When the lights went out, and the shooting started, Y2K started to feel all too real

Welcome to a special festive season edition of On Call, in which we share readers' stories of working on the 31st of December 1999 – the moment the tech world held its breath and hoped years of Year 2000 bug remediation efforts would work. Let's start with a reader we'll Regomize as "Graham" who at the time worked at a cable …

[xyz123]

I worked for a certain UK Satellite company. For Y2K they hired 8 VERY VERY expensive suits with no technical ability.

They sat there from 30th December to 2nd Jan being paid insane amounts (think world's top lawyers and then some). They had no technical ability OR access but were purely in place to draft PR fluff pieces "just in case" the TV satellites decided to hurl themselves from space on a death trajectory towards the UK.

Company spooged over £16 million on these guys, but refused to update their ticketing/support system, TV Box firmware etc etc.

[David 132]

"Worst prank ever"?

>at least for a few moments, because the phone soon rang.

"It was the Australian office, laughing their heads off..."

Ah, what they should have done, instead of just hanging up the phone at local midnight, is babble something incoherent about "my god... the koalas... wallabies... they've got machetes... oh the humanity... oh nooooo, the 'roos have taken Clyde..."

And then hung up the phone.

[Gene Cash]

Re: "Worst prank ever"?

On the bad side, we did have one of our sites self-SWAT themselves by being slightly tipsy, going "oh my god, Dave has a gun! [bang!] [bang!] I've been shot!!" and hanging up, then refusing to answer the phone for ten minutes.

Of course HQ called the local police in a panic, and the department got to spend an hour of New Year's "face down thumbs up" with live weapons pointed at them, during a long and extremely angry harangue by the Sergeant on why you don't do that.

This wasn't during Y2K though. It was just random stupidity. These are the same idiots known to joke with airport security about having a bomb/drugs, then wondering why they spend an hour in a very small room being interrogated/searched and miss their flight.

[MiguelC]

Re: self-SWATing

A friend was asked at a Spanish-Moroccan border customs if she had any "chocolate" with her. Being a sweet tooth she said she did, only the find herself locked in a small room, surrounded by four female police officers, and stripped down to underwear, while they insisted she'd confess where she hid her stash of drugs. Why the hell did the police think everyone should be aware of local slang for hashish is anyone's guess.

[Russell P Hamilton-Clarke]

Re: self-SWATing

I caught an early morning flight from Bergamo in Italy to Tangier in Morroco. Guy in the seat next to me had connected to Bergamo from somewhere in Spain. During the flight, he pulled a massive, clingfilm wrapped bollus of hash, tore off a peice and started to chew on it. Then he casually turned to me and asked if I wanted some. Cabin crew walking past, he didn't bat an eyelid.

[PRR]

Re: self-SWATing

> to Tangier in Morroco. ... massive ... bollus of hash

Coals to Newcastle? (A guy did once get rich when the Newcastle miners were on strike.)

Timely news: Moroccan Authorities Seize Over 8 Tons of Hashish at Tangier

[midgepad]

the long way round?

Odd route. Other business en route, perhaps?

[dmesg]

Re: self-SWATing

I'm wondering why the local police thought anybody would just up and confess like that.

[bemusedHorseman]

Re: self-SWATing

"At the border, we were given the traditional welcome..."

"...MYYYYY ARSSSEEE!"

[tinman]

Re: "Worst prank ever"?

PC Plod doesn't take that sort of prank very well but airports REALLY don't like it. Remember this poor s0d who joked on Twitter about blowing Robin Hood airport sky high when his flight was delayed by snow. He was charged and fined for sending a "menacing electronic communication" and lost his job. Took him two years to get the sentence overturned

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19009344

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: "Worst prank ever"?

Sign over the entrance to security at O'Hare airport. "No jokes".

[jake]

My y2k horror story.

I sat in a lonely office in Redwood City for a couple hours before and after midnight, playing with Net Hack[0]. My phone didn't ring once. As expected.

The cold, hard reality is that I and several hundred thousand (a couple million? Dunno.) other computer people worked on "the Y2K problem" for well over 20 years, on and off. Come the morning of January 1st, 2000 damn near everything worked as intended ... thus causing brilliant minds to conclude that it was never a problem to begin with.

HOWever, in the 2 years leading up to 2000, I got paid an awful lot of money re-certifying stuff that I had already certified to be Y2K compliant some 10-20 years earlier. Same for the embedded guys & gals. By the time 2000 came around, most of the hard work was close to a decade in the past ... the re-certification was pure management bullshit, so they could be seen as doing something ... anything! ... useful during the beginning of the dot-bomb bubble bursting.

