C'mon and fess up. How much did YOU believe in the Y2k disaster?

[JohnT]

And what were the scope of your preparations?

I didn't believe in it a bit, but I was wondering what lengths some of us Dopers went to in order to prepare for the end of civilization. Are some of you still eating that 700 pounds of beef jerky that you bought? Any of us now using our Y2k bunkers as spare bedrooms?

At the most, I got a little bit anxious around 11:59:30pm, but since lights haven't been going off around the world prior to that (remember, all the missles in Russia were going to launch when their clocks rolled over) my anxiety wasn't that great. I, otoh, did have some great times debating and debunking Y2k paranoia on various message boards.

[TheLoadedDog]

I was, admittedly, more at ease when New Zealand clicked over into 2000, and the lights didn't go out. A couple of hours later, and it was our turn.

[chula]

I was one of the people saying "I told you so" on January 1. A lot of people who had been predicting doomsday suddenly forgot those debates.

How much was the tab on that scam anyway? Billions of dollars?

[JohnT]

Two of the big Y2k names, Gary North and The Gartner Group, estimated that it would cost $600 billion to fix the problem, but they also estimated that there was no way it was going to be completed before mass breakdowns of society occurred.

I hope all those programmers who fixed the Y2k bug made sure that they allowed for 5 spaces in the year field, or else we're going to have to go through the same crap in the year 9999.

[JohnT]

Of course, the current "About the Gartner Group (http://www.gartner.com/5_about/our_business/) page mentions nothing about Y2k, tho' these people were the biggest proponents of it. Typical.

[Bryan Ekers]

Well, I was on duty at a military base at midnight, Dec 31, 1999. I'm not sure what I could possibly have done if civilization decided to collapse, but I was being paid so who cares?

[Ice Wolf]

I didn't sweat it over Y2K, I must admit. Certainly didn't buy up th' water an' stuff, tho' th' recycling bins around about were full t' th' brim with plastic containers for weeks.

I remember being on the phone with a good friend as midnight came and went. The conversation something like this:

"Lights still on over there?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, cool. We'll live, then."

And I went t' bed.

[Treviathan]

I was planning a party at my place that year, and I was in the car picking up some appetizers that afternoon when I heard that New Zealand (I think) was the first country to welcome the new year.

I figured that since hordes of flaming angels didn't descend upon Wellington to separate the virtuous Kiwis from the damned, all would probably be kosher when midnight struck at my place.

[Essured]

Mr Goo and I were in a dodgy old motorhome somewhere in the middle of France.

We expected nothing to happen, and were not in the least bit concerned. Both our parents were extremely worried, as we'd stated that if the fares got cheap enough, we might arrange a side trip, as we weren't even concerned about flying. No worries beforehand, no twinges as the clock ticked over and no sighs of relief. No smug "told you so" comments either, since it was just the two of us and I don't see the point.

[Siege]

Actually, I was one of those programmers working on Y2K stuff. For about 9 months, I even got to call myself a "Y2K Expert". I spent a lot of time searching the web for information about every system in the manufacturing plant I was working in (Warning: A Google search on "Wetzel" (as in Wetzel Tools) produces results you don't even want to think about, or it did 3 years ago, anyway. They were even worse than a search I did on a piece of equipment made by Onan.) We even had to certify that a piece of x-ray equipment which hadn't been used in years and wouldn't be used in years met corporate Y2K compliance standards. You'd be surprised how many pieces of equipment were labelled "Y2K Status: NA -- no clock." I did have to modify some old dBase code, including some which we didn't find out about until January 2000, which led to me working around compiled dBase code with a raging case of flu. It was the one Y2K bug I didn't allow for.

The bottom line: I was one of the people saying, "Don't worry about it, really." To people who were worried about banks, I pointed out that since they routinely issued 30 year mortgages and they wanted their money, they'd been dealing with the problem for a long time. To the fellow at church who was worried about his car, I pointed out that there was no need for his car to know what year it was. I was amused to realize that dBase code I'd written back around 1989 in Hawaii was Y2K compliant, and a bit outraged to realize someone had successfully patented the fix I'd used about 8 or 9 years after I'd done so. I was an amateur in those days -- any programmer worth the title could have thought of it. I was on call the morning of Jan. 1, 2000, but I didn't think I'd be needed. Still, I was relieved when I was when the lights in Australia didn't even flicker at that witching hour.

CJ

[mattgg]

I'm also a programmer and spent a lot of time fixing Y2K bugs. I won't say that the world would have come to an end if not for the efforts of people like me and cjhoworth, but our preparations did prevent many Y2K problems before they happened. The fact that the rollover passed uneventfully (24 times, no less) is due in large part to a lot of hard work. It did cost a fortune to do all of the work. Over one hundred people in my company spent months making sure our software (both the software we sell and the software from other companies which we use) would continue to work on 1/1/2000. That accounts for 1 or 2 million dollars right there.

