I was considered “brave” and “crazy” for offering to work that shift. People were losing their minds. It was the first time I realized how gullible the general public was. I was the calm in the storm. I reminded them that air was not controlled by a computer and we would survive. It would be like “camping nursing.” Midnight -NOTHING- and people felt stupid. I’m ready for that feeling again. It was priceless.
Comments (105)
sorted by:
The hysteria was crazy. I got into some ridiculous arguments in 1999. Things I remember saying:
The computer in your car doesn't care about dates - it's too busy figuring out air fuel ratios
The computers running the city water system only need to know the day of the week - to start ramping up pumps during the work week in anticipation of demand. If they print a report, it might have some bad dates on it.
You are right - people have already forgotten how they were taken in by the MSM.
The stupidity was astonishing.
Haven't thought about it in a long time. But in retrospect, I'm beginning to think it was an excuse to install DS code into the banking industry so they could monitor and steal from our investments.
9/10/01
Rumsfeld and his missing trillions.
You might be on to something....
Good point.
Metal Gear Solid 2 made this a plot point.
Good God, what did Hideo Kojima know?
Edit: Just so I'm clear, this is not sarcasm or joking.
Interesting. I've never heard Metal Gear Solid 2. Had to look it up.
FWIW, one time on a business trip I ran into a high flying exec (she told me so herself) working in the CC industry in the late '90s "fixing" the problem. She insisted it was a real problem, but I was skeptical (or curious), and asked a bunch of questions (from an inquiring minds want to know perspective). She knew what she was talking about. But there was something - I just wasn't 100% convinced it was as bad as she said. I suspected that the banking industry problem was only a fraction of what was advertised - a lot of people, and the computer industry, was making "bank" on the problem, Clinton was in the WH, and I was convinced the whole thing was a major scam.
I agree, the Y2K stupidity was astonishing, but even so it doesn't come close to the abject madness of Covidiocy.
My mom, who was fairly old at that time, was worried about what was going to happen. I told her nothing would happen. Then my husband, the engineer told her the same, and she was good with it. From what I recall some IT people were making an entire career out of it at the time.
agree completely about the IT ripoff! I owned a small business at the time, so could have been disastrous, but my IT guy just said, go in and change the date ahead to January 5th or something, then shut off all your computers after changing all...then have a Happy New Year, when you get back to your office after the holidays, reset the actual day...no problems...lotta IT people grifted big-time, then retired...
Definitely a scam - just recall who was in the WH at the time....
Absolutely...that was the first time I experienced fear porn! It was full blown panic at our office. My husband and worked for a heavily regulated industry and the company was freaking out.
My husband was a Manager of Telecom which involves microwave dishes, Scada etc and worked closely with the IT Manager. Corporate was send an inspection team and we were located in the state headquarters. The IT Manager had bunch of stickers printed that said "Y2K Compliant" and stuck them on everything in the Server Room! Sheer genius. The pea brains from corporate walked through the Server Room with Clipboards checking off their lists.
Of course this was a month prior to Y2K and we still had to keep watch all night to observe that nothing happened.
THIS!!
Planes totally fell out the sky right? Oh wait. That was 9/11.
Ignorance though
I hadn't thought about this in a while. I must have been half awake at the time because I knew it was bullshit without any proof of it being bullshit. I knew a husband and wife who spoke to groups about how to suck nutrients out of a grain of wheat. No joke (as Biden would say). My street gathered together and shot fireworks at midnight along with some local cops who let us do it even though it's illegal here.
It's funny - by the time of the Y2K event, I had worked with computer systems and controllers in a number of different industries, yet I was often told I had no clue what I was talking about.
I won't say much more - if I mentioned some of the systems I was involved with and worked on, I could easily be ID'd.
I was in IT consulting leading up to Y2K.
Yes, the problem was overblown. That said, there were real issues lurking in a lot of companies that Y2K exposed, especially in banking (in my experience). The problem wasn't so much that the calendar broke the process, but that mission-critical legacy applications were undocumented and essentially unfixable. It would have been a minor nightmare if Y2K had just been ignored and then all those companies discovered and tried to fix those apps simultaneously in the weeks after 1/1/2000. A lot of people with "antiquated" skills got pulled out of retirement, and many apps were either totally rewritten or replaced by "good enough" commercial versions.
For those of us in IT, it was apparent several months out that all the "real" problems had already been fixed, and from then on, everyone was either in CYA mode, or was using the flowing faucet of cash to push through all those changes that were important but could never get funding - just call it "Y2K related" and you magically got the bucks and the higher ups didn't have the technical chops to question or dare be wrong.
