In reply to Michael's post asking for two more books to reach 20000 (yes, he must be itchy to reach another numerical milestone!), I was curious to see what 20000 (decimal) looks like in other numerical bases from 2-20: 2: 100111000100000 (binary) 3: 1000102202 4: 10320200 5: 1120000 6: 232332 7: 112211 8: 47040 (octal) 9: 30382 10: 20000 (decimal) 11: 14032 12: B6A8 13: 9146 14: 7408 15: 5DD5 16: 4E20 (hexadecimal) 17: 4138 18: 37D2 19: 2H7C 20: 2A00 Hmmmm, I am disappointed that 20000 in other bases is nothing special. No cool patterns -- no "Da Vinci" code stuff -- just "ordinary" sequences of numbers. There must be something wrong! 20000 (decimal) must be special in some way! It has to be special! Considering that base 10 (decimal) is also arbitrary in our modern world (why not 9 or 11 or ?), then I guess 20000 is nothing special either. That is, the current number of books, 19998, is only two less than 20000. Why aren't we celebrating over 19998? why does a 0.01% change all of a sudden start a wild party? (Don't we wish -- It's "par-tay time!") But I guess people like to see the odometer on the ole' car turn over from all 9's back to 0's. It's like a rebirth of sorts. So it is human nature, I suppose, to ascribe special meaning to certain patterns in numbers. Therefore, I recommend to PG that if human nature is important, and bigger is better, then PG should report the number of books it has in a lower base. Now, doesn't 232332 (base 6) sound much more impressive? You can report the number of books in the collection as: "# of books in PG's collection: 232332 [*]" And at the bottom of the page: "[*} Note, this is base 6." <smile/> Jon Noring