_{[0] Not playing the game, rather playing with the game. Specifically modifying the source to add some stuff for a friend.}

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: My y2k horror story.

I was involved with some Y2K work in 1998. It was a bunch of PCs running departure boards at various small, rural railway stations. The fix was really easy to do, except the problem was we couldn't find most of the computers. They'd been working away happily in cupboards for years. But which cupboards? And in which building / waiting room / signals enclosure had they been shoved? So it was more treasure hunt than IT problem. Somebody somewhere knows where they are, but who? Or is it easier to just search the station?

[Gene Cash]

Things went RIGHT for once

Y2K was an instance where people actually took an important widespread issue seriously and spent the time/money/effort to fix it.

Another example is, um, well, er.... I think that's about the only time that's happened in recorded history?

[ezramus]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

Hey don’t forget that humanity also fixed the hole in the ozone layer!

[Eric 9001]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

It didn't - there is still a seasonal ozone hole in the Antarctic stratosphere; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion?useskin=monobook#Ozone_hole_and_its_causes

It's predicted that under current ozone-depleting substance release levels, it'll take until 2045 till the ozone layer regenerates to pre-1980 levels (but if unregulated CFC release in China increases, it could undo the gains; https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190522141808.htm).

Of course, every time the patents on refrigerants are about to expire, studies by the manufacturing companies "suddenly" discover that the refrigerants have some potential for causing ozone depletion and global heating and therefore those must be banned and the new (freshly patented) refrigerants must be used instead.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

> Of course, every time the patents on refrigerants are about to expire

Since when is propane patented... 'cause that is what many refrigerators use for decades now, without problems. Same is used in many ACs (I refer to Air Conditioner here, not Anonymous Coward).

[ABugNamedJune]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

foul smelling gas? Works for both ACs

[Eric 9001]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

Many I should have written "non or not very flammable and convenient refrigerants".

The issue with propane is that it burns really well, which has caused many injuries and deaths when used as a refrigerant in vehicles (it is banned for vehicle use in many countries).

Supercritical CO₂ can also be used as a refrigerant without flammability or many patent concerns (but of course many invalid patents have already been awarded for a previously known use), but it needs high-pressure piping, which is a serious concern, as any bursting of such high-pressure piping could easily kill you.

[David 164]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

Pretty I read somewhere that Greenpeace, when it did useful stuff, actually help developed propane refigerates for homes. I doubt they charge for patents.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

They could not patent 'cause they already ran out before FCKW came in. Using propane as one of the gases is much older. It was just about optimizing a few things, i.e. engineering details which everyone could have done, but noone did.

[Pickle Rick]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

Don't forget we (they) have eradicated the killer disease, smallpox. Wait, what? They did _what_? Oh for the love of...

[anothercynic]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

Except it's not eradicated... If it still exists in a lab or in animal remains or related viruses, its not eradicated. And you can be guaranteed that some Level 6 biohazard labs still have it in vials, including some labs that officially don't exist.

[PghMike]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

CFCs being banned to protect the ozone layer.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

And lead in petrol/gasoline being banned.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

The sad part was they pretty much knew about the issue from the beginning.

[tinman]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

With the delicious irony that both CFCs and lead in petrol were developed by the same man, Thomas Midgley Jr

[Eric 9001]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

He didn't do it all by himself - he was on the teams that developed it.

While TMJ was on the team that determined that Tetraethyllead added to fuel prevented engine knocking of superior effectiveness and profitability to ethanol-blended fuels (it seemed tellurium worked well enough too, but that was discarded, as the slightest bit of tellurium pollution could be identifiable by a hard to eradicate smell), that wasn't ironic.

It wasn't ironic as it was well known from the start that it was a terrible idea to add lead to fuel and the company therefore did not mention lead in reports and advertising - calling it "Ethyl" instead.

Due to the small amount of TEL added per unit of fuel, short term lead exposure wasn't a problem - a lot of leaded fuel vapor could be inhaled once and nothing would happen (other than the impact of the toxicity of the fuel vapors) - but of course chronic exposure caused lead poisoning - which he suffered multiple times.

He later decided that he would help develop something harmless this time - and joined the team that proceeded to develop the first CFC's - which were non-toxic, non-flammable, non-explosive refrigerants (it was originally considered that such compounds would be toxic, but it was determined that the stability of the carbon–fluorine bonds resulted in non-toxicity).

It took 30 years after his death before it was widely known that R12 and other CFC's destroyed atmospheric ozone.

Ironically he killed themselves in the end via accidental strangulation by the elaborate system of (intended to be harmless) ropes and pulleys he devised to pull his severely disabled body out of bed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.?useskin=monobook#Career

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

there's a very good tim harfords cautionary tales bbc podcast on this very person. He also invented a machine to help him get out of bed as he suffered from polio, unfortunately he got tangled in the ropes of it and died of strangulation!