Ironically, the end result was the consulting market crashed hard in the first quarter of 2000. Budgets were empty, everything that needed to be fixed in the short term was already fixed under the Y2K excuse, and IT departments cut their consultants (and, in some cases, staff) to the bone.
Right. I graduated nursing school late 90’s, was in banking prior to that. They were already working on bank programming issues in 1997-8 before I graduated. I don’t disagree the potential was there. But nursing? Paper charting? It was wild.
Some of the stuff was crazy, especially at first. There was a big concern about embedded controllers in things like elevators and machinery - I wasn't in that industry, but I suspect it ended up being a nothingburger.
The real problem was the uncertainty. If your code isn't well documented, then you can't just figure out where the problems are - you have to test every possible scenario. Then if you find a problem, do you still have the source code? The original compiler? Can you fix it and recompile in the latest version, or will that break other things? Are you better off recoding from scratch (and then fix all these other issues you had), or bringing in different software and customizing it?
But some stuff was just out-and-out ridiculous. I had to go to an engineering company. They had 50 identical Unix workstations (Solaris, I think) running CAD software. Unix didn't have a problem with dates. All the machines were updated to the same, latest BIOS. The CAD software didn't care what the date was and the manufacturer had certified that well in advance.
Absolute worst case, testing one machine was more than enough. They paid me to kick a working engineer off his workstation during business hours so I could do a small suite of tests to verify what we already knew, and then had me do it to every one of those 50 machines. Between what I was being billed out as, and all the wasted time of those engineers, it was a colossal waste of time and money. But somebody wanted the option to be able to sue my company if things went south, so I did it.
The hilarious thing was I had this same conversation nearly verbatim 50 times:
me: I'm here from xxxx, I've been instructed to test your workstation and software for Y2K compatibility per so-and-so. Will take about 15 minutes.
user: OK. You know these are unix machines, they don't have a Y2K problem?
me: I know.
user: And the CAD software doesn't care what the date is, plus mega-cad-corp certified this version for Y2K compatibility - we just upgraded to the latest version to be sure.
me: yep.
user: You just tested Joe's. Isn't this kind of a waste of time? All these machines are identical.
me: yep.
I can attest that everything you said is 100% accurate. I made a ton of cash as a contractor "fixing" Y2K problems but they were just funded projects under the guise of Y2K readyness.
Same here. I really did find a bug which was directly related to y2k but it was in a non-critical system and had a pretty trivial effect. I was still Mr. Big Dude for a day though.
One of our contracts to update BIOS for every PC and server in a very large financial company, but we knew the BIOS would work with no problem, but the company wanted to be sure. The amount companies wasted on Y2K BS was biblical. We raked them over the coals, and they were happy to pay.
I worked that shift, too, and I'm here to tell everyone that it wasn't a hoax. The company I worked for had all of their dates as YYMMDD (the century wasn't stored), to save space. At that time, people generally didn't think the current round of programs would be around until 2000, figuring that new programs would replace the old. Well, that didn't happen, so we had to add the century to every date used in the database and programs.
We were a specialty production company and we had to maintain a record of all of the events that occurred for each product, as the next person down the line needed to know what had occurred prior. We spent a couple of years changing everything -- and I mean everything -- over to YYYYMMDD. This was for thousands of programs. For us, it was do or die, else we would lose the correct order of events and everything with a date would be out of order once the year 2000 data began to be entered into the system.
The entire IT department was there on Dec. 31, 1999. We held our collective breaths to see what would happen. Thankfully, all of our hard work paid off. We had a program or two here and there where something was missed, but it was quickly fixed and reinstalled. Y2K was only a nothingburger because we worked like dogs to make sure that it was.
A voice of reason. If it was a nothingburger it's because all of the critical systems that needed fixing were fixed in time. Simple as that.
You are exactly correct, fren. Failure, in this case, was not an option.
The part that was a "hoax" was how blown out of proportion it all was. Nobody is saying there weren't real issues that switching centuries caused in computer programs.
Hindsight 20-20. How could anyone know ahead of time how successful companies would be in fixing the problem? There was no agency making sure that every company was doing their due diligence.
Even if every company completely failed at making this transition, the results still wouldn't be as catastrophic as what many people believed. That was the hoax.
That’s the way I looked at it, ESPECIALLY in nursing. We weren't even using infusion pumps yet.
Hopefully people like you are doing the same for us now.
Thank you. I was once a programmer/analyst for a while. I was working a different job by 12/31/1999, but yes, it was a very real concern and many folks just like you made sure nothing crashed.
