I found a misfiled receipt in the folder hanging next to my tax folder. It might have been there for a while – I’m not sure. I’m no fan of overpaying my taxes, so I looked for the transaction date to see if it’s from 2012 and I can use it in my next tax filing, or if I messed up on a previous year’s tax filing. A few seconds of scanning revealed 11/01/12 Seriously? Somebody thinks this string of characters conveys useful information. Or maybe this person just hates other people. There are 6 possible ways to reorder the year, month, and day in a date. Fortunately, 3 of these orders are not in widespread use. The ones that are widely used are year-month-day day-month-year month-day-year So the plausible dates for my receipt are 2011 January 12 11 January 2012 November 1, 2012 So, either I messed up my 2011 taxes and can file an adjustment request, or I can use this receipt on my 2012 taxes. Great. Maybe I’ll try to invent some parallel-universe technology, try ...