Email-based reminder services are a handy tool for keeping track of pending activities. I recently gave a try to a service called FollowUpThen. It works by simply sending an email to a specific address in the followupthen.com domain, which then creates a reminder. Examples on their web page include:

  • 3hours@followupthen.com
  • tomorrow@followupthen.com
  • 11am@followupthen.com Last night I sent an email to the address noontomorrow@followupthen.com. The format seemed in line with the other examples given. Fortunately, I took the time to read the fine print in the response, shown below:
This graphic shows a copy of my email from the service, with the date 'Wed Dec 31' circled in red.
The confirmation email

One would think that the FollowUpThen programming team would have a unit test in place that flags reminders scheduled for forty years in the past.

Any theories on how this date was arrived at without an error message?