Y2K was averted as a disaster by a lot of diligent computer engineers, programmers, analysts, and users that began way before popular awareness of the issue was a thing. It is because of that work, coordinated globally, that Y2K “never materialized”.
My personal role in Y2K response was as the shift supervisor for my local Sheriff’s Department, which had gone to “maximum staffing levels” beginning on 12/29/99. It was the quietest NYE I worked in 28 years in uniform.
Hmmm. Not so sure. I was rural Italy. Italy, as a nation, was far behind most other countries and rural Italy deemed hopeless when it came to Y2K preps. I had run a Marathon on New Year's Eve 1999. Then I went down to mid-night service at a nearby Basilica in the valley.
The mass commenced sometime around 11:30 p.m.; rural Italy is not too anal about times. As the prune-faced muckety-muck from the Vatican spoke on-&-on in Italian, half the audience was dozing and the other half listening intently. Except for one of the faithless, a certain Yankee (i.e., me).
Yes, there I was cocking my head up and down, alternately looking at my watch and at the overhead light. When the magic minute arrived for the new year, the new decade, the new century, and the new millennium, all that happened was a flicker of that large over-head light.
After the service, I walked out of the basilica expecting the night to be impossibly black. The suspense built substantially. But, no, living room lights still dotted the adjacent hills and street lamps continued illumining the roads. The only item amiss was a railroad gate that had come down and still chimed away with no train in sight.
I was riding a 200 mile - four day (fifty miles a day) endurance ride in Death Valley. The night sky was ablaze with star and we danced in the dust to an Elvis impersonator. What a night. And, yes, it was COLD! We had several bon fires going. Thans...your share brought up this long ago memory.
Yeah, I think we all had our own anticipations and celebrations for the day, Penny.
EDIT: on the Marathon for Peace -- ironically titled in retrospect -- I lived down to G.K. Chesterton's epigram: " Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." 🤫
Well, Thank you, Beverly. You are giving me credit for your imagination. Well, on second thought, I lived in N.Y.C. long enough to know how to take credit where it is not due. 😉
Good story Ned. My wife...girlfriend at the time, worked for a large hospital in Baltimore as the assistant to the head of IT. They had a huge budget to get things ready for Y2K. Since she was not a tech, she did not have to work that night. We had a formal dinner at my house with candlelight and danced at midnight. We had a beautiful crossover to the new century.
The only really weird thing is that we all called it the "new" millennium and yet, in reality, it wasn't the new millennium at all. Any one who understands basic numbers knows that there never was a year zero, that the first AD millennium started in the year 1 and ended on Dec 31 in the year 1000, so the second millennium didn't actually end until a year after the "fateful" day of Dec 31 1999. Yep that whole year of 2000 was really the END of the previous millennium, not the start of a new one. That didn't happen until Jan 1, 2001 (as Arthur Clarke noted in his famous book 2001: A Space Odyssey. )
Jon, you are right, and I think most people did know that, but people were worried that computers would get messed up because of the change from 1900s to 2000s. Things were often set up to have a 19 automatically come up for dates and the last 2 numbers put in. For most facilities, I understand making the change was not as hard as had been anticipated, but it did worry a lot of tech people, and writers who wanted some kind of massive problem that would bring down civilization or something. As so often happens, the anticipated change was less problematic than expected. On the other hand, some change really frightens people, like treating people who don't look like us as equals, worthy of our respect. That is a big one, but when one actually makes the change, life is so much brighter because the "enemies list" grows a whole lot shorter and the "potential friends list," a whole lot longer.
While there was no year zero on any calendar, there was a zero point in time, from which the calendar keeps time.
Indeed there are numerous time zeros, depending on which calendar you are using. The Julian is perhaps the most commonly used, but there are also others from which to choose such as the Jewish calendar, as well as Aztec, Chinese, Ancient Greek and so on.
My husband & I went to a sit-down dinner for about 30 people, put on by a friend who is a terrific cook, and fairly well-to-do. So she hired a wonderful swing band, and we danced (one of my men friends is a terrific lead!) and ate, and watched fireworks. A wonderful evening.
I just made my first trip to Italy this spring. I’d say urban Italy isn’t too concerned with exact time schedules either. We attended a Holy Thursday Sacred procession in Sorrento scheduled to begin at 8pm It actually began at 9:15, but no one seemed at all concerned or surprised.
In Italy, time, like traffic lights, is simply a suggestion. Even ignorant Americans are tolerated when they make dinner reservations at the ridiculous time of 7:30 or 8:00.
Our tour guide was surprised every morning when we were all in the lobby 10 minutes before the appointed time. (Admittedly, in a group of twenty even amongst Americans, that was unusual. We must have had a high degree of Germanic heritage in the group)
Tunis has that load of history from Carthage, too; Tunisians are much like Italians, with one BIG difference. I always chuckled with the taxi drivers in Tunis. They would run through the traffic lights with abandon like denizens in Naples, Italy. Yet they drove at the speed of retirees from Naples, Florida. 🥳
We were in Rome, and I was looking for a shop that sold hand-made knives, which I wanted to buy for my adult sons. I couldn't find the shop, so hailed a taxi and asked the driver if he knew where to find the shop. He thought it was near the Pantheon, so off we went. On the way, he asked what kind of knife I wanted, and I was trying to describe the elusive object, when he reached under his dashboard and pulled out a lethal-looking stiletto - "like this?", he asked helpfully. I gave up trying to describe the knives that I sought, but asked if he kept the stiletto for protection, and was his job dangerous. He laughed and told me that since Rome is so dependent on tourists, the police take care to provide good protection. I never did find the knives I wanted, but anyone who visits Italy just can't be put off by small disappointments. Even the taxi drivers are engaging.
I do, too. If I weren't over 80, I'd sell everything and move there. Since Giorgia Meloni, Mussolini's granddaughter, moderated her views and changed her political affiliation, Italy certainly has appeal, especially since Trump plans to burn this country to the ground.
Love your Y2K story Ned; Penny’s too. We simply climbed to the rooftop of our home in the Midwest and watched the stars as 2000 arrived (it was amazingly mild weather). Remembering our much younger curiosity w/out fear reminds me to consider the same approach for our next 4 years. When overwhelmed I’ll go outside to watch the stars.
Thanks for another great start of this Monday. The other is HRC's letter. On our way to our home in Rome tomorrow. What a fabulous description of my fellow Italians where when a bus comes we often say "un miracolo".
I dearly wish I could post the laughing Snoopy meme, here: "Always find a reason to smile. It may not add years to your life but surely will bring life to your years."
Interesting how, in retrospect, these stories of non-events have their own dignity and charm! They are now memorable moments for being other than anticipated. Thank you for sharing this lovely anecdote.
Apple's Macintosh computers were nonplussed with all the mental gymnastics performed with PC equipment. I know as I had mine ready to roll at our fire department. The turn of the century/millennium came and went without so much as a belch.
What's more comforting than covering yourself up with fond memories - AND having more drawer space too! For whatever it is worth to share (I'm considering having a Harris quilt made, myself).
Ok I produced I think the only tee shirt celebrating the presidential debate in 1996 in Hartford between Clinton and Dole. I drove to the place where Clinton stayed and gave tee shirts at the front desk. But I never drove to a nearby two to give Dole shirts and I always felt guilty. But about 10 years ago I found Senator Dole’s email and messaged him my apologies. He wrote back and told me to send them to his museum in Kansas I believe. And I left him with my thoughts about as a great leader that we now find lacking. He thanked me and I always treasure that brief interaction.
Wow never knew Apple had systems to dispatch fire equipment. I worked with a company with many jurisdictions but theirs were all on some flavor of Unix or Windows based servers.
I used to love that little musical wave as the Windows logo came up on screen. Now even the window has gone. My screen is covered with icons, so I always leave a clear space where the window used to be.
I was in London, working for the Finance Director of an extremely wealthy transport company connected all over the British Isles and a large part of the USA. We'd been preparing for weeks. Hardly dared to go to bed in case London melted down at midnight. And I was in Paris when the Euro became the currency. Knowing the French, the authorities had been preparing us all for a year, with instructions, and gimmicks (little bags of gold-clad chocolate euros, keyrings with a euro-converter gadget) to show us how great it was going to be, dual price-tickets on everything, and braced for commercial paralysis and protest marches in the streets. But no! At midnight, people were queuing at the ATMs, squealing with joy as they extracted their first euros. €€€ And as for time zones, my son used to call me from Australia at 2 am for a chat, having calculated forwards instead of back. (Or the other way, I'm not too good at math.)
Lots of places to upgrade to 64 bit processors all based on the Unix time, definitely an issue for those using 24 bit processors now mainly in Big government.
Yes but that didn't keep the big wigs at my famous hospital from freaking out to the point where all the heads of departments had a sleep over in cafeteria just in case of disaster.
Y2K was the best and worst thing that ever happened to IT. It was, the best because it created an incredible amount of work for almost every IT department, software company and hardware company. It also brought hundreds of thousands of programmers and engineers to the United States from India, Russia, China, the Philippines and many others. My company grew from 2 of us to over 150 consultants during the 1990's and we made the decision in 1991 to avoid doing any Y2K work.
