2 x 222222

thank you

22.02.2022 was amazing!

It started as a family-dinner-discussion in November 2016 about the date 11/11 being a nice date, and that 22.02.2022 would be the ultimate mathemagical date.

I bought the domain name same night in 2016, and on 21 April 2019 - 1038 days early - the countdown to 22.02.2022 @ 22:22 went live.

2019 family reaction: OK, that's nice

2021 family reaction: Dad, you are crazy. Stop it.

A few weeks before 22.02.2022 I was approached by Maura Judkis, a journalist at Washington Post. She wanted to do an article about the date, and asked if I wanted to do an interview. Without previous experience I threw myself into it. And 1½ weeks later I found myself in a Zoom call with Maura from USA.

She had done great research including talking to wedding planners and pregnant women and wanted to know my view. The article is here, and it went online a few days before 22.02.2022.

I later realized that USA Today also covered the story, linking to the countdown - and I started getting a bit nervous about how it would all end.

How was my 22.02.2022?

It was a normal day going to work in the morning, although with lots of Twitter interaction on my commute on the train. I kept my eye on Twitter throughout the day, and an eye to the website trafic as I was unsure how much trafic they could handle. Like all other amateurs I rely on external hosting, and had no experience in large volume trafic.

There was A LOT going on on Twitter - 22.02.2022 was a major theme, Twosday was trending and lots of thoughts went into how it would all end up. Would anyone want to look at the countdown, would web servers be able to cope with the trafic - if any?

As I checked the website a few times during the day, I realized that it was unaccesible a few times - traffic exceeded capacity of the web servers.

On the way home I called my wife to tell that I had one thing to do when entering the house: Get to my PC and fix some capacity stuff - quickly done.

And from there on taking part in the celebrations she had prepared: Good food, champaign, and cake.

Our son (on the pic) had been wearing a Twosday T-shirt to University, and our daughter also wearing one while travelling in Central America.

It started as a bit of a joke, yet all our interactions on Twitter made it fun.

I never had a goal, yet a total of 2x22222 + 371 = 44.815 people visited the countdown during 22.02.2022.

A warm 2x22222

+ 371

THANK YOU FOR THE FUN