REMEBERING Y2K

Y2K!

Wow, what a pain-in-the-ass.

Here’s the thing, Y2K – the Millennium bug – was a problem primarily in digital records. Most records were dated, say, 96 rather than 1996 or 85 rather than 1985 or whatever. When 2000 rolled over, 99 would become 00 and everything would be fouled up.

I remember a woman on the Nightly News showing a reporter her basement filled with food. Why? Because Y2K was going to shut-down computers and cause world-wide panic and bla, bla, bla!  

End of Days!

I was working for the Colorado Community College System doing PR and we put our two or three Y2K press releases during the waning months of 1999. Some time earlier, a group of techs started going through the system’s files – tens-of-thousands of them – and changing the two digit numbers to four digit numbers. By the time the dreaded Y2K rolled over to 01-01-2000 there was nary a hitch.

That held true, so far as we know, throughout the world when 2000 became a reality. I recall a video rental store somewhere in New England changed few thousand dollars for a rental due to a Y2K error, but not much else; at least not much else that was reported. There is speculation that big companies with Y2K problems never made them public. Still, it wasn’t the end of the world.

Harken back to December 31, 999. The Apocrypha (biblical) proclaimed that the Last Judgment would come one thousand years after the birth of Jesus (which was, by the way, ironically in 04 BC due to some early miscalculations). Some reports say that farmers planted no crops, after all, why bother if the world was ending? Apparently, many public documents of the time opened with "As the world is now drawing to a close . . ." The James Randi Foundation Website reports that “Pope Sylvester II and Emperor Otto III momentarily mended their considerable political differences in anticipation of a certain leveling of those matters.” That is, the end of days!

It’s not hard to imagine a lot of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth and wailing as 999 came to an end. And it’s also not hard to imagine that more than a few farmers felt like asses when New Years Day 1000 dawned and the grain bins were shockingly low. Planting season in 1000 must have been a busy, busy time.

Y2K or the Apocrypha or whatever, some people always seem to be looking for any excuse to end the world.