But companies were desperate for Y2K help and when your clients ask you to handle their Y2K modifications, we did. The reason we didn't want to make Y2K changes was that once these projects were completed we would have to find other work for them. We only did Y2K work for about a dozen companies and kept the size of the projects teams to a minimum. The modifications were similar mostly involving expanding the dates from mm/dd/yy to mm/dd/yyyy. The testing was critical as well, but all of our Y2K projects were completed by the end of 1997.
The life insurance industry had evolved from offering very simple products to include several complicated projects like Universal Life and Interest Sensitive Whole Life Products. And then came the Variable Life products where insureds could invest in various mutual funds.
Congress passed several major tax law changes to insure people were paying capital gains when they surrendered their policies. These were the projects our clients needed us to help them with and Y2K was a distraction form complying with them.
Congress and the various insurance departments were getting a lot of pushback from the insurance industry to not tinker with regulations that would require large modifications to their systems.
So by the late 1990's and into the early 2000's their were relatively few new regulations and also few new life insurance products compared to the 1980's.
We had all finished data stored in databases and used the timestamp option for dates, far more accuracy than a simple date for computational needs. This was also the importation of foreign IT workers created a certain amount of chaos among people who felt their jobs post Y2K were in jeopardy because these workers were willing to take substandard pay to remain in the United States.
Just like standard time happened by many people, maybe even REPUBLICAN'TS, working together, and thats what needs to happen NOW in the current fuckup. We can't stand around to just see what happens. Everyone concerned should be working toward the future. I think Kamala said it best: WE WON'T GO BACK. Definitely not for this bunch of loonies.
I had a party across the street and arranged with the host that I would shut off the main breaker exactly at midnight. You talk about folks going silent.
My personal role was as one of those programmer analysts finding all the dates that would fail for a large international company here in Maryland in both mainframes and server based programs and databases. It was a fun task and we were ready long before the expected rollover..
Most of the life insurance companies we worked for used one of a handful of life insurance administration systems. Most of them started using number of months since January, 1900 for internal date storage. But since birthdates on policies sometime produced 1900 all of the systems carried it as mmddyy, so that date was checked against the age at issue of the insured to determine the century. Otherwise, it was what you said and really wasn't that difficult to fix the systems.
A much larger project of expanding all of the financial values had recently been done in all of these systems because they were written when almost no one had a life insurance policy with a face amount greater than $9,999,999.99.
There was a problem I kept quiet about (until Sep 25th this year), that took place 10 years after the first flight of the F-22 in 1997. It's more appropriate today in light of the start of railroad time zones.
"...F-22A, back to Hickam…(click to view full) Aircraft software can be serious business. DID’s F-22A Raptor FOCUS Article mentioned recent flight software problems that delayed the aircraft’s first foreign deployment from Hickam AFB in Hawaii to Kadena AFB, Japan. What we didn’t mention at the time is how serious the problem was, and how dependent on computers modern aircraft – including military aircraft – have become. What follows are relevant excerpts from a CNN transcript on February 24, 2007 that covered a number of unrelated issues. We’ve cut that out, and left only the F-22 related section of the transcript… KC-10: Life saver…(click to view full) Maj. Gen. Don Sheppard (ret.): “…At the international date line, whoops, all systems dumped and when I say all systems, I mean all systems, their navigation, part of their communications, their fuel systems. They were — they could have been in real trouble. They were with their tankers. The tankers – they tried to reset their systems, couldn’t get them reset. The tankers brought them back to Hawaii. This could have been real serious. It certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad. It turned out OK. It was fixed..."
I remember the fear well in our community of 2,000 people on the Pacific Coast-the classes available in local churches and neighborhood homes, the list of food we should store, the suggestion of mechanical devices to purchase to help make life bearable. The fear was real but also the leaders who rose up to help educate and calm the masses.
I was one of those in my community. Computers and accounting programs had become the big thing in the previous several years, so much so that most younger people who did bookkeeping, etc., on computers had no idea how to do it on paper with columnar pads and doing a debit and credit for every item, and then how to create and balance a P&L or Balance Sheet. I had been doing manual bookkeeping since 1978, so I began helping people re what to buy, office supplies wise, and then how to use them. Many of them realized what a huge benefit computerized accounting programs really are, instead of having to carry around huge ledgers and binders for everything.
I was a national bank examiner prior to and after Y2K. We started examining our banks in 1997 to see how they planned to deal with the time. Those who followed our guidance would be fine. Those who did not, faced a breakdown in IT systems. We encouraged those making progress to continue, and forced those who were not to pay attention. It worked. The banks made it safely through the millennium change thanks to a lot of hard work and clear expectations for ensuring their hard- and software were updated.
Thank you for saying this. I, too, was in IT then and know the years of identitfying code needing to change way ahead of the day. It was a major concerted effort by hardware & software folks.
Yes! Please! I don't care which "time" they choose. It's always going to be dark when I take our dog (dog is our co-pilot) out for the first time or the last time.
No, our country needs the switch. It’s one of the few universal non-partisan things we have to b!tch about now that the weather has been co-opted as a political talking point.
Too right Bill! Here in Missouri I wake up in the dark all year 'round. At least when I travel to the UK in the summers I get some morning light (well it is quite early: 4:00-ish) to wake up to!
We need to stay on standard time. And if we allow states to choose their own, we could be going back to the mess for travel etc that we had before 1883, only hours ahead or behind all over the place.
I traveled to Bali several years back, and because they are located so close to the equator, their times, and the light, never change. Nor does the sunrise or sunset. The amount of daylight at 5am or 7pm, etc., is exactly the same all year round. Our tour guide had moved to California at one point, and it had taken him quite a long time to adjust to the changing daylight and night time throughout the year. He said time around the solstices was particularly difficult.
I also worked in Alaska for one summer, on a 16 week contract. During that entire time I never saw the moon or stars. There was no darkness, only a mild dimming of the sunlight in the 'morning' and evening. The college kids who worked at the same resort just stayed up and played football, basketball, etc., until they got tired, and some, I don't think, ever went to sleep. As I was driving home in my RV I finally got far enough south to actually have darkness, and when the stars came out I just sat there and cried. It had been so very long since I had seen them, and I didn't realize how very much I missed them and what a huge part of how I thought about myself and my identity they were.
I agree, a person preference isn't as important as consistency in this. I think the lesson illustrates it's usual to resist change, but the benefit can outweigh the reluctance. It doesn't seem like too much of an adjustment to say, this is what 5 o'clock looks like in this part of the country.
I LOVE daylight saving time, because the long summer evenings are even longer. It is of course a bit of a jolt when standard time hits us, and the change should happen earlier in the year (and consistently in spring and fall). But the alleged widespread disruption of people's personal clocks strikes me as exaggerated: does nobody ever stay up an hour past their bedtime on a Saturday night?
Whether you like the idea of year-round standard time or year-round daylight time depends a lot on which side of a time zone you live on - the long dark mornings for those on the western side can be a bummer on daylight time, in the winter.
When I was working, it took me two to three weeks to adjust to the time change. Air and rail lines find it to be a twice-yearly hassle. I still say eave the time one way or the other, but leave it alone.
Some of us wake spontaneously at 4:00 am and staying awake to close the chicken coop when those girls refuse to go to bed until full dark is a hardship when dark falls at 10 pm in the northern part of the US.
Great mini lesson! Kind of reminds me of the Y2K panic that never materialized! Thanks Dr. HCR!
Y2K was averted as a disaster by a lot of diligent computer engineers, programmers, analysts, and users that began way before popular awareness of the issue was a thing. It is because of that work, coordinated globally, that Y2K “never materialized”.
My personal role in Y2K response was as the shift supervisor for my local Sheriff’s Department, which had gone to “maximum staffing levels” beginning on 12/29/99. It was the quietest NYE I worked in 28 years in uniform.
Hmmm. Not so sure. I was rural Italy. Italy, as a nation, was far behind most other countries and rural Italy deemed hopeless when it came to Y2K preps. I had run a Marathon on New Year's Eve 1999. Then I went down to mid-night service at a nearby Basilica in the valley.
The mass commenced sometime around 11:30 p.m.; rural Italy is not too anal about times. As the prune-faced muckety-muck from the Vatican spoke on-&-on in Italian, half the audience was dozing and the other half listening intently. Except for one of the faithless, a certain Yankee (i.e., me).
Yes, there I was cocking my head up and down, alternately looking at my watch and at the overhead light. When the magic minute arrived for the new year, the new decade, the new century, and the new millennium, all that happened was a flicker of that large over-head light.
After the service, I walked out of the basilica expecting the night to be impossibly black. The suspense built substantially. But, no, living room lights still dotted the adjacent hills and street lamps continued illumining the roads. The only item amiss was a railroad gate that had come down and still chimed away with no train in sight.
I was riding a 200 mile - four day (fifty miles a day) endurance ride in Death Valley. The night sky was ablaze with star and we danced in the dust to an Elvis impersonator. What a night. And, yes, it was COLD! We had several bon fires going. Thans...your share brought up this long ago memory.
Yeah, I think we all had our own anticipations and celebrations for the day, Penny.
