This should be a no-brainer for most geeks, but it was a slap in the face for me today. While at lunch with a coworker friend of mine, we were counting employees at our place of employment and how large the turnover has been and the size of it currently. As we were counting through, using the fingers on my hands, I had counted past ten, and was reusing my hands to keep track. Then my friend said:
"Just count in binary."
DUH! Why have I never thought of that? Honestly. I could count the entire staff on one hand using the binary counting system, rather than base 10 as I was earlier. I restarted, and all was well. In fact, I could count to 1,023 on two hands using binary and 1,048,575 if I included the 10 toes on my feet (although that could prove to be difficult).
At any event, I just wanted to say that it's amazing how the most obscure things in life, like knowing the binary number system, can be the most useful. From here on out, I'm counting on my hands in binary just for the fun of it. 🙂
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