Remembering Y2K.

[Mrs-M]

Do you remember?

I thought it would be both fun and interesting to think back to and reflect upon all the hype that reverberated around the world surrounding Y2K.

Did you spend your eve (New Year's Eve) sitting on the edge of your seat wondering? I know we did. http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-scared001.gif

[Lainey]

I remember taking some cash out of the bank for emergencies because it was assumed that ATMs might not be working; otherwise, didn't do any panic or survival type stuff.

[Bastelmutti]

I do remember the hype - but not all of it was hype: companies really did have to fix their computer systems. We had a two-month old baby, so we got some extra food and took out some extra cash in case the cash registers and ATMs were messed up for a while, but otherwise had a fine New Year's Eve. Yes, we took the baby out to the dinner/fireworks we went to. She was in a sling the whole time. We have a cute photo of my DH and a friend holding her with a clock at midnight, too.

[IshbelRobertson]

Our uni had updated its computer system well before New Year's Eve - and so I attended a family hogmanay party and got home at 3.00 am on 1 Jan! I didn't give it a thought!

[herbgeek]

I had some extra food, water and money just in case. I'd been involved in updating computer systems for the year or two prior, and figured something would go wrong. I was watching news reports from Sydney, and relaxed after there were no computer catastrophe's reported there.

[catherine]

Hey, if we're all getting nostalgic about Y2K, at least we have 12-21-12 to look forward to!

I didn't do anything for Y2K (except I did have a client that hired me to do a market research project on it). I'm also not going to do anything for 12-21-12.

[Tammy]

I worked night shift on a med-surg floor. I just hoped we didn't lose power cause that's never easy in a hospital. Nothing unusual happened.

[Mighty Frugal]

I wasn't worried in the slightest. During the final day of the millennium my girlfriend and I documented our day with pictures-out for breakfast, shopping at a grocery store, etc.

In the evening I hosted a 2 person soiree in my condo with my new boyfriend (who became my dh) we had a good time:~)

[bae]

I remember going to bed that night dreaming of the wonderful deals I'd be able to find the next morning on brand-new, never-used generators and so on :-)

[WorldFoodie]

Just a bunch of hype!
i went on a cruise thru the Panama canal and the ship was the frist one to go thru the canal under the new Panamanian control.
Fun!

[Stella]

I was 21. I wasn't worried. I went out drinking at a bar across the street from my apartment.

[Mrs-M]

Great hearing from everybody. I think towards the final countdown, people were really padding things for all they were worth.


Originally posted by Catherine.
I didn't do anything for Y2K (except I did have a client that hired me to do a market research project on it). I'm also not going to do anything for 12-21-12.We didn't do anything for Y2K, either, but we won't be making that mistake again for 12-21-12! No-siree! http://dunkorator.franken.de/smileys/elol4.gif http://dunkorator.franken.de/smileys/eteehee.gif

[bae]

Great hearing from everybody. I think towards the final countdown, people were really padding things for all they were worth.


I was working in the computer industry at the time, and the whole Y2K thing was a royal PITA for us, we had to have road shows explaining to customers that their systems weren't going to be devoured by zombies come 1/1/00. What a waste of time and effort.

Of course, we *did* have a Y2038 problem, but I figured we had plenty of time to fix that one, and I'd be living on a remote island raising goats by then :-)

[Mrs-M]

Things I remember leading up to the final countdown.

Flashlights were sold out everywhere.
No jugs of water to be found anywhere.
Batteries sold out.
Line-ups at the pumps for weeks prior to.

[Mrs-M]

Originally posted by Bae.
I was working in the computer industry at the time, and the whole Y2K thing was a royal PITA for usI can only imagine! I recall, how when the clock struck midnight, and the lights still remained on, how DH and I looked at one another. Surprise and relief graced both our faces.

[jennipurrr]

I will never forget it. I was a Sr in high school with grand plans...went out to dinner and then later that evening had the worst food poisoning ever! I was up all night but not by my choice. My mom even called the ER in the middle of the night and the wait was 14 hours! So, I just stuck it out and was fine within a couple of days.

