public long getFirstMillisecond(Calendar calendar) {
        calendar.set(this.year, Calendar.JANUARY, 1, 0, 0, 0);
        calendar.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
        // in the following line, we'd rather call calendar.getTimeInMillis()
        // to avoid object creation, but that isn't supported in Java 1.3.1
        return calendar.getTime().getTime();