So when the clock struck midnight, I wasn't afraid of computer problems. I was afraid that some nutjob who thought the world would end at midnight would try to ensure that it did. I expected that the power would go out somewhere in the world at just the right moment and cause panic and rioting. When people asked me if they should worry about computers breaking down, I told them they should worry about people breaking down instead.

[Booker57]

I will admit to buying a case of TP. What the hell, it won't spoil, you can always use it, trade it. Still using it. I have always been prepaired. Old Boy Scout.

[flodnak]

Fella bilong missus flodnak is in the networks and security biz. Although he wasn't involved with fixing potential Y2K problems, he was in fairly regular contact with people who were. He told me that, from what he could see, 1) many of the things people thought would cause major problems, like imbedded chips, would either cause only minor problems or none at all; and 2) a large army of very bright people were working their @$$e$ off to correct what could really cause serious disruption. As a result, we weren't worried.

I had thought that we should gas up the car and get out some cash ahead of time, not because of fear of the Y2K problem but because of fear of fear of the Y2K problem. Which is to say, concern that gas station storage tanks and ATMs might be emptied by nervous people during the long New Year's holiday weekend that year. But we forgot to do that and as it turns out even that wasn't a problem.

[FairyChatMom]

At the time, I was working with a man whose wife listened to a Christian Talk Radio station all the time. She convinced him that they needed to prepare. They laid in supplies of food, water, and ammunition. He kept telling us about all the preps they were doing. He got real quiet about it when we came back to work after the holidays.

Yeah, he was an idiot.

[porcupine]

I filled my gas tank a couple of day prior so I wouldn't have to deal with idiots making a run for gas on NYE.

I got my standard amount of money from the ATM a little early so I wouldn't have to deal with idiots making a run for cash on NYE.

The electric company had been notoriously unreliable in general for the past couple of years, so I made sure I had batteries in my flashlights.

I stopped watching TV news about two months before NYE because I got sick of all the reactionaries trying to stir people into a frenzy over Y2K. Except for a few days last September, I haven't gone back to watching on a regular basic and probably never will.

I was concerned some maniac might try some type of suicide bombing in Times Square on NYE.

That was the extent of my Y2K madness. I develop software for a living, and I found that the more people knew about computer systems, the less they were worried about a computer-based disaster.

[hajario]

I was one of the most vehement "nothing's gonna happen" people you would ever meet. I can't even imagine how many hours I spent trying to convince the unconvincable that it was all a bunch of moronic media hype. We didn't do a damn thing to prepare unless you count buying lobsters and filets to eat with friends that night. I won a few bets too but I didn't have the heart to collect.

Haj

[SeekerTweaker]

Maybe a Dallas doper can confirm this, but didn't the lights go out in a section of the town for a while at midnight? I know a bunch of the traffic lights went out at midnight....

I'm just thinking how freaked out the people must have been when their lights went out at midnight... probably assumed that it happened everywhere. Yipes!

One awesome thing about the Y2K panic- that AWESOME espn commercial where they did the "Y2K Test". Cut to flickering lights with team mascots running around, glass smashing, people looting and screaming in the offices with staticy tv screens behind them. I must have seen that commercial 20 times and laughed out loud at every one of them.

[Una Persson]

Originally posted by hajario
I was one of the most vehement "nothing's gonna happen" people you would ever meet. I can't even imagine how many hours I spent trying to convince the unconvincable that it was all a bunch of moronic media hype. We didn't do a damn thing to prepare unless you count buying lobsters and filets to eat with friends that night. I won a few bets too but I didn't have the heart to collect.
That post above could have been written by me, almost word for word, except for the lobsters.

[rowrrbazzle]

I didn't think the world would end. I did think there would be localized problems.

I did what Californians are supposed to do to prepare for an earthquake. I had a week's worth of water (from the tap, stored in old bleach bottles) and canned food (bought from the grocery). I made sure I had fresh batteries for my flashlights.

Also, over the previous months I gradually withdrew enough cash from my bank account to pay for a couple of month's expenses. I turned in my rent check a few days early.

In other words, I took minimal precautions that really didn't cost me anything. The canned food served as occasional meals over the next few months.

It turned out my apartment garage entry card stopped working that weekend. They blamed it on Y2k, but I'm skeptical.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

I made sure my coleman lantern and stove worked. But that was about it.

[tomndebb]

How much was the tab on that scam anyway? Billions of dollars?
Two of the big Y2k names, Gary North and The Gartner Group, estimated that it would cost $600 billion to fix the problem, but they also estimated that there was no way it was going to be completed before mass breakdowns of society occurred.
I can't even imagine how many hours I spent trying to convince the unconvincable that it was all a bunch of moronic media hype. For the record: it was not a scam.