EDIT: on the Marathon for Peace -- ironically titled in retrospect -- I lived down to G.K. Chesterton's epigram: " Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." 🤫
(smile) You took us there, through time and space. Thanks!
Well, Thank you, Beverly. You are giving me credit for your imagination. Well, on second thought, I lived in N.Y.C. long enough to know how to take credit where it is not due. 😉
Good story Ned. My wife...girlfriend at the time, worked for a large hospital in Baltimore as the assistant to the head of IT. They had a huge budget to get things ready for Y2K. Since she was not a tech, she did not have to work that night. We had a formal dinner at my house with candlelight and danced at midnight. We had a beautiful crossover to the new century.
Sounds great. The millennium happens only once in a thousand years. So do it right! 🥳
The only really weird thing is that we all called it the "new" millennium and yet, in reality, it wasn't the new millennium at all. Any one who understands basic numbers knows that there never was a year zero, that the first AD millennium started in the year 1 and ended on Dec 31 in the year 1000, so the second millennium didn't actually end until a year after the "fateful" day of Dec 31 1999. Yep that whole year of 2000 was really the END of the previous millennium, not the start of a new one. That didn't happen until Jan 1, 2001 (as Arthur Clarke noted in his famous book 2001: A Space Odyssey. )
Jon, you are right, and I think most people did know that, but people were worried that computers would get messed up because of the change from 1900s to 2000s. Things were often set up to have a 19 automatically come up for dates and the last 2 numbers put in. For most facilities, I understand making the change was not as hard as had been anticipated, but it did worry a lot of tech people, and writers who wanted some kind of massive problem that would bring down civilization or something. As so often happens, the anticipated change was less problematic than expected. On the other hand, some change really frightens people, like treating people who don't look like us as equals, worthy of our respect. That is a big one, but when one actually makes the change, life is so much brighter because the "enemies list" grows a whole lot shorter and the "potential friends list," a whole lot longer.
While there was no year zero on any calendar, there was a zero point in time, from which the calendar keeps time.
Indeed there are numerous time zeros, depending on which calendar you are using. The Julian is perhaps the most commonly used, but there are also others from which to choose such as the Jewish calendar, as well as Aztec, Chinese, Ancient Greek and so on.
This is a picky point I freely admit.
Can always count on you, Jon. 😊
My husband & I went to a sit-down dinner for about 30 people, put on by a friend who is a terrific cook, and fairly well-to-do. So she hired a wonderful swing band, and we danced (one of my men friends is a terrific lead!) and ate, and watched fireworks. A wonderful evening.
I just made my first trip to Italy this spring. I’d say urban Italy isn’t too concerned with exact time schedules either. We attended a Holy Thursday Sacred procession in Sorrento scheduled to begin at 8pm It actually began at 9:15, but no one seemed at all concerned or surprised.
In Italy, time, like traffic lights, is simply a suggestion. Even ignorant Americans are tolerated when they make dinner reservations at the ridiculous time of 7:30 or 8:00.
Our tour guide was surprised every morning when we were all in the lobby 10 minutes before the appointed time. (Admittedly, in a group of twenty even amongst Americans, that was unusual. We must have had a high degree of Germanic heritage in the group)
Tunis has that load of history from Carthage, too; Tunisians are much like Italians, with one BIG difference. I always chuckled with the taxi drivers in Tunis. They would run through the traffic lights with abandon like denizens in Naples, Italy. Yet they drove at the speed of retirees from Naples, Florida. 🥳
Funny visual, Ned.
We were in Rome, and I was looking for a shop that sold hand-made knives, which I wanted to buy for my adult sons. I couldn't find the shop, so hailed a taxi and asked the driver if he knew where to find the shop. He thought it was near the Pantheon, so off we went. On the way, he asked what kind of knife I wanted, and I was trying to describe the elusive object, when he reached under his dashboard and pulled out a lethal-looking stiletto - "like this?", he asked helpfully. I gave up trying to describe the knives that I sought, but asked if he kept the stiletto for protection, and was his job dangerous. He laughed and told me that since Rome is so dependent on tourists, the police take care to provide good protection. I never did find the knives I wanted, but anyone who visits Italy just can't be put off by small disappointments. Even the taxi drivers are engaging.
That is what I love about Italy -- all that history and wearing it like a loose garment.
I loved Italy
I do, too. If I weren't over 80, I'd sell everything and move there. Since Giorgia Meloni, Mussolini's granddaughter, moderated her views and changed her political affiliation, Italy certainly has appeal, especially since Trump plans to burn this country to the ground.
So did I, until I went to live there.
Love your Y2K story Ned; Penny’s too. We simply climbed to the rooftop of our home in the Midwest and watched the stars as 2000 arrived (it was amazingly mild weather). Remembering our much younger curiosity w/out fear reminds me to consider the same approach for our next 4 years. When overwhelmed I’ll go outside to watch the stars.
That sounds like the perfect prescription for my post-electoral oldster's blues, Maureen.
Thanks for another great start of this Monday. The other is HRC's letter. On our way to our home in Rome tomorrow. What a fabulous description of my fellow Italians where when a bus comes we often say "un miracolo".
Well that is a character-building tale . . . for me, *Purobi. Learning yet again to manage being pea-green with envy. 😉
EDIT: please forgive my mis-spelling your name, Purobi. 🤞
Your story makes me smile, Ned.
Mission accomplished. 😉
Oh… Mr McDoodle, I thought you were in rural Italy in 1883. 😜👺🐗👧😪😝
I dearly wish I could post the laughing Snoopy meme, here: "Always find a reason to smile. It may not add years to your life but surely will bring life to your years."
EDIT: good one, me-lad, Billy. 😊
A challenge for this age
No Snoopy surely is a challenge! 🖖
Interesting how, in retrospect, these stories of non-events have their own dignity and charm! They are now memorable moments for being other than anticipated. Thank you for sharing this lovely anecdote.
You are welcome, Laura!
Great story, however, the new century and millennium didn't arrive until the year 2001. Just sayin' ...
True-dat. Spent that in Times Square. Way over-rated.
Apple's Macintosh computers were nonplussed with all the mental gymnastics performed with PC equipment. I know as I had mine ready to roll at our fire department. The turn of the century/millennium came and went without so much as a belch.
And I ran a 5 K midnight race in Central Park. I know because I still have the tattered long sleeve jersey. I didn’t win, btw.
I stand corrected. It was 2001. But the tee shirt is still tattered. I wonder why I didn’t run in 2000. It’s too late to go back.
I just discovered this organization that turns nostalgic t-shirts into blankets! https://www.projectrepat.com/pages/our-story-hos
What's more comforting than covering yourself up with fond memories - AND having more drawer space too! For whatever it is worth to share (I'm considering having a Harris quilt made, myself).
Ok I produced I think the only tee shirt celebrating the presidential debate in 1996 in Hartford between Clinton and Dole. I drove to the place where Clinton stayed and gave tee shirts at the front desk. But I never drove to a nearby two to give Dole shirts and I always felt guilty. But about 10 years ago I found Senator Dole’s email and messaged him my apologies. He wrote back and told me to send them to his museum in Kansas I believe. And I left him with my thoughts about as a great leader that we now find lacking. He thanked me and I always treasure that brief interaction.
What a great find! Drawer space is a big problem.
Wow never knew Apple had systems to dispatch fire equipment. I worked with a company with many jurisdictions but theirs were all on some flavor of Unix or Windows based servers.
Ours were all Windows based.
I used to love that little musical wave as the Windows logo came up on screen. Now even the window has gone. My screen is covered with icons, so I always leave a clear space where the window used to be.
speak for yourself te he
I was in London, working for the Finance Director of an extremely wealthy transport company connected all over the British Isles and a large part of the USA. We'd been preparing for weeks. Hardly dared to go to bed in case London melted down at midnight. And I was in Paris when the Euro became the currency. Knowing the French, the authorities had been preparing us all for a year, with instructions, and gimmicks (little bags of gold-clad chocolate euros, keyrings with a euro-converter gadget) to show us how great it was going to be, dual price-tickets on everything, and braced for commercial paralysis and protest marches in the streets. But no! At midnight, people were queuing at the ATMs, squealing with joy as they extracted their first euros. €€€ And as for time zones, my son used to call me from Australia at 2 am for a chat, having calculated forwards instead of back. (Or the other way, I'm not too good at math.)
We still have several years to avert the next big computer time disaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
Fascinating!
Yuhh.., so much for our 64bit world. Only 14 years til 2038. It'll be here in "no time". But, the lead up to it?
Oh no! Here we go again. Tr*** will fix it... he's a stable genius. Hahahahahagag
Joyce - I hope he isn’t anywhere near the White House to even try.
Interesting. I was totally unaware of this. On the other hand, I'm not so sure I'll be here - or working with computers - in 2038.
Yeah. We fixed the last one.... someone else's turn. Hopefully for another exciting new year, full of doomsday preppers and all !!
Lots of places to upgrade to 64 bit processors all based on the Unix time, definitely an issue for those using 24 bit processors now mainly in Big government.
Morning, Ally! Not surprised to know you were among those at the ready to lead us through a smooth transition!
Morning, Lynell!! That was a quiet night, thankfully.
You must be up super early or on your own time zone Ally.
I never realized when or how this was all coordinated. A meteorologist, telegraphs, and jewelers. Amazing coordination.
Happy time zone day to all.
It was actually early enough in my evening, and of a topic that I could read before bed!
Yes but that didn't keep the big wigs at my famous hospital from freaking out to the point where all the heads of departments had a sleep over in cafeteria just in case of disaster.
As the head of my hospital's Emergency Department, I was required to be present that night. When nothing happened, we were sent home at 2 am.
Quietest NYE I ever worked...
Y2K was the best and worst thing that ever happened to IT. It was, the best because it created an incredible amount of work for almost every IT department, software company and hardware company. It also brought hundreds of thousands of programmers and engineers to the United States from India, Russia, China, the Philippines and many others. My company grew from 2 of us to over 150 consultants during the 1990's and we made the decision in 1991 to avoid doing any Y2K work.
But companies were desperate for Y2K help and when your clients ask you to handle their Y2K modifications, we did. The reason we didn't want to make Y2K changes was that once these projects were completed we would have to find other work for them. We only did Y2K work for about a dozen companies and kept the size of the projects teams to a minimum. The modifications were similar mostly involving expanding the dates from mm/dd/yy to mm/dd/yyyy. The testing was critical as well, but all of our Y2K projects were completed by the end of 1997.
The life insurance industry had evolved from offering very simple products to include several complicated projects like Universal Life and Interest Sensitive Whole Life Products. And then came the Variable Life products where insureds could invest in various mutual funds.
Congress passed several major tax law changes to insure people were paying capital gains when they surrendered their policies. These were the projects our clients needed us to help them with and Y2K was a distraction form complying with them.
Congress and the various insurance departments were getting a lot of pushback from the insurance industry to not tinker with regulations that would require large modifications to their systems.
So by the late 1990's and into the early 2000's their were relatively few new regulations and also few new life insurance products compared to the 1980's.
We had all finished data stored in databases and used the timestamp option for dates, far more accuracy than a simple date for computational needs. This was also the importation of foreign IT workers created a certain amount of chaos among people who felt their jobs post Y2K were in jeopardy because these workers were willing to take substandard pay to remain in the United States.
All I remember is the Seinfeld episode....
Just like standard time happened by many people, maybe even REPUBLICAN'TS, working together, and thats what needs to happen NOW in the current fuckup. We can't stand around to just see what happens. Everyone concerned should be working toward the future. I think Kamala said it best: WE WON'T GO BACK. Definitely not for this bunch of loonies.
Thank you for your service Ally!
Hear, here!
I had a party across the street and arranged with the host that I would shut off the main breaker exactly at midnight. You talk about folks going silent.
John, you are SO bad! LOL!
Sounds like the Merry Pranksters at work . . . .
When CNN showed the lights were still on for the New Year's celebration in Sydney, Australia, I knew we would be Okay.
Yeah, it was kind o anti-climactic after that.
My personal role was as one of those programmer analysts finding all the dates that would fail for a large international company here in Maryland in both mainframes and server based programs and databases. It was a fun task and we were ready long before the expected rollover..
Most of the life insurance companies we worked for used one of a handful of life insurance administration systems. Most of them started using number of months since January, 1900 for internal date storage. But since birthdates on policies sometime produced 1900 all of the systems carried it as mmddyy, so that date was checked against the age at issue of the insured to determine the century. Otherwise, it was what you said and really wasn't that difficult to fix the systems.
A much larger project of expanding all of the financial values had recently been done in all of these systems because they were written when almost no one had a life insurance policy with a face amount greater than $9,999,999.99.
There was a problem I kept quiet about (until Sep 25th this year), that took place 10 years after the first flight of the F-22 in 1997. It's more appropriate today in light of the start of railroad time zones.
See https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f22-squadron-shot-down-by-the-international-date-line-03087/
"...F-22A, back to Hickam…(click to view full) Aircraft software can be serious business. DID’s F-22A Raptor FOCUS Article mentioned recent flight software problems that delayed the aircraft’s first foreign deployment from Hickam AFB in Hawaii to Kadena AFB, Japan. What we didn’t mention at the time is how serious the problem was, and how dependent on computers modern aircraft – including military aircraft – have become. What follows are relevant excerpts from a CNN transcript on February 24, 2007 that covered a number of unrelated issues. We’ve cut that out, and left only the F-22 related section of the transcript… KC-10: Life saver…(click to view full) Maj. Gen. Don Sheppard (ret.): “…At the international date line, whoops, all systems dumped and when I say all systems, I mean all systems, their navigation, part of their communications, their fuel systems. They were — they could have been in real trouble. They were with their tankers. The tankers – they tried to reset their systems, couldn’t get them reset. The tankers brought them back to Hawaii. This could have been real serious. It certainly could have been real serious if the weather had been bad. It turned out OK. It was fixed..."
