Just over 15 years ago...

Bob

Well-known Member
Just over 15 years ago, our favorite (electronic) "tools" were gonna melt down.

Or, NOT!

LOL!

Funny thing is MOST of our 'puters survived and Best Buy almost didn't survive these last few years.



<img src = "http://i.imgur.com/Xe0kfTe.jpg">
 
Yes, and every company had a Y2K committee to attempt to address the fear mongers. Y2K fixes soon turned into Y2K "certified". I was on one committee, and it was just like global warming arguments. Our IT staff was spreading the fear, refrigerators, elevators, etc. They admitted there was no way to know how the computers would respond. So I went home, set my computer's clock to 12-31-1999 23:58 and watched it run fine for five minutes. Went to the next meeting and explained what I had done. Astonished looks from the "experts"! One finally said "I wish I had thought of that!" So they instructed everyone in the company to do the same thing to make sure there were no problems. Of course everything was OK. Was not good enough for the parent company because we had not hired a consultant to "certify" the results. Hoo-boy. But local IT was on my side and we stopped out stupid meetings.
 
I too was put on the Y2K wagon at work. Folks were running around concerned that their cars wouldn't run. My response was "I have a 1955 Land Rover and I KNOW it will run". I still have the badge around here somewhere.
 
A very close friend was a programmer. He worked a lot of hours that year. We always get together on New Year's Eve. That night he said "I'm sorry to see it end."
 
I remember it. I recall watching the teevee coverage of NYE across the globe and thinking, "Figured as much", when nothing happened. Never did get my Winders 98 computer upgraded for Y2k and it seemed to be okay.
 
It was 16 years, do the math.
Anyway I got my advise from my brother. He was a field service tech, trouble shooter, for IBM at the time. He said that the big computers that control power plants etc don't know what date it is when measuring how much fuel is being burned per hour, boiler temp, steam pressure, voltage output & such, only know what date to put on the report.

Willie
 
Our county asked all emergency responders to stay sober in case something happened.
We also had a less than honest township trustee that charged the township $8k to
update the fire dept. computers to be Y2K compatible. the thing was we only had
one computer, and it belonged to the county.

Steve A W
 
(quoted from post at 17:12:08 01/31/16) A very close friend was a programmer. He worked a lot of hours that year. We always get together on New Year's Eve. That night he said "I'm sorry to see it end."

I think Compuware really made a lot of money on that BS. I don't think there has been another outside event that made as much money for IT firms. I was working with some Germans at the time, and they would laugh about the whole thing.
 
The powers that be could not convince everyone to buy an upgrade computer system immediately or everything will be lost. When that did not work, they decided to create Windows 6-7-8-10 and no longer support something that was working fine. Now we are stuck with version 10 on new computers and this is their biggest disaster to date. Maybe time to go to the orchard and get an Apple?
 
We were at a neighbor"s New Year"s Eve party. When the ball started to drop, I sneaked out to the garage and pulled the main breaker on the house! Cuz the host"s Dad was scared of Y2K, and had stocked up on fuel, food, water, etc. Now, that was funny!
 
That created more electrical work than 911. It was a blessing . I also felt you would wake up and it would be another day like yesterday ,however my co-worker Vinny was stockpiling gasoline and predicting all kinds of doom.
 
You're forgetting to count the year 2000, which occurred immediately after December 31, 1999. 2000 was one year long, as were each of the fifteen years 2001 through 2015. That's sixteen as of December 31, 2015, so the title of the topic should have been "Just over 16 years ago..."

Stan
 
HEY. He said it was over 15 yrs ago. He didn't say it wasn't 16 yrs ago. (For a small fee, I'll defend anything you say also.)
 
A neighbor worked on computers, he said most machines would have no problem. Had developed some software that he could run on a computer tied to a network, if it found one having problems his unit would lie to it about the date, so it would function until it could be replaced.

Claimed he could have had an entire military installation prepared for about $5,000.

Meadville, PA, used to be full of tool shops. Many put in injection molding shops to keep the toolmakers busy. They ran balls to the wall for 2 years leading up to the y2k flop, making computer parts. By May of 2000 the computer part orders died and they were sitting there with idle tool and injection molding shops.
 
(quoted from post at 03:46:42 02/01/16) We were at a neighbor"s New Year"s Eve party. When the ball started to drop, I sneaked out to the garage and pulled the main breaker on the house! Cuz the host"s Dad was scared of Y2K, and had stocked up on fuel, food, water, etc. Now, that was funny!

I'd have paid to see that. But I think everybdy was secretly looking at a lightbulb about that time.
 
(quoted from post at 20:28:26 01/31/16) That created more electrical work than 911. It was a blessing . I also felt you would wake up and it would be another day like yesterday ,however my co-worker Vinny was stockpiling gasoline and predicting all kinds of doom.

I worked with a electrician that had 500 gallons of gasoline in his garage. In a suburban development.... He wrote a book on Y2K preparation, appeared on local TV.

But the best was his Y2K tattoo!! He had a hard time living that down! :shock:
 

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