[PB90210]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

I think QI had him down as the most dangerous man that ever lived

[midgepad]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

Rather late for a lot of Americans, I suspect.

Too much Lead in s9me brains there.

Now the time to ban the rest of the petroleum approaches, or recedes in the rear view mirror.

We are not related, BTW.

[dmesg]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

If we could only do that for the climate crisis. Maybe starting with a moratorium on AI datacenters.

[Someone Else]

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

No, let's start first with a moratorium on Donald J. tRump

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing major

My former employer's invoices sent to customers showed the year as 1900. No-one noticed for weeks!

The software provider took six months to fix it along with the leap-year bug that was noticed immediately when the ERP showed wrong date on every client.

With the lovely file-based databases, ACUCOBOL runtime requirement for the clients, and designed for LAN connections - latency over VPN killed all performance - the ERP reportedly survived at my old workplace until another company bought them at the end of last decade.

[david 12]

Re: Nothing major

My Dad turned down the offer to Y2K certify the project he'd been contracting with. He didn't need the money or the bother. As he pointed out to the employer: The printouts are the only place you have the date. Just wait until Y2K, *then* decide if you want to spend the money to fix it.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

"merrymaker shot a distribution amplifier"

Well, how to tell an USA story without mentioning USA :D.

[Dan 55]

Re: "merrymaker shot a distribution amplifier"

But is that a Y2K problem or just something that happens every time midnight comes around there?

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: "merrymaker shot a distribution amplifier"

I’ve likely told this before, but in the Bronx homeless people used to rip out small street telephone exchanges and use the space to live in. So the phone company strung said exchanges between telegraph poles instead, and the locals used them for target practice.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: "merrymaker shot a distribution amplifier"

I cant get the "merrymaker shot a distribution amplifier" sound out of my head:

"hahahaha happy new year BOOM CH-CHUNK BOOM CH-CHUNK hahahaha BOOM ZONG SPARK CH-CHUNK hahahaha neighborhood dark happy new year BOOM CH-CHUNK BOOM CH-CHUNK hahahaha"

To real?

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

"The main fuse of my house had blown because we were using way too much power"

Lol, too much Christmas lights AND new year lights AND guests at the same time?

[An_Old_Dog]

Major Minor

Kerry: "I was confident that nothing serious would go wrong ..."

On what basis did he make that statement?

That aside, seemingly-minor problems can have large consequences.

If someone under medical care during the year 1999/2000 transition suffered mis-care, or even unfavorable care results, and decided to sue the care provider, a solicitor who found a simple "wrong date" on a report could use that to try to convince a jury that the care provider had been negligent in its Y2K testing/remediation, and that that negligence led to the mis-care, a medical error, etc.

[Manglemender]

A cheap flight

At the time of y2k I was working for an OEM machine builder that used QNX based systems for user interface etc. written in C. We had done our due diligence and found nothing serious; worst case, the odd printout on a couple of older machines might say 1900.

However, earlier in December, my (now) ex-wife had flown to Portland Oregon to live with her internet boyfriend. Predictably, that didn’t work out and the cheapest flight back to London departed on 31st December but wouldn’t land until 1st January. The plane never fell out of the sky but i didn’t pick her up all the same.

[koborn]

My last day at a job was 1st Jan 2000

I was working for Sony's ISP, based in the City. I had accepted a new job and resigned with effect from Xmas day, but they begged me to stay on "just in case". Not a big deal, my new employer weren't going to be doing much that week.

There were two of us in the office. The boss was away in Tokyo. He phoned about 3PM to check, colleague (Japanese) answered. My Y2K report consisted of shouting across the room "tell him it's all working". About an hour later we realised this was not strictly correct - one customer-facing Perl script had broken. As it had only ever been run by three customers we weren't too worried.

I left about 4. Going home (to Reading) was strange: everything closed and deserted - when I got to Reading I thought "Wow, even Mcdonald's is closed." But the trains were running, so hats off to Network Rail et al!

[Pickle Rick]

Re: My last day at a job was 1st Jan 2000

> ...everything closed and deserted...

That reminds me of the Y2K episode of My Name Is Earl.

> ...hats off to Network Rail...

I don't think I've ever seen those words put together like that before! Is "up" still "up"? Do I need to reevaluate my entire World View...?!

[Claptrap314]

WAT?

"the moment the tech world held its breath and hoped years of Year 2000 bug remediation efforts would work."