[loosechickens]

All we did was make sure we had full water and propane tanks in the RV, and had dumped our waste tanks, so in case there were some glitches causing problems, we could just sit back for a few weeks and let them work them out, without us being part of the problem, and spent that week sitting at a wildlife refuge outside Yuma AZ, and spent the actual changeover time watching the displays of fireworks on TV, with power supplied by our solar photovoltaic panels and golf cart batteries, across the world through all the time changes.......

But we did have friends back east, very fundamentalist Christian with an apolcalyptic bent, and sure everything was going to fall apart, who went into Y2k with over a ton of wheat berries in their basement........for quite a few years afterward, not ONE of our group of friends dared ask about those wheat berries, as there was NO sense of humor regarding them. For all I know, they are STILL grinding those wheat berries every week for bread....in fact, I'm sure of it....it takes quite awhile for one family to go through more than a ton of wheat berries........

[Mrs-M]

How awful, Jennipurrr.

LOL, LC! We pretty much reside in the wild frontier, so everything we need (or could possibly need) can be found right in our backyard, so we didn't really panic that way. We were however concerned over whether or not we'd have electricity/gas.

[peggy]

We had just moved to Japan. No worries. The Japanese for the most part didn't seem worried about it either. Like LC we had fundy friends, and some in the family. They were all sure the whole world was going to spontaneously implode, or something like that. My brother asked if we were worried going to Japan when the apocalypse was clearly coming. I asked him if he thought his computer not functioning for a day or two meant the end of the world? And whatever did people do before computers? It was all pretty silly. Another friend told me he had bought MRE's and when I mentioned that canned ham and canned brown bread would taste much better when the world didn't end and he had to eat them, you could see the "Oh, I didn't think of that" look in his eyes. I hope he didn't buy too much. :0!

Uh, bae....what's happening in y2038? And should I order my cake now? :0!

[Gregg]

Have to admit being one of the gullible ones. Lucky for me we already had a generator and were always pretty well stocked up in the winter so I didn't have to go crazy. I do still have 4 of the 5 gallons of Coleman fuel that I bought just in case. !Splat! It was pretty funny when the host of the neighborhood party we were at flipped off his power at about 12:01. Took a good 5 or 10 minutes before anyone looked out to see that all the other neighbor's lights were still on.

[Alan]

Uh, bae....what's happening in y2038? And should I order my cake now? :0!
You're not likely to notice.

As I understand it, the original Unix timestamp (time_t) stores a date and time as a 32-bit integer representing the number of seconds since 1 January 1970. During and after 2038, this number will exceed 2 to the 31st power − 1, the largest number representable by a 32-bit integer. I believe the solution is to go to a 64-bit architecture.

[treehugger]

I remember recognizing all the hype and hysteria for just that: hype and hysteria. DH and I went to a Primus concert (we had gotten free tickets from a friend of a friend!) at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention center in Oakland that night and had a great, normal NYE time.

Kara

[shadowmoss]

What no one seems to remember is that there WAS an issue, but because a lot of us geeks worked a lot in the year or 2 prior to the actual date, nothing happened. If the alarm had not been sounded and folks hadn't taken the measures they did (I'm talking the corporate types), then what was forcast might well have happened.

[Alan]

What no one seems to remember is that there WAS an issue, but because a lot of us geeks worked a lot in the year or 2 prior to the actual date, nothing happened. If the alarm had not been sounded and folks hadn't taken the measures they did (I'm talking the corporate types), then what was forcast might well have happened.
I completely agree. I was in the corporate world at the time, corporate security in the banking/insurance sector. We worked for nearly 2 years at identifying and correcting problems ranging from our database systems to our corporate aircraft, and everything in-between.

Every industry worked at correcting the problems that would affect them. The fact that everything from traffic lights to utility systems stayed online is a testament to their efforts.

It didn't turn out to be a non-issue. The issues were real, but corrected through the hard work of many, many people.

[peggy]

You're not likely to notice.

As I understand it, the original Unix timestamp (time_t) stores a date and time as a 32-bit integer representing the number of seconds since 1 January 1970. During and after 2038, this number will exceed 2 to the 31st power − 1, the largest number representable by a 32-bit integer. I believe the solution is to go to a 64-bit architecture.

OK, well thanks! Whew!
As it is, I think we are all supposed to be dead by the end of next year sometime. The Mayans predicted it (without apparently predicting their own demise!):doh:

[treehugger]

It didn't turn out to be a non-issue. The issues were real, but corrected through the hard work of many, many people.

Yes, of course this is true, and I apologize for appearing to minimize the hard work of all those people who "fixed the glitch"* so that the rest of us didn't suffer any consequences. And actually, that's what I was referring to in my post: that there weren't any recognizable issues for the average citizen (no bank, power, or government failures), and I wasn't expecting there to be any, so I saw so reason to panic.

Kara

*Office Space reference, because the Y2K date issue figured prominently in the plot of that classic workplace movie.

[Alan]

Yes, of course this is true, and I apologize for appearing to minimize the hard work of all those people who "fixed the glitch"* so that the rest of us didn't suffer any consequences. And actually, that's what I was referring to in my post: that there weren't any recognizable issues for the average citizen (no bank, power, or government failures), and I wasn't expecting there to be any, so I saw so reason to panic.

Kara

*Office Space reference, because the Y2K date issue figured prominently in the plot of that classic workplace movie.

Please allow me to apologize for not being clearer, as I actually did take your post positively and agree on every point. By the time I got to the "It didn't turn out to be" part, I'd already mentally moved on to the air of nonchalance that many people expressed as a result of nothing significant materializing on 1/1/00. I think many simply don't realize how much effort that took.

[treehugger]

Please allow me to apologize for not being clearer, as I actually did take your post positively and agree on every point. By the time I got to the "It didn't turn out to be" part, I'd already mentally moved on to the air of nonchalance that many people expressed as a result of nothing significant materializing on 1/1/00. I think many simply don't realize how much effort that took.

Let's quit apologizing; we're cool. :) I think there are a whole heck of a lot of things that work seamlessly in our every day lives for which we don't ever stop to think about the monumental efforts that take place out of view.

Kara

[WorldFoodie]

I recall being in IT in the early '80s, just barely past card readers ;) , when computer space was an issue. The company I workd for stored lots of dates, so in order to save space, they only stored the last two years of the date. When I inquired about what would happen in 2000, I was told that there'd be lots of new unconceivable technology, so no problem. In 2000 I know that some of the stuff was still in use, but I was long gone. ;D
What I can't recall, was very much discussion of it here on the Simple Living boards.

[LDAHL]

The County government I worked for at the time convened a Y2K planning group. One of the participants bragged about all the food, fuel and other supplies he had stockpiled at his place. The representative from the Sheriff’s Department put his gun on the table and said “The only thing you did wrong was telling me about it”.

[Spartana]

I quit my job at a water district in Sept of 1999. Everyone thought it was because I feared Y2K when really it was just sheer laziness and boredom at the thought of having to do yet another "Y2K" readiness drill in case the world ended and all the computers that run the telemetry that run the pumps shut down and we were rushed by the crazed hoardes of water-seeking suvivalists

Personally I didn't do anything at all. Stocked up on some extra food, pet food, toilet paper and water. I don't remember what I did that evening but I'm sure I wasn't sitting at home staring at my extra toilet paper :-)! I'm a bit of an anarcist/survivalist wanna-be anyways (give me the Mad-Max and Tank Girl worlds of the future!!) so I'm always curiously hoping things may just fall apart.

Spartana during the apocylpse - what do you do when you have to pee?

http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=713&d=1330390682

[Mrs-M]

Gosh, I just caught this thread again. Appreciate all of the new entries so much! Have really loved reading through them. Great stories and experiences.