Y2K

It was December 31st, 1999. I was maintenance technician at our facility. I had been asked to stay until after midnight to make sure that nothing goes “wrong” when the year transitioned from 1999 to 2000. The fact was that computers were only using the last 2 digits for the year. The problem as I was told, was that the computer could jump to 1900 instead of 2000. If calculations were done using the year, this could lead to problems.

At our facility, they had not stopped at computers. They called every manufacturer to make sure their equipment was Y2K compatible. Well it was too funny. I had to take model number and serial number of all small electrical motors. If it had wires connected to it, we had to check. 

Nothing happened that night. 

In the days afterwards, I was expecting some critism about how there was this big hype about nothing really. Total silence. I was amazed. What had happened? Paralysis by fear?

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  1. I was working for a small company (only 4 people based in UK)when Y2K rolled around and I’ll never forget the panic that pervaded the company, mainly our head office in Qatar, then, just like you nothing happened.

  2. I worked at a government facility that had thousands of programs written in COBOL, most of which only had 2 digit year-fields. In the 18 month lead up to y2k I worked enough overtime rewriting them all, to pay for a two week Mediterranean Cruise!