That's fascinating, Jim. Thanks for this tidbit of info.
I remember the fear well in our community of 2,000 people on the Pacific Coast-the classes available in local churches and neighborhood homes, the list of food we should store, the suggestion of mechanical devices to purchase to help make life bearable. The fear was real but also the leaders who rose up to help educate and calm the masses.
I was one of those in my community. Computers and accounting programs had become the big thing in the previous several years, so much so that most younger people who did bookkeeping, etc., on computers had no idea how to do it on paper with columnar pads and doing a debit and credit for every item, and then how to create and balance a P&L or Balance Sheet. I had been doing manual bookkeeping since 1978, so I began helping people re what to buy, office supplies wise, and then how to use them. Many of them realized what a huge benefit computerized accounting programs really are, instead of having to carry around huge ledgers and binders for everything.
I was a national bank examiner prior to and after Y2K. We started examining our banks in 1997 to see how they planned to deal with the time. Those who followed our guidance would be fine. Those who did not, faced a breakdown in IT systems. We encouraged those making progress to continue, and forced those who were not to pay attention. It worked. The banks made it safely through the millennium change thanks to a lot of hard work and clear expectations for ensuring their hard- and software were updated.
Thank you for saying this. I, too, was in IT then and know the years of identitfying code needing to change way ahead of the day. It was a major concerted effort by hardware & software folks.
“Kind of reminds me of the Y2K panic that never materialized!”
I had the same thought.
Now, if we could just get rid of this daylight saving time nonsense; not that it matters much to us retired folk.
Yes! Please! I don't care which "time" they choose. It's always going to be dark when I take our dog (dog is our co-pilot) out for the first time or the last time.
Just pick a damn time and leave it alone.
No, our country needs the switch. It’s one of the few universal non-partisan things we have to b!tch about now that the weather has been co-opted as a political talking point.
Too right Bill! Here in Missouri I wake up in the dark all year 'round. At least when I travel to the UK in the summers I get some morning light (well it is quite early: 4:00-ish) to wake up to!
I think we should get rid of daylight savings time. It does cause problems with our body’s time clock, so I’ve read.
We need to stay on standard time. And if we allow states to choose their own, we could be going back to the mess for travel etc that we had before 1883, only hours ahead or behind all over the place.
Don't look now...
Arizona keeps Mountain Standard all year. In fact it's called Arizona Time now!
Also, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.
I traveled to Bali several years back, and because they are located so close to the equator, their times, and the light, never change. Nor does the sunrise or sunset. The amount of daylight at 5am or 7pm, etc., is exactly the same all year round. Our tour guide had moved to California at one point, and it had taken him quite a long time to adjust to the changing daylight and night time throughout the year. He said time around the solstices was particularly difficult.
I also worked in Alaska for one summer, on a 16 week contract. During that entire time I never saw the moon or stars. There was no darkness, only a mild dimming of the sunlight in the 'morning' and evening. The college kids who worked at the same resort just stayed up and played football, basketball, etc., until they got tired, and some, I don't think, ever went to sleep. As I was driving home in my RV I finally got far enough south to actually have darkness, and when the stars came out I just sat there and cried. It had been so very long since I had seen them, and I didn't realize how very much I missed them and what a huge part of how I thought about myself and my identity they were.
One time, all year long, please! The days get either longer or shorter according to the time of year, without us hoomans fiddling with the time.
I agree, a person preference isn't as important as consistency in this. I think the lesson illustrates it's usual to resist change, but the benefit can outweigh the reluctance. It doesn't seem like too much of an adjustment to say, this is what 5 o'clock looks like in this part of the country.
I LOVE daylight saving time, because the long summer evenings are even longer. It is of course a bit of a jolt when standard time hits us, and the change should happen earlier in the year (and consistently in spring and fall). But the alleged widespread disruption of people's personal clocks strikes me as exaggerated: does nobody ever stay up an hour past their bedtime on a Saturday night?
Whether you like the idea of year-round standard time or year-round daylight time depends a lot on which side of a time zone you live on - the long dark mornings for those on the western side can be a bummer on daylight time, in the winter.
When I was working, it took me two to three weeks to adjust to the time change. Air and rail lines find it to be a twice-yearly hassle. I still say eave the time one way or the other, but leave it alone.
Some of us wake spontaneously at 4:00 am and staying awake to close the chicken coop when those girls refuse to go to bed until full dark is a hardship when dark falls at 10 pm in the northern part of the US.