seconds, among friend! What fun! ;-)

Diane Gould Hall said...

Visit my blog at
to see my numbers.
Thanks Randy for the Saturday fun. I gave you full credit on my blog.

Michigan Girl said...

I've worked this out several times with a software cd called "What Day Were You Born"

Also consult this site when I can't put my hands on the cd:

Thanks for the reminder...time to check it out...Cheers GenealogyHangout :)

Tanya said...

I have an app on my iphone called DayFinder. It will give you days, weeks, months and years apart.
It goes all the way back to the year 1600. Interesting, and I guess you could easily figure hours and minutes with the day information.