Making money hand over fist selling gold and silver to the panic stricken. I wish more had held onto it longer; they would have made a killing. But many just dumped it back at us over the few months afterwords.
We did though pull an “all nighter” and celebrate (physically) at work just in case someone got the brilliant idea of trying to break in. But the high point of all that was watching drunks piss on our doorstep during the night. We were drunk too by then, of course. But we had a bathroom.
I can recall the fury on the Usenet fangroup for Art Bell. Many of the nutters proclaiming all their preparations for the coming disasters. Then the amusement as they later tried to justify their purchases - one of them bragging about how cheap his survival food was (hey who needs variety or taste ibn their diet). Then the amusement as a Art Bell fled the radio scene int eh aftermath rather than face the music.
I also remember in the year leading up there was a scummy online ‘psychic’ who among his other jobs-he-could-not-keep became a ‘consultant’ to people for Y2K compliance - on Macs.
Myself I went to NYC and went to a party with friends. Figured if the crap was going to hit the fan I might as well be in riot central.
Cecil’s column this week is on Y2K. I remember a local business touting “2YK generators” for sale back then. No, I didn’t just make a typo.
Anyway, one of Cecil’s references in his column was one Capers Jones, who, back in late '99, sent out a list of the odds of certain things happening when the clock struck midnight. This list appeared in at least one newspaper:
Bad credit reports due to Y2K errors: …70%
Loss of electric power for less than one day:…55%
Loss of electric power for more than one day:… 40%
Loss of international phone service:…35%
Errors with social security payments:…35%
Errors in first January paycheck:…30%
Errors or delays in tax refunds:…30%
Airline flight delays/cancellations:…25%
Loss of local telephone service:…20%
Manufacturing shut downs of <1 day:…20%
Errors in bank account balances:…15%
Disruption of stock market trading:…15%
Errors in hotel/motel reservations:…12%
Delays or cancellations of shipping:…10%
Delays in UPS or FedEx deliveries:…10%
Food shortages/rationing:…3%
Death of injuries due to Y2K:…1%
How he arrived at any of these numbers was not disclosed in the article.
We intended to make sure we had a full tank of gas and some cash on hand, just in case people panicking about the Y2K bug bought so much gas that the storage tanks at gas stations were emptied, or withdrew so much cash that the ATMs were emptied. I don’t remember if we got around to doing either.
I was heavily pregnant, and it had been a rough pregnancy (hyperemesis). My husband had been working overtime a lot during that year, among other things helping to check that all the software his company was running was Y2K compliant and helping to fix anything that wasn’t. That evening I was feeling well and he had been promised the whole weekend off, and we had friends visiting. I would have felt like celebrating even if it wasn’t the night all the numbers rolled over 
We sat around a bar and bitched about then mayor Paul Schell canceling the annual New Year’s event at the Space Needle due to alleged “terrorist concerns.” To the best of my knowledge we had the distinction of being the only city in the world that canceled their Y2K festivities.
I don’t know if the general populace really understands (although mangetout and possibly Shodan seem to), but the reason nothing happened on 1/1/00 is because lots and lots of programmers put in lots and lots of hours patching software.
It’s unlikely that any bugs would’ve caused planes to fall out of the sky, but it probably would’ve been a serious PITA for a long time. I know because I distinctly remember writing code with 2-digit years, thinking “I sure hope this program isn’t still running past 1999…”
Things I remember from Y2k:
Seeing the fireworks over the Perth Operahouse on TV, noticing the lights of the city were still on and going to bed. (I was in IT, I was on-call, I determined correctly at that point that I wasn’t going to BE called.)
A day or two before, I walked around Denver. I noticed no unusual traffic or people patterns. The stores were empty (but stocked). The ATMs all had cash in them. I figured this was a ‘geek panic’ and the rest of the population really didn’t notice or care.
A Cow-orker discovered that the Mice had gotten into his grain stores in November, he ended up double_buying his ration kit for his family (6 people, three months…something like $5000)
The sign at Costco saying ‘We Do not accept any returned generators’ and remembering a generator box in the back of a neighbors Sport Ute.
I was worried about it at first, but I wound up getting mono, and got so sleepy I forgot all about it.
I’m ashamed to say I was one of those that was really worried about Y2K
I made my girlfriend (at the time) promise to not fly a day before or a day after
In retrospect, yep, I was an idiot. I swallowed a bunch of fear-mongering and came out a fool.
Oh well. Thanks, all you programmers who made everything turn out all right.
I was at home with my husband and two kids. Y2K did not concern us in the slightest.
My cousin, however, is another story. She decided that it was going to be the end of the world, so she had all her utilities disconnected and went down to her basement to wait for God to return. As a call center employee, I can imagine the stifled laughter when she had to call and get everything reconnected.
I had to work at W-M and regretted that I couldn’t have flipped off the lights for just a second at midnight. I love following Doomsday scares & was amazed that a man who made a career out of mocking Rapture Hysteria fell prey to & in fact fed into a lot of Y2K hysteria (Gary North).
A friend invited me to spend the week with her family as her Grandmom had stocked up & at the first sign of trouble, I’d have gone there.
Don’t forget, 2012 is right around the corner 
To be fair, an Al-Qaeda member was arrested trying to enter Washington with a huge load of explosives. However, now that I’ve looked up the details again the bomber’s target was LAX, not Seattle.
There were actually people in Walmart at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve? (Doesn’t matter which New year’s Eve, but 1999/2000 seemed to have bigger parties than normal). my bet is that each and every person in the store at the stroke of midnight was one of those people who figured Y2K would happen (of coruse, though, Walmart really isn’t the best place to be if Y2K was real to the extreme they thought it’d be real … )
To answer the OP as to what I was doing, my fiancee and I took in some of the New Year’s Eve festivities around the city, and wound up watching the fireworks at midnight at the main downtown park/meeting place. It was about -40 at the time though. I also gave her a kiss at the stroke of midnight (well, started a couple seconds before and finished a couple seconds later), and it’s hard to kiss in those kind of tempuratures!
Since I knew all bout the Mayan calendar and the REAL end of the world in 2012, I dismissed Y2K as the minor kerfluffle it was.
I was working (in IT)
Often true, but I still am somewhat amused by the great numbers of people who now insist the whole thing was a damp squib and we were never in any position of true risk.
We were. We didn’t end up in trouble due to all the work which was carried out. Just because people didn’t understand the possible problems didn’t mean there weren’t things that could have gone terribly wrong.
Based on my own experience and that of others I know, we skilfully worked our way around a major bullet back then.
Y2K9
Me and my geeky roommates turned of all our computers <4 in that house at that time; up to 25 or so on LAN nights!> and went to a bar. Ordered LOTS of booze at a bout 11:30, just in case the registers went nuts and we couldn’t order any at midnight 
Only thing I remember was that our waitress had contacts that glowed with ‘2000’ in them. That was really neat.