Remembering Y2K

[Daniel_Bingamon]

10 Years ago, many people worried that Y2K would shut everything down. People in the stores all buying water.

Being a Computer Programmer, I didn't do anything.
Although, we had a service at our congregation praying for a good New Year, I did have sneaky desire to flash the lights in the room at midnight - but I didn't.

[peeplj]

I was working in the ITS (at the time, recently renamed from MIS) dept in a hospital in Texarkana as a hardware technician.

For the last several months of 1999, we spent 60 hour weeks, testing newer computers, replacing the very oldest computers, flashing BIOS's, replacing ROMs, installing OS and software upgrades, upgrading the network architecture, and pretty much testing and remediating almost anything that had a CPU except for biomedical devices, which were supported by a different set of techs, and the elevators, which were tested and remediated by an external vendor.

We all worked hard, while all having private doubts about the veracity of all the popular end-of-civilization scenarios that were being bandied about.

The night of Y2K, we had "all hands standby," where basically everyone was on call. We had one person from each department manning the phones.

Midnight rolled over, and nothing happened.

Contrast to the hospital on the other side of town. Their management didn't put much stock in the whole idea that Y2K would have much effect on nearly anything, so they did just a small fraction of the prep that we did. Anything computer-related (with the exception of patient-care devices), they were simply going to let fail, and replace after the fact.

And midnight rolled over for them, too....and nothing happened.

That was Y2K for me. It was one of the single biggest puffs of hot air I've ever seen.


--James

[A-Musing]

My main recollection
Would be the observation
That the species we belong to
Invents chaos for its own

(fill in the rest...)

[bigskybri]

It was a big deal w/ some folks over here. They hung out at a local cafe, same one where I ate, and were convinced it was going to lead to anarchy. I knew of several who spent thousands of dollars preparing for chaos. It was good, cheap entertainment listening to them. A couple of them inquired what my plans were and I replied nothing, though my credit card processing bank forced me to spend $85 to help them upgrade their computers (I'm still steamed about that). Afterwards, when it was clear nothing was going to happen, some friends who owned a health food store started having folks wanting to sell them bulk beans and rice. They turned it all down. The good ol' days...

[Innocent Bystander]

I did nothing, but that was because I had been busy the entire year.
The "Old" format of of our database's exports to the accounting system only held two digits of year.
Much of the work was in changing over to the new format.

One of the managers I used to work for swore he was going to get rich changing old systems for the Millenium. That did not happen.

For us, we didn't expect calamaties and disasters: but we anticipated the long slow burn of accounts fouled up in some tedious and inextricable way. That would have been disaster enough.

And yet, elsewhere, planes did fall out of the sky.

[missy]

The ex (who was on his way to being the ex at this point, and this didn't help) had been collecting food for months. I got up New Year's Eve and went to take a shower and we had no water pressure in the upstairs bathroom. That's because he was filling a 55 gallon overpack drum with water. Just in case.

I need to ask the kids if their father every got through all the food he had saved - I moved out soon afterwards....



I spent midnight on the computer, talking to friends world wide on IM. We all figured if it was going to crash, we were going to help.

[Tommy]

I mailed my Garmin GPS to the factory, and told them to upgrade and return it. Hey, it was worth a try. They called me on the phone and offered to take it as an trade in on a newer one. It was good price so I went for it.

[mutepointe]

I was hoping cell phones, SUV's, and McMansions would explode. It wouldn't have taught those folks a lesson so much as it would have rewarded the frugal.

[rebl_rn]

I was recovering from the flu. Didn't do much

The only problem we had was one archaic computer program we still used at work that went wonky in the new year. But nothing catastrophic, just a nuisance.

[izzarina]

I never bought into the whole thing. It just didn't make logical sense to me. So, we did nothing in terms of "getting ready" for the pending doom. Although, I think if I had to do it all over again, I would most definitely had hidden behind the couch with a water pistol

[Charlene]

My blind friend was so sure Y2K was the end times he listened to every kook show on the radio and he insisted we store some water and food. He still insists we "dodged the bullet" on Y2K and that some disaster is just around the corner, so he has food and water stored away in his basement, and, now that he owns his own house, he has solar panels on the roof so he can still have power when the grid goes down and all his food in the freezer won't spoil and he'll still be able to use the microwave.