I agree. Our IT department worked overtime to fix all the problems. Had it not occurred, some serious infrastructure problems would have occurred in this country. I won't say who I work for, but I know enough that had we not fixed our code across all of our apps, the economy could have been ground to a very slow crawl.
I worked that night too. Boss gave me a bucket and a flashlight. I asked what for and she didnt know, just said since you're working midnight.
Whats even funnier is my coworker was mad I got a free bucket and flashlight and she didnt get anything.
The bucket was in case the plumbing didn't work. 😂🤣😂
That’s great!!
This made lots of people begin a journey of awakening, myself included. I didn't start looking down rabbit holes, but it made me more wary/leery of my surroundings.
Leading up to Y2K there was no YouTube but places like LiveLeak existed with internet footage of Bill Gates getting raped by a pie to his face - truly epic! And Soros talking about the WEF agenda. There was talk of getting rid of coins in the U.S. and a “one world currency” - the Euro is implemented.
Who knew that very soon we would all be awakened by one of the largest crimes against humanity - 9/11. Sure, it took years if not decades for people to truly wake up. But “they” (the cabal) fucked up with their over the top symbolism this time. I can’t wait for GWB to be tried for treason/crimes against humanity... he especially because I voted for that mother fucker and I believed In him - at the time.
Me too. He was a hard red pill to swallow.
At least you took that step. Many on the right are still asleep.
A good friend made good money working on "preparing the government" for that one... We saved him a six-pack...
I ran outside at midnight to play catch with myself to be the first person to play baseball in the new millennium. I was in high school lol
Y2K was horrible. I shut everything off to protect it. My VCR is still blinking 12:00.
It will not let me forget that horrible, horrible day.
I worked for a large manufacturing plant, we actually idled production for one hour before and after midnight… big nothing
I remember at my company all the money we spent converting mainframe code. Y2K was a big deal - but it was remediated successfully at most companies. Had nothing been done, a lot could have potentially happened. Even my own software I wrote had a Y2K bug that I didn't see until after the fact - and it broke my software. Catastrophic world scenarios might have been far fetched, but serious impact to business and the economy could have occurred had it not been for all the remediation.
I will note that many thousands of programmers/coders did quietly work on their programs ahead of time to make certain there would be no problems with taking two-byte yeardate to a four-byte year date.
As in, going from "99" to "2000" but the computer only has two bytes for the year - so it puts in "00." Does the computer now think it's the year 1900? Yes, because it automatically put a "19" in front of those two bytes that denoted the year.
That was the concern, and it was a very real one. Many programmers did make sure that wouldn't happen. And it didn't.
*Source: Worked as a programmer/analyst for several years about a decade before the Y2K worry hit.
I made good money that year, and worked the night shift too. All I remember is the really good catered food they brought in for us.
Downtown hospital, big city. I’m lucky I got a pat on the back.
I told everyone thay they'd still have electricity, water, natural gas, ... just the billing may be missing, at first.
Same bullshit with 2012 "Mayan Calendar end of the world" hype.
The Mayan Calendar ended because it marked the end of an age, and the beginning of a new one...not the end of the world.
Yes, forgot about that one. It didn’t ruffle many feathers around here.
Seems to have marked the end of a good age, and the start of a really shitty one though. Let's hope that really does turn around.
I was 19 years old and I remember I went to a party at a cabin. It was the first time I drank 6 beers in one night. I felt like SHIT the next day. That's what I remember of Y2K! :-P
I lived in a small town at the time so the hype didn't really touch the community or freak anyone out that I can recall. I just remember it being an excuse to have a huge party and place Prince music!
I was 7yrs old for Y2K. Fucking SEVEN!!!
I remember watching my dad unplug the computers and realizing I was being raised by utter retards.
It was honestly, as ridiculous as it sounds, one of the most formative experiences of my life. I've thought about it a lot.
My dad wasn't some luddite dip.
He went to a prestigious biomedical engineering school and led teams of some of the smartest people I've met in my life designing some pretty crazy shit requiring extensive knowledge of chip design & manufacturing, programming, and biophysics of the heart, and the knowledge to train surgeons to implant this technology.
If you have a pacemaker or a defribrilator there's a good chance my dad's patents are involved either directly through products he directly oversaw the design of, or through the way his patents have influenced the industry.
He unplugged every single thing that used electricity in the night of Y2K.
And thus began my education of human behavior and psychology.
I sound like I'm exaggerating... but it low key fucked me up.
I never looked at him the same way again.
