Who here thinks Y2K was a big hoax?

[Louie Detroit]

It wasn't, it was real. Please weigh in with your expert opinion arguing my position. :waiting:

I can't wait for the "But Igor at the tractor factory in Smolensk had no problems printing shipping labels" argument.

[dvarapala]

It wasn't, it was real. Please weigh in with your expert opinion arguing my position. :waiting:

Of course it was real. We only avoided disaster because we threw hundreds of millions of dollars and an army of COBOL programmers at the problem during 1999. :yesnod:

[Aerovette]

Just to be safe, I took the advice of Prince and partied like it was 1999.

[KenHorse]

Y2Dems is a bigger problem.....

[Louie Detroit]

Of course it was real. We only avoided disaster because we threw hundreds of millions of dollars and an army of COBOL programmers at the problem during 1999. :yesnod:

Probably more like many billions and don't forget RPG programmers too. :iagree:

[slewfoot]

Beats me but I saw a lot of stupid people buying generators and survival shit they didn't need

[Louie Detroit]

Just to be safe, I took the advice of Prince and partied like it was 1999.

My partying was delayed, I had to report to work at 4am New Years day to verify shit. However the large Y2K bonus I received funded many good party sessions later on. :shots:

[Louie Detroit]

Beats me but I saw a lot of stupid people buying generators and survival shit they didn't need

That's the kind of shit you don't need until you need it. :yaddy:

[IB4TL]

Beats me but I saw a lot of stupid people buying generators and survival shit they didn't need

The parents of a girl in my class (yes, I was in 8th grade in '99) built an underground bunker and stocked it with something like 10yrs of rations.

:funnier:

[Torqaholic]

Was used to working night shift in the IT department alone. Never had so much company. Everybody was there! Other than the huge amount of shrimp cocktail I ate that night it was a big nothing burger.

[Mick]

No, it was totally fake. The Gateway 2000 desktop I was using at home at the time, with no remediation at all, kept chugging along like nothing had happened. :shrug:

[Steve_R]

No nuclear power plant meltdowns or nuke weapons oops, so that was good. It could have meant some interesting work though.

[Louie Detroit]

No nuclear power plant meltdowns or nuke weapons oops, so that was good. It could have meant some interesting work though.

Do you have any info on the Y2K expenditures for Nukes? I'm guessing in the billions.

[Rodnok1]

Spent most of 99 flying around updating systems.
We had a few nodes so old they didn't work as no updates were available. It was a known so that wasn't a suprise. Guy I knew worked satellites did have some get knocked off line that were very important. They all came back online eventually.

Think about this with so much being computer controlled now it would be a nightmare if we were at this level in 99. Imagine the outrage and chaos if Fakebook went down :willy:

[Steve_R]

Do you have any info on the Y2K expenditures for Nukes? I'm guessing in the billions.


I’m not in IT so no actual numbers. I know power plants, including nukes, were preparing years in advance. No clue how much DoD and DOE spent on nuke weapons infrastructure but I’m sure it was a scary big number.

[Frankie the Fink]

I was the Y2K Program Manager for the Securities & Exchange Commission and responsible for the remediation of the entire agency and ensuring all the investment houses became compliant. Yes, Y2K was real, although the SEC had no failures (after my staff and I worked 14-16 hour days for months) some banks I know for certain had issues that were quietly covered up an fixed quickly once discovered.

My interview on the topic in Government Executive Magazine is about 13 paragraphs down in this article ( or you can just search for "Frank" and "SEC"):

https://www.govexec.com/magazine/2000/07/y2k-work-changedbrcourse-of-it/7201/

[Datawiz]

It was real, and I made a KILLING that year as a consultant. Most money I made in a single year, yet to be surpassed...but I'm close with my current gig. :yesnod:

[bsmith]

One of the sister companies to the one I work for is IT related.
The boss has this as his profile picture. :lol:

[DAB]

my 1999 and my 2000 vintage hand chisels look remarkably similar..... :DAB:

[Onebadcad]

Had a very high sex incident count in 1999, especially in second half, as convinced the wife the world would end on New Year's Day.

[Raazor]

meh... much ado about nothing.

/thread

[Cypress-Mike]

Well, I for one was around when all the nothing happened. Hoax? Idk. Proof that people would loose their freaking minds about the unknown?? Absolutely!!!

[snide]

When I upgraded our software in '89-'90 for a '91 rollout, I updated all of the date fields to include a 4-digit year. No one had issues with our software on 1/1/2000.

[Swany00]

Wasn't worried at all, was working in the communications side of a major defense contractor and there was hardly any concern at all.

[ZipZap]

We jacked with satellites and ground station software so much leading up, that we actually decided to go dark for about 30 minutes instead of take the risk. We then put offline systems in monitor to make sure we could light them back up. I was just happy that GMT was 8 hours ahead and we were able to do this at a reasonable hour.

[Bill]

Saw ZZ Top on New Years Eve of Y2K. Had a great time. Didn't think the world was going to end. It didn't. Of course, I never thought I'd see America in the shape it's in now, so there's that.

[ricks327]

The city I worked for at the time went all in to avoid problems which never occurred. All departments heads were working at the dreaded time to avoid an impending disaster.

:rofl:

[jw38]

I managed a large telecommunication company's support organization when Y2K occurred. It was all hands on deck (77 engineers) and from 9pm on 12/31/1999, to 6am on 1/1/2020, we received 1 support call, and it had nothing to do with the "Y2K bug".

I received a $50k bonus for "organizing and managing" the support team for the evening! Each engineer received a $20k bonus!

[Frankie the Fink]

Love the naysayers who blithely think because Y2K effects didn't overwhelm the country it was because there was never an issue in the first place. And not due to people busting their ass for months fixing things. Sheeple that know nothing.

And then Congress comes up and says "How could so many smart people do something so stupid??" to CIOs in a Y2K hearing. I seethed at that, I would have held up an IBM punched card and explained to the morons that every single byte of space had to be used in the 60s/70s to fit a ton of information in 72 characters before oceans of memory and relational databases matured.

[CurtP]

I was in the Network Team at the time and had to go all over the world to replace PLCC chips, expand the memory and update the OS in all our Cisco network equipment in preparation for Y2K. One of the managers had Y2KDOUT as their license plate in 1998/1999.

I went through so many of these:

[jw38]

I managed a large telecommunication company's support organization when Y2K occurred. It was all hands on deck (77 engineers) and from 9pm on 12/31/1999, to 6am on 1/1/2020, we received 1 support call, and it had nothing to do with the "Y2K bug".

I received a $50k bonus for "organizing and managing" the support team for the evening! Each engineer received a $20k bonus!

I was in the Network Team at the time and had to go all over the world to replace PLCC chips, expand the memory and update the OS in all our Cisco network equipment in preparation for Y2K. One of the managers had Y2KDOUT as their license plate in 1998/1999.

I went through so many of these:

I was with Nortel Networks. Interesting times!

[dvarapala]

Beats me but I saw a lot of stupid people buying generators and survival shit they didn't need

Yet somehow I don't remember peolpe stocking up on toilet paper. :shrug:

[Unsuspicious]

Yet somehow I don't remember peolpe stocking up on toilet paper. :shrug:

If the computers were gonna go down, all your printer paper would need a new purpose

[The_Dude]

I was working on C++ class libraries with time and date representations. We had to rewrite a lot of code to support 4 digit years and years beyond 2037.

[Bill]

Yet somehow I don't remember people stocking up on toilet paper. :shrug:

Know how I know you aren't from the South?


Milk, bread, and toilet paper. Those are your go-to 'facing possible disaster' staples.

[dvarapala]

Know how I know you aren't from the South?


Milk, bread, and toilet paper. Those are your go-to 'facing possible disaster' staples.

Well somehow during COVID that shit spread up north. :lol: