Do you remember Y2K? :D

[Tetra]

I was just thinking about this!!! Do you guys remember the Y2K "scare"??

I was in high school at the time and I remember thinking my families Christian circle of friends had gone insane.

I knew someone who had actually made a bunker with food and water rations. Not gonna lie, I still laugh thinking about it. Dude went nuts.

Whats the craziest Y2K story you know??

 

[keith99]

Yea I remember it. I had to rewrite a lot of code to deal with needing 4 digit years. The only time it was difficult was when there simply was not room on the screen for 4 digits!

The funniest was getting an blast email from an otherwise intelligent person telling how to change the display of the year in Windows that said this would prevent problems. It did no such thing.

I found it amusing and a bit disconcerting that there was absolutely no press coverage regarding possible date triggered viruses. That was my concern and I made a point of watching news reports as the new year got very close. California is 17 hours behind Australia and New Zealand. I had images of going in to work and changing the system clocks on 50-100 computers if problems were reported, none were.

 

[alsughasoughaiuyfygh]

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[Tetra]

Yea I remember it. I had to rewrite a lot of code to deal with needing 4 digit years. The only time it was difficult was when there simply was not room on the screen for 4 digits!

The funniest was getting an blast email from an otherwise intelligent person telling how to change the display of the year in Windows that said this would prevent problems. It did no such thing.

I found it amusing and a bit disconcerting that there was absolutely no press coverage regarding possible date triggered viruses. That was my concern and I made a point of watching news reports as the new year got very close. California is 17 hours behind Australia and New Zealand. I had images of going in to work and changing the system clocks on 50-100 computers if problems were reported, none were.

Literally... and I mean literally... nothing happened. lol

People were like buying Y2K ready CD players and stuff.

 

[Tetra]

How ironic, I was just talking about this with my parents yesterday! I recall hubby, me and the kids not giving 2 flips about it, went to bed early that New Year's Eve and guess what? Life as we knew it still went on! Crazy! LOL

Right?!?!?! I mean, I was a teen at the time so I really didn't care.

 

[Nithavela]

Nothing happened because thousands of people laboured to prevent anything from happening.

 

[Tetra]

Nothing happened because thousands of people laboured to prevent anything from happening.

Ummm no. I mean... yeah they worked hard... and yeah it cost 300 Billion... but like, it made no difference. It affected no one, even counties in the third world who weren't Y2k compliant. The affect it would have was "greatly exaggerated".

Y2K bug | computer science

I don't know if it's wrong or not... but it makes me smile just a bit more thinking about it.

 

[Winken]

I heard about it, read about it, discussed it, noted that if it were true it would be disastrous, and went on about my day.

 

[keith99]

Literally... and I mean literally... nothing happened. lol

People were like buying Y2K ready CD players and stuff.

Actually quite a bit happened. It just did not make the news because it started 4 years before 2000 hit! Credit card systems broke as soon as cards with expiration dates of January 2000 started getting run.

But compared to the exaggerations nothing happened. One possibility was that aircraft navigation systems would fail if left unupdated. But the exaggeration became that planes would drop out of the sky. No way they could navigate pretty well with just old school magnetic compass and for that matter the guys flying commercial jets could do it well enough to get where they were supposed to with total instrument failure. BUT if every plane lost its GPS they would have been off just a bit, timing would be tougher and it could lead to teh same kind of inconvenience bad storms create, except for every airport, everywhere.

One ironic thing is that Y2K isn't the big threat. Most stuff would have worked just fine and the above airplanes possibility may be total smoke. It would depend on teh plane time display interface. Dates in computers are stored as a integer. The number of days since some starting date. For early computers that was a 3 byte integer and we may be pretty close to when that would have overflowed. Few if any of those are still in use. But the date of overflow does not correspond to any obviously significant date in human terms so except for tech geeks no one hears about it.

 

[Tetra]

Actually quite a bit happened. It just did not make the news because it started 4 years before 2000 hit! Credit card systems broke as soon as cards with expiration dates of January 2000 started getting run.

But compared to the exaggerations nothing happened. One possibility was that aircraft navigation systems would fail if left unupdated. But the exaggeration became that planes would drop out of the sky. No way they could navigate pretty well with just old school magnetic compass and for that matter the guys flying commercial jets could do it well enough to get where they were supposed to with total instrument failure. BUT if every plane lost its GPS they would have been off just a bit, timing would be tougher and it could lead to teh same kind of inconvenience bad storms create, except for every airport, everywhere.

One ironic thing is that Y2K isn't the big threat. Most stuff would have worked just fine and the above airplanes possibility may be total smoke. It would depend on teh plane time display interface. Dates in computers are stored as a integer. The number of days since some starting date. For early computers that was a 3 byte integer and we may be pretty close to when that would have overflowed. Few if any of those are still in use. But the date of overflow does not correspond to any obviously significant date in human terms so except for tech geeks no one hears about it.

The exaggerations were out of control. I totally remember people thinking planes would be falling out of the sky!!

My mom is the worrying type, so it would have been super exaggerated in my household.

 

[Brent W]

I was a Freshman in High School. I never really remembering being that concerned about it. It made for an interesting New Years though with all the hype and how some people were preparing for it.

 

[keith99]

I was a Freshman in High School. I never really remembering being that concerned about it. It made for an interesting New Years though with all the hype and how some people were preparing for it.

The preparing was perhaps the funniest part. Extreme but still half measures. Stock up on food and other supplies BUT still stay home!? Yea, sure, your neighbors will calmly starve rather than take by force. Or not!

My thought was go all the way or pretty much don't go. So I respected the nut in Texas who moved to 200 miles from nowhere. At least he took his error to the logical conclusion.