A lot of it is growing up and seeing the world differently. There are so many things we stress over in life that just simply don’t matter. I wish I could have seen that many moons ago.
Y2K and the end of the world with the Mayan Calendar in 2012. That was just as priceless.
I worked at Gateway computers that night biggest anticlimactic BS ever!!
Ah yes, I remember it well... the Y2k virus as many dubbed it.
A certain person I once knew, who had bachelor of science degrees in electrical engineering and a masters in computer science, was full onboard with the Y2k apocalypse. Jack really was convinced of the coming apocalypse of Y2k. He had already bought hundreds of pounds of whole wheat, rice, and oats. He had several storage barrels full of dried foods. He even bought several cooler bottles of water. He lived in a Winnebago trailer, in case he needed to get the hell out of Dodge, as they say. I made the mistake of allowing him to store all his emergency rations in my attached garage at the time. Across the road was a very large field. With fields and meadows it provides a predictable environment for mice and rodents. The road acted as a barrier between the 'wild' and the manicured lawns on the other side. Soon afterwards I started to have mice problems in the lower level of the house. It didn't take long before I suspected the bags of grain were attracting these vermin. That's when I ordered the food in the garage to either be stored in hermetically sealed drums or it had to be removed. When my Y2k acquaintance went through the bags of grain denying his food stuff was the cause to my mouse infestation, we came across several broken bags of grain all with trail of grain and the mouse turds. He removed all of his Y2k rations in a huff and after that I really never heard from him again. The mouse problem soon ceased afterwards. Y2k came and went without any sign of the much touted apocalypse. Reflecting back, I wondered what became of all of that food stuff Jack had. Realizing 2012 was approaching, I'm sure all of that stuff Jack had was repurposed.
I try to keep stuff like this in mind. I stocked my pantry with things we eat regularly, planted a garden and will soon have chickens. Food that lasts forever just doesn’t sound appetizing to me.
I guess one good thing that came out of Y2k was upping the ante on prepping. More people searched out how to overcome disaster and since then more has been posted all over to help those just starting.
There were some actual implications for banking and the old systems they have but yes it was completely overblown. The banks did have old Cobol programmers come in to fix the date issue. I know because my aunt was one of them.
Those old COBOL programmers made a TON of cash.
LOL. I too work that day. Pipe line company in Alaska. Personal going onto vacation had to cancel. Every one working up to 000:01 and nothing happen. After that the news media started at it again fear factor: it’s the wrong year it’s 2000 to 2001 that KAOS will occur. The puppet masters WILL always have CRAP falling from the sky. STOP falling for it. Friday the 22/ 2023 again I see a lone driver (older female) wearing a mask. WTF!?
Night of Y2K, playing everquest, about to smoke Innoruuk in the Plane of Hate, with a bunch of other engineers, linux admins, and network folks, we were all chuckling about the hysteria, paused for a moment of silence for all the knuckleheads and enjoyed the new year.
I 'member great effort during that time spending large Y2K amounts converting six character dates into eight character dates in various systems.
It indeed was frightening.
Me too, It was all hands on deck at a large manufacturing facility. Cost tens of thousands of dollars per hour for any down time. We shut the whole thing down and waited. Nothing happened. Then someone said well maybe it has to do with daylight savings. So we waited another hr. Then just to be sure we waited another. Then we carefully and slowly started back up. Seems like we were on edge for days afterwords.
It wasn't all bad, I finally convinced my wife to buy a generator for y2k, and she has praised that thing many times since.
Yes, but what about the Y10K crisis?
Y2K - I worked with a good group. No one panicked. We had a lot of PBX’s and VM’s out there at that time.
What we did was turned off the ability for the users to see the year and rolled the year back to somewhere in the 60’s. We played around with the year until the time matched.
No one complained about not seeing what year it was in the systems.
Believe we started doing that the year before Y2K.
Time flys
Yes, 1997-8 at my bank.
I was at a party that nite..at midnite the host cut off power ....everyone freaked lol
I did too! I was actually admitting a pt to the CCU. I had my flashlight handy. Nothing happened. Good times.
And then it got even worse....Y2001! Some idiots fell for the same scam twice kek! Same script as "global warming," and "climate change."
I can't say working that shift was priceless - Cisco gave me a $750 "bonus" for working that shift. They had a war room setup at their bigger campuses. I was in TX.
I got a great deal on a Gateway PC late 1999 because of their fear. A few people that worked in my apartment complex were laughing at me and shaking their heads when I was carrying my cow boxes inside.
Well, none of them had anything to say to me on January 1st. Idiots.
But the problem is that most of these people never learn from it.