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By: Roxanne
Date: 12/31/99 8:49:38 PM
# Replies: 25
Dammit!
Nothing happened! What a rip-off!
Roxanne report time 8:54pm CST.
Response #1
By: Roxanne
Date: 12/31/99 8:58:47 PM
Oh wait! I found something! The date on this webpage that is supposed to be the world millennium clock says: "01-01-100"
Pass the bottled water! Get into the storm shelter!
http://www.worldtimezone.com/millennium24.htm
Response #2
By: Ralf
Date: 12/31/99 11:14:33 PM
Happy goddam newyear.
Grumble.
(Anyone want to buy a bomb shelter? Cheap?)
Response #3
By: Tess Trueheart
Date: 1/1/00 9:03:29 AM
Tee hee..
Response #4
By: sooz
Date: 1/1/00 3:55:53 PM
Now, now. There was a bus in New York City whose ticket taker messed up, and in a casion, 160 slot machines stopped working. They fixed 'em in a matter of minutes, but...
Yeah, I know. We all wanted to see at least SOMETHING blow up.
Response #5
By: Roxanne
Date: 1/1/00 7:04:48 PM
I'm pissed at ABC News. For the Central Time Zone Midnight Moment, they had *Granbury* as the Texas representative. What? Didn't Houston do anything? And as the fourth largest city in the country, doesn't that merit some coverage??? Or I would have at least expected Dallas to be covered.
I did see Austin; but I can't remember if it was on ABC or CNN.
Didn't all the reporters at the "Y2K Kommand Centers" look stupid? All of them grasping for any little glitch that they could report as a Y2K Bug!!!!
This may well go down as the biggest "hoax" in history! All the panic for nothing.
Response #6
By: Ralf
Date: 1/1/00 8:41:43 PM
All the panic was probably WHY there was nothing to worry about. Had there been complacency, you'd be sitting in the dark now.
If you don't wreck your car, do you try to get your insurance premiums back?
Response #7
By: sooz
Date: 1/2/00 2:10:49 AM
That's just what the aforementioned brother said would happen.
"Yep, to avoid looking like they've overreacted, the extremists will say 'If it weren't for us, you WOULD be in the dark!'" This makes them look like saviors instead of reactionary goofballs.
Y2K. The ultimate urban legend.
Response #8
By: Homer The Brave
Date: 1/2/00 10:51:31 PM
Ralf can't say that you'd undoubtedly be sitting in the dark now, but likewise, you can't just call it an urban legend. I know a few COBOL programmers (my heart goes out to them) who managed to make a buck by fixing software that would have screwed up things like billing and ordering systems.
Regardless, I think it's another wonderous chapter in the Chronicle Of Human Frailty. Can't wait for leap year.
Response #9
By: Ralf
Date: 1/3/00 9:44:37 AM
There WAS a problem, and it was fixed. I know personally of half-a-dozen statewide medicaid/medicare billing systems that would've crashed had they not been fixed in 1998. I worked on them.
Granted, if a medical billing system dies it doesn't spray the countryside with radioactive molten metal, but mine was a minor story. There was LOTS of mission-critical stuff that got fixed.
For instance, I work with a lot of environmental-health engineers. These are the guys who inspect and permit fresh water systems. They've been putting in 16 and 18 hour days for over a year (without extra pay) to guarantee their county would have clean water come January 1st.
To call Y2K an urban legend dishonors people like that.
Response #10
By: sooz
Date: 1/3/00 10:59:24 AM
(See previous message about my argumentative nature.)
You're probably right. I don't live in that world (the one of computer fixer type people), so I only have the vantage point of Joe Q. Public. From here, it looks like a lot of really smart people made a lot of money doing "fixes" that weren't necessary. I mean, no one came to my business, church or home to fix computers, and WE were all fine, so people like me figure nothing was really required. And we probably have no clue what we're talking about.
So I'll, um, shut up now. Here, have an Irish Cream Coffee.
Response #11
By: Ralf
Date: 1/4/00 8:45:58 AM
What makes me mad is the obvious scams some people got away with. MY dad (not the sharpest PC user) sent away $29 for a "Y2K Readiness" CD-ROM to test his PC. He ran it, and it said "Congratulations, you're Y2-OK!" No explanation of the "exhaustive tests" that were run or their results. Even HE felt ripped off. When he sheepishly asked me what I thought, I went to www.microsoft.com and downloaded about 2 megabytes of Y2K patches for his version of Windows95. It fixes small things, like the date/time picker showing "00" instead of "2000" but it makes him feel better.
How much you wanna bet some Proxmire wannabe attacks the government for "wasting" millions of dollars in preparation?
Response #12
By: sooz
Date: 1/4/00 11:38:31 AM
Too late. The government readiness dude himself admitted this morning that he blew a lot of unnecessary money on Y2K stuff. Of course, I can't find that article now. But if the guy HIMSELF admits it was about 75% hype and 25% real problem, well...
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/cc.htm for a very interesting article.
Response #13
By: sooz
Date: 1/5/00 2:52:52 AM
Oh, alright. After extended coffee with Homey D. and Richie tonight, I've developed an urge to tell the rest of what's in that article.
Three computers were left un-Y2K-fixed in a back room of the Y2K guy's offices. Promptly at the turn of the new year, guess what they did? Yes, they CRASHED MISERABLY. This gives incredible credence to the fixers, and shows that what they did was probably truly necessary... at least a lot of it.
Response #14
By: Tess Trueheart
Date: 1/5/00 4:45:52 AM
Kev told me a story he heard/read about a guy returning a video tape and the computer told him he was 100 years past due and owed something like 90,000 in late fees. Think they were Y2k ready? tee hee..
Response #15
By: Ralf
Date: 1/5/00 8:06:39 AM
If the video store was a real bastard about it, they could probably sue him for collection and ruin his life. I mean, it's his word against theirs.
Response #16
By: sooz
Date: 1/5/00 2:35:45 PM
Y2K bug bites Gore
WASHINGTON - Al Gore helped lead the federal response to Y2K, but that doesn't mean his own Internet operations went bug-free. The computer glitch took a tiny bite out of Gore's campaign Web site. The damage came inside his ''virtual town hall,'' where a message from a supporter was dated January 3, 19100. Gore's campaign explained that the mistake was visible only on computers using a certain type of browser and that it was quickly fixed. Besides, they said, it wasn't exactly a major glitch, even for the man who once claimed to have invented the Internet.
Response #17
By: sooz
Date: 1/5/00 2:39:33 PM
Millennium glitch causes large fees
COLONIE, N.Y. - A customer who returned a movie to a video rental store found that the price of late fees had gone up - by $91,250. A Y2K glitch caused the computer system at Super Video to misinterpret data and read that the customer's tape was 100 years late. ''It's pretty easy to identify the problem,'' the store owner said. ''Either the account is correct or there is a late charge of $91,250.'' He joked that he was tempted to collect on a couple of late tapes and head to Florida for the winter. But instead, he fixed the problem with simple math and a ball point pen.
Response #18
By: Da Sissop
Date: 1/5/00 8:30:21 PM
"I'm sorry sir, but your copy of 'Birth of a Nation' is 100 years overdue."
Response #19
By: Roxanne
Date: 1/5/00 9:26:39 PM
We did have one minor Y2K glitch here in northern Bama. On New Year's Eve after midnight, I was surfing around the cable and saw a nekkid chick! Yup, the pay-per-view channel was unscrambled and it was all cheesy soft porn!
Response #20
By: Homer The Brave
Date: 1/13/00 5:12:40 PM
I heard on NPR today that CIA spy satellite transmissions were screwed up for a while just after the Big Click-Over.
Hmm.
Response #21
By: sooz
Date: 1/13/00 10:13:06 PM
That's what you get for listening to NPR.
Response #22
By: Homer The Brave
Date: 1/14/00 2:08:46 AM
"I'm Robert Seigel..."
"..And I'm Noah Adams."
Response #23
By: Da Sissop
Date: 1/14/00 7:38:08 AM
I'd like NPR better if they'd get rid of all those stupid 15-second music breaks. Or maybe just start playing some kickass guitar licks instead. Dude.
Response #24
By: Ralf
Date: 1/14/00 8:29:27 AM
They do, sometimes.
"And today, on All Things Considered, we're going to masturbate for an hour while Jeff Beck takes the studio apart one delicious chord at a time. Jeff?"
Response #25
By: Fungus Amongus
Date: 1/16/00 8:29:57 PM
NPR would definitely do better with Eddie Van Halen. Those darn New Yorkers are boring though.