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).

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.

Sightings

First Sightings

All Sightings

March 3rd, 2010:

March 4th, 2010:

March 5th, 2010:

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

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