My mother-in-law decided instead of staying in her paid-for house in a small town where everyone knew her and where there is a nice, clean, year-round river for water, it would be best to sell her house and move in with her daughter. She did live in Palouse, Washington, and her daughter lives in Moses Lake, Washington, right in the dry central part of the state where the only way farmers can grow much is with the irrigation water from Grand Coulee Dam. Well, they got on each other's nerves, especally after January 1, 2000, came and went with no disaster, and my MIL now lives in a old folk's apartment here in Spokane. If you watch "Hoarders" on AMC you have a vision of what her place is likely to look like if she lives another 10 years. We keep trying to convince her that if the people thinking they are being nice to the elderly give her bags of groceries, and she has 6 boxes of Rice Krispies, she doesn't NEED to have a 7th box, but then she gets all defensive. I wash my hands of her. My husband is going to have to do any cleaning that gets done. And when she dies, I'll try to stay away from the mucking out of her place, especially if my sister-in-law turns up.

My husband's aunt who lives out in the countryside near Potlatch, Idaho, had a big shed built by her house and a huge propane tank installed and filled, and converted her heat to propane, and filled the shed with food and water and candles and such. I wonder if she's used it all up yet?

Now, having said all that, after the 97 inches of snow we had last winter, my husband decided it might be good to have some extra food on hand, so we have soups and canned goods packed into a couple of cupboards, and some water. We have a propane powered camp stove and extra small bottles of propane. If we don't use it for a disaster, we'll use it camping next summer. We have a small kerosene heater and some kerosene and extra wicks, so if the power goes out we could heat up one room of the house (we have electric heat and no fireplace.)

I always thought Y2K was nonsense and I think 2012 is a lot of hooey too. Now, if we have a nuclear attack on the Air Force Base that's just outside of town, since we're downwind of the base I'll probably be fried before I know what's happening, and all the hoarding in the world won't make any difference anyway.

[Chuck_Clark]

I was on the inside like most others who've posted. By July of 1999 we'd already tested everything, fixed the miniscule portion of the system that had a problem, and purged/deleted almost 100 old subprograms that we should have gotten rid of long before.

I think we were all put on standby by a nervous nellie of a director who thought that Faux News was juournalism and preferred to believe the media chicken littles over his own IS staff. Its a good thing that nothing happened - those of us who weren't intoxicated by midnight had already gone to bed with the telephone turned off orunplugged.

[s1m0n]

I was in Montreal during the great ice storm, when most of the province was blacked out for five days. I have never been more grateful that my apartment had an old-school (ie, with pilot lights rather than spark ignition) gas stove and a gas heater. I had a someting like 18 friends sleeping on my floor, but *I* got to sleep in my own bed. With light from candles, we had heat and food, and that was enough.

[missy]

Now, having said all that, after the 97 inches of snow we had last winter, my husband decided it might be good to have some extra food on hand, so we have soups and canned goods packed into a couple of cupboards, and some water. We have a propane powered camp stove and extra small bottles of propane. If we don't use it for a disaster, we'll use it camping next summer. We have a small kerosene heater and some kerosene and extra wicks, so if the power goes out we could heat up one room of the house (we have electric heat and no fireplace.)

.

But that's not "panic" mode - that's just general good sense preparedness. We used to do the same when we lived in the country - of course, the time we needed all that (when we were hit by a tornado), the place we had stuff stashed blew away.........

[gonzo914]

I did nothing, aside from minor alcohol consumption and farting around with the kids at home.

But I had just spent the last four months fast-tracking an HR/payroll software installation that ordinarily takes 9 months to a year. The client, a very large community college district, had discovered in June that there was no way their payroll system would calculate checks after January 1. But due to the need to follow purchasing regulations, no one could start on it until the last week of August. We were done by Christmas and had already precalculated the January 2000 checks, so I took off until after New Year's Day. It was a non-event.