The other logical idea is that there could be a blip on the radar. Perhaps credit card problems or registers (most likely some not all) might have problems. AND there might be a double down on the exaggerations leading up to Y2K. So there was a non trivial chance of panic buying somewhere. Reasonable to make sure your weeks shopping is done before New Years and perhaps a bit extra and a bit of extra cash on hand just in case. Not to avoid disaster but perhaps to avoid the son of Black Friday with no sales.

EDIT:

I'm sort of surprised there were not a lot of ads saying Y2K was a good reminder to check your emergency kit. Here in Southern California that translates to Earthquake kit. Using Y2K as a prod to make sure any kit is stocked and review family emergency plans would have been reasonable. Not thinking Y2K would be bad, just thinking that it reminds us any day could be when bad things happen.

 

[RDKirk]

Actually quite a bit happened. It just did not make the news because it started 4 years before 2000 hit! Credit card systems broke as soon as cards with expiration dates of January 2000 started getting run.

But compared to the exaggerations nothing happened. One possibility was that aircraft navigation systems would fail if left unupdated. But the exaggeration became that planes would drop out of the sky. No way they could navigate pretty well with just old school magnetic compass and for that matter the guys flying commercial jets could do it well enough to get where they were supposed to with total instrument failure. BUT if every plane lost its GPS they would have been off just a bit, timing would be tougher and it could lead to teh same kind of inconvenience bad storms create, except for every airport, everywhere.

One ironic thing is that Y2K isn't the big threat. Most stuff would have worked just fine and the above airplanes possibility may be total smoke. It would depend on teh plane time display interface. Dates in computers are stored as a integer. The number of days since some starting date. For early computers that was a 3 byte integer and we may be pretty close to when that would have overflowed. Few if any of those are still in use. But the date of overflow does not correspond to any obviously significant date in human terms so except for tech geeks no one hears about it.

However, it was preparation for Y2K that brought a lot of companies through the loss of the World Trade Center on 9/11

 

[RDKirk]

The preparing was perhaps the funniest part. Extreme but still half measures. Stock up on food and other supplies BUT still stay home!? Yea, sure, your neighbors will calmly starve rather than take by force. Or not!

My thought was go all the way or pretty much don't go. So I respected the nut in Texas who moved to 200 miles from nowhere. At least he took his error to the logical conclusion.

Both measures are sensible, depending on what you think is going to break.

I think everyone should be prepared for a week without power, water, ATM failures, or the ability to shop for food. That happens to a lot of people every year from storms and such. We had a blizzard when I was in Omaha that prevented shopping for two days and cut power to thousands of people for two weeks. Tornadoes, blizzards, fracking earthquakes and such can happen anywhere in the country to cause short-term outages.

If someone is expecting a general breakdown of society, then, yeah, he needs to be a member of a like-minded community 200 miles away from the nearest major city.

 

[keith99]

Both measures are sensible, depending on what you think is going to break.

I think everyone should be prepared for a week without power, water, ATM failures, or the ability to shop for food. That happens to a lot of people every year from storms and such. We had a blizzard when I was in Omaha that prevented shopping for two days and cut power to thousands of people for two weeks. Tornadoes, blizzards, fracking earthquakes and such can happen anywhere in the country to cause short-term outages.

If someone is expecting a general breakdown of society, then, yeah, he needs to be a member of a like-minded community 200 miles away from the nearest major city.

Here in Southern California we are pretty well off for disasters, at least short term. Baring of course the disaster killing you outright. Quake flattens the house? Over 90% of the time one would survive simply sleeping outside. 99.99% of the time sleeping in your car means alive but perhaps miserable. The one thing is water, but I have a pool and pool water does not magically go bad. Oh a month later it might be.

And since I BBQ a lot I usually have a hundred pounds of charcoal and could go with wood after that.

Perhaps the sneakiest problem people are apt to face is water in flood prone areas. In that situation one does not think of water shortages as a problem, but when it floods the sewage plant and the manure piles in farm country get flooded and one does have water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.

 

[RDKirk]

Here in Southern California we are pretty well off for disasters, at least short term. Baring of course the disaster killing you outright. Quake flattens the house? Over 90% of the time one would survive simply sleeping outside. 99.99% of the time sleeping in your car means alive but perhaps miserable. The one thing is water, but I have a pool and pool water does not magically go bad. Oh a month later it might be.

And since I BBQ a lot I usually have a hundred pounds of charcoal and could go with wood after that.

Perhaps the sneakiest problem people are apt to face is water in flood prone areas. In that situation one does not think of water shortages as a problem, but when it floods the sewage plant and the manure piles in farm country get flooded and one does have water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.

Happened annually during monsoon when I was in the Philippines.

It wasn't a problem when I was in South Korea (Osan, near Seoul), Yokota Japan, or Okinawa. Can't recall about Thailand (I was too young and dumb to be paying attention to what was happening in the 'ville).

Tap water was untreated in Papanga Province anyway in the Philippines, but during monsoon season it mixed with sewage and you didn't even want to sit over it.

 

[Dave-W]

A good friend of mine is a professional coder (we are both bass players in Messianic congregations, named David, and have boys born on the same day) warned the company he worked for at the time (circa 1990) that in 10 years time there could be a huge problem. They ignored him.

Come 1998 and even more so in 1999 he (as one of the few remaining COBOL programmers) was working overtime to fix the 2 digit year coding problems.

Once the "crisis" had passed, they laid him off. He had some serious medical things going on, exacerbated by his working on code 18 hours a day 6-7 days a week for almost a year.

 

[Sketcher]