While a few shops had begun addressing the issue in the late 1980s (all the code I wrote beginning in 1984 was Y2K compliant), it was the presentation of the doomsday scenarios that finally got most management off their duffs to address the problem. (Of course, most of them couldn't make the right choice, so billions were wasted replacing functional code with untested Client/Server nonsense--and then ripping it out at the last minute to simply fix the original code.)

As usual, the media, particularly TV, got most of it wrong and created unnecessary hysteria long after management had finally awakened to the issue and reluctantly coughed up some money to handle it. (I would be curious to see a citation from the Gartner Group subsequent to July, 1998, claiming that it would not be fixed in time.)

By the time 2000/01/01 rolled around, I was pretty sure that there would be no meltdown--but only because I had seen the efforts being expended to prevent that calamity.

[Bumbazine]

I was another one of those programmers fixing Y2K bugs in 1999. The only thing I was really worried about was people going wonky, so I moved our 401K from stocks to gov't bonds, and we did our shopping early that week, just in case there was a last minute run on T. P. We did stay up to have a glass of wine at midnight, then went off to bed. ho-hum.

[Violet]

Celebrated in London (UK). :cool: Didn't believe in any disaster. Didn't care if one occurred.

[astro]

Put absolute blind faith in the ability of balding, chain smoking 50-60 year old COBOL programmers being paid $ 100,000 a year to fix the problem.

[TheLoadedDog]

I spent February 2000 enjoying the hospitality of a relative of a friend who runs a rice mill in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. He said that he had no work to do, and his machines were idle. He didn't mind though, because this was due to his regular customers having too much rice on their hands - the stuff they'd bought from him in late '99 thinking the world would end. So he had the mill running 24/7 before the new year, got loads of cash, and spent it with me hanging around seedy bars the following year. He was cool with Y2K.

It turned out, the only problem in Australia was that a few people in Adelaide had slight difficulty with certain types of bus tickets. Not exactly the end of the world.

[Fern Forest]

I was quite fascinated by the issue in 93 and 94 and thought it did have potential for big problems. By the time 98 rolled around though I didn't expect much. My mother was one of the people in charge of the project fix at her bank and they were expecting to finish with a few months to spare. And many companies were reporting that they would be finishing ahead of time as well.

I expected a few more glitches and surprising results, like that person who got a 100 something year late fee at Blockbusters, then there were but the way things happened was well within my personally conceived error bars of the events.

[Pábitel]

We had a local "stadium" church, you know won that hold thousands for each service, actually buy up local TV time in November or December 1999 prime time on a weeknight and put on a scare fest. They brought in "experts" (people selling survival gear, etc.) to tell everyone how bad it was going to be.

I actually went on something of a mission to talk people out of the histeria after that.

The funny thing was to look at the want adds come March, April 2000. "For sale Generator, never used", "For sale survival rations, great for camping", "For sale 200 gallon water tank, like new"

Y2K was the greatest get rich sceme in history. Sell people on a bogus deadline and then make 'em pay through the teeth for you to "save them" from the impending disaster. I personally knew people who were pulling down more that $100k just to code COBOL. Today they make about half that.

[lionel]

I got married on Januruay 1st 2000. Take that as you will.

[Crusoe]

I thought there would be unexpected potentially serious localised problems. I wasn't particularly worried, but did get extra copies of bank statements mailed to me at the end of December as evidence of my balances. No other precautions really, but I certainly wasn't sure it would all go fine.

[DeadlyAccurate]

Put absolute blind faith in the ability of balding, chain smoking 50-60 year old COBOL programmers being paid $ 100,000 a year to fix the problem.

balding? Nope - long brown hair and female
chain smoking? nope - never smoked
50-60 years old? nope - 29 in January
COBOL programmer? - yep
$100,000? - I wish!

We had decided to go backpacking for my birthday in January of 1999. When we mentioned it to a coworker, he honestly thought we were doing it for Y2K preparedness. Even though we were all IT people, he still thought the world would go to hell in a handbasket once Jan 1, 2000 rolled around. He was one of those buying propane tanks and so on.

What did we do? Absolutely nothing at all. We didn't even get out more money.

[AHunter3]

I figured a few computer routines would produce incorrect data. Then the people who ran those reports would have them fixed. Maybe in 10-20 places on the planet somewhere, those routines would be connected to automated processes and therefore things that were supposed to happen wouldn't happen. In which case the customers would call in and someone would do a manual override, report the bug, and it would be fixed.

I still have my Utne Reader guide to survival after Y2K, with its "How to Recognize Edible Plants" and "How to Start a Fire After the Matches are All Gone" and other such tips that assumed something on the order of Asimov's "Nightfall" was gonna happen.