The tech world most certainly did not. At all. We ALL KNEW that the hype was 90% BS. Also, that a lot of work had gone into fixing the 10%. Even though 99% of THAT would not have been very serious even if unaddressed. Yeah, that .1%, though--that stuff would have been pretty bad. BUT, things like mortgages had been fixed--in the 70's. Credit cards '96 and '97. Anything dealing solely with forward dates that had NOT been fixed suddenly got a hundred year reprieve at that point.

The techies were mostly concerned about the normies freaking out. Personally, when I heard about the wine shortage due to people stocking THAT, (in July), I relaxed.

[Terry 6]

Re: WAT?

A lot of very good work was done in the lead up to Y2K on important systems.And a lot of money, including ( maybe particularly) public money was wasted paying for obvious nonsense work. We had a bunch of stand alone (no internet) laptops that had to be tested, at our service's expense so paid for out of our teaching budget. This was mandatory, by the local authority. Machines that were used to type stuff up in WORD and then printed. Nothing else. The worst that could have happened? I suppose they may have refused to boot for some arcane reason, We'd have had to borrow a couple of machines to tide us over for a day or two while the IT guys remediated the issue at the start of the next term ( when, by the way we probably wouldn't need to use them much for at least another month or two). But that seemed unlikely to the point of ridicule. None the less we had to fork out for this.The machines were by no means system critical. But the mandate was all machines. No exclusion for non-critical aging laptops. No risk-assessment ahead of the work, which would have saved a bunch of public money.

[David Hicklin]

Re: WAT?

> But the mandate was all machines

FOMO but in this case the aspect of missing ONE machine that could have caused a serious issue and obviously deciding that risk assessments are very much judgemental and have been know to be badly wrong.

[ComicalEngineer]

Happy days

At the time I was working for a major manufacturer of industrial gases. I got the job of checking a number of software packages for the Y2K bug. As most of the software worked on a normal PC it was simple enough to disconnect from the network and set the date to 23:59 on 31 Dec 1999 on the internal clock and wait for the results. IIRC I had about a dozen packages to test of which only 2 were any issue. One rolled to 1900, but as it only used the last 2 digits for the date that was pretty irrelevant. In any case, it was fairly simple to re-code it to account for the new millenium. The second package could have caused more of an issue as it was linked to purchasing and payment of invoices for new equipment. That was an old in-house piece of software and was in any case due to be replaced.

I took a lot of time doing the testing as it was on overtime as I had to check all date dependencies.

It earned me the deposit on a new car.

[Anonymous John]

Y2.003K

The government dept I worked had a flawless Y2K. Until a software update three years later. A drop down year menu went

2004

2003

2002

2001

1900

Quite an achievement for seven year old software that used four digit years from the start.

[Deimos]

I was really upset

When my “Jo Guest calendar” and “Babylon 5” apps both stopped working.

But the worst problem was idiots still trying to justify invoices asY2K IN February 2000.

The money monsters flagged each invoice as “nice try” and sent them back.

Happy 2026 my fellow little Vultures.

[David Hicklin]

Re: I was really upset

> invoices asY2K IN February 2000.

Don't forget the leap year bug that tripped many a software package up.

[swm]

Not Y2K but similar

Not Y2K but when my grandfather turned 100 the life insurance company insisted that he cash in his policy. For tax reasons we didn't want to do this. Turns out that their computer systems had a 2-digit field for age and he was causing their software to fail.

[Anonymous IV]

Re: Not Y2K but similar

I'm surprised they didn't ask him if he could please die immediately.

After all, it was an insurance company with which you were dealing...

[NXM]

The party stopped

"The main fuse of my house had blown because we were using way too much power."

Something similar happened in a house opposite us. They threw a huge party - loud music, booze, dancing into the early hours - until it all suddenly went silent.

Turns out they danced so much the floor collapsed. End of.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: The party stopped

Let me guess... USA way built house? 'cause typical European way to built is a bit different. Don't try punching walls like you see in US sitcom, 'cause the wall wins.

[David Hicklin]

Re: The party stopped

> Don't try punching walls like you see in US sitcom, 'cause the wall wins.

Some "modern" houses in the UK have such flimsy partitions instead of walls internally that you might just manage that!

Now the 1950's built council house was a different beast...

[Pickle Rick]

Re: The party stopped

We had a house party around the late 80's. Pretty packed. All good, loads throughout the house: kitchen, living room, by the front door There was a little problem getting everyone in as the entire floor fell out of the hallway. No injuries, but a few people looked confused as they were about four foot lower than they had been a second before :)

[J.G.Harston]

Yeah, after watching the fireworks out of my bedroom window, I turned a computer on and the fuse went pop. My wife insisted it was a Y2K event. