Fun with Time and Excel

This morning in Excel 2007 class I discovered a fun thing to do with a spreadsheet.

1. In the middle of the screen type the date of your birth.  In the cell to the right enter a zero.
2. In the cell below, type the date of your first birthday, and in the cell to the right, the number one.
3. Select all four cells and drag the fill handle down, using AutoFill to fill in future dates.
4. Select all four cells and drag the fill handle up to fill in past dates.

Here's an example for someone who was born on September 11, 2001:

In this example the dates are only extended 10 years into the future and 10 years into the past.  However, there's no limit to how far back or how far forward you can go.  On the spreadsheet for my actual birthdate I went as far back as my Dad's birth year and discovered that I was "negative thirty" (-30) years old when my father was born.

This is the first time I've ever thought of being a negative age.

Of course this exercise can be a tad bit depressing, too, if you go far enough into the future, bypassing the natural life expectancy of imperfect humans.  I see my parents dying... and I don't like it.

The positive thing, though, is this:  How many times do we hear people longing to "go back into the past" when things were nicer and they were much younger?  Well, with this method of "time travel via spreadsheet", you can spend a bit of time imagining old age, and then as you utter the above-mentioned lament, your wish can now come true!  You can "go back", so to speak, and tell your parents and others how much you love them.

I think I'll take the train and go visit my parents again, since I'm still unemployed and we've still got "rail miles" on our Amtrak credit card.

So that I can tell them something.