The Progress Bar

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 00        10        20        30        40        50        60        70    76

The Progress Bar

At about 10:15 PM GMT (5:15 PM EST) on March 3rd, a new prompt appears when you connect to the BBS. It includes an ETA, which changes randomly and is likely useless (and is sometimes humorous), and a progress bar, which has reached 76/76 as of 1:04 PM GMT (7:04 PM EST; 10:04 AM PST).

[edit] Information

• The progress bar is 76 characters wide (78 if you count the borders).
• Each ▒ is considered one block.
• The : character appears to equal half of a ▒. Update: This appears to have only happened at 38.5. While 38.5 was seen multiple times, the : character has not been seen in the progress bar since.
• The progress bar was first sighted by CatZilla, on March 3rd, 2010, at 9:51 PM GMT (1:51 PM PST). It was at 38 and a half blocks.
• For Images found in the BBS before, during and after the progress bar, look at the Known Images section.

[edit] Sightings

[edit] First Sightings

[edit] All Sightings

March 3rd, 2010:

March 4th, 2010:

March 5th, 2010:

[edit] Estimated Progress Bar Completion Time

Countdown

Now these points of data make a beautiful line...

To calculate the average amount of time between tick advancement, only the first time that a certain tick value was reached counts towards the average rate. This means that upon multiple occurrences of the same number in a row, only the first time counts.

The average rate of tick advancement is: 72.483 minutes per tick (Official as of 0708 PST (UTC-8))

The amount of time remaining based on this average rate is: 3.624 hours (Counting from 0708 PST (UTC-8))

This puts the approximate time of 76/76 ticks at: 1045 PST (UTC-8) on 3/5/2010 (Other timezones...)

This also approximates the start time (0/76 ticks) at: 1456 PST (UTC-8) on 3/1/2010

At 2:45 AM PST the contributor that did this, volt, went to sleep. --Volt 10:10, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

If you want to have a hand at updating the numbers above (and the image), download the file here: File:Data.xlsx

At 8:00 AM PST Voltas has started updating this (Voltas is unrelated to Volt)

READ HOW TO DO IT:

1. Add date+time and tick number to bottom of left side
2. EDIT ORANGE CELLS ON RIGHT
   1. Type digits of new slope (y = slope*x+number) into top box at right
   2. Subtract 1 from the "ticks left"
   3. Correct the "Now" time
3. UPDATE WIKI WITH GREEN CELLS
4. Screencap Excel, crop, and update the old image with the new image

[edit] Various Estimated Time Remaining Messages

• about seven
• 96 Fortnights
• Late Eocene
• 91 Weeks 46 Days 95 Hours (Approximately)
• 5321 Millennia
• 1946 Geological Eras
• 66 Femtoseconds (Or Smaller)
• Last Thursday (Except on Weekends)
• NEXT TUESDAY (UNLESS OTHERWISE REDETERMINED)
• 12:00AM FEBRUARY 30TH, 15,354BC
• EARLY DECEMBER, FURONGIAN EPOCH
• 39 Cubic Steradians
• AFTER THE HEAT-DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE
• 89 INVERSE ACERS (UNLESS OTHERWISE REDETERMINED)
• Y2K
• 91 Weeks
• 2871 GEOLOGICAL ERAS
• 49 Weeks
• EARLY PRECAMBRIAN
• 64 MONTHS 10 MONTHS 45 MONTHS (EXACTLY)
• 4781 MILLENNIA
• LATE EVENING, EARLY ORDOVICIAN
• 100 INVERSE ACRES (UNLESS OTHERWISE REDETERMINED)
• Cave Johnson's Birthday
• MORE LIKE SIX DAYS
• When the cows come home
• 68 FORTNIGHTS
• 36 DAYS BEFORE NEXT SATURDAY
• PRECISELY

Possible references:

• about seven
  • Raminator from the forums at http://www.blackmesasource.com.

• http://www.last-thursday.org/
  • On the contactinfo page, the email address is everyone.else@last-thursday.org. "Everyone Else" is featured in the movie 'Knowing' represented as two backward capital E's (33) and signified the remainder of humanity would be destroyed.
  • More likely [1] this.

• 66 Femtoseconds
  • Turning metal black (65 femtosecond laser http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=847)
  • Surgery (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/110531613/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0)

• 96 Fortnights
  • is 1,344 days, 32,256 hours, 1,935,360 minutes, etc

• 91 Weeks 46 Days 95 Hours (Approximately)
  • is 16,487 hours, 989,220 minutes, etc

• EARLY PRECAMBRIAN, EARLY ORDOVICIAN, FURONGIAN EPOCH, LATE EOCENE
  • All are major extinction events in the history of Earth:
  • (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event)

• MORE LIKE SIX DAYS

• Valve Time

• MFM Disk Error featured in one of the Fourth Contact images (MFM makes use of "clock bits": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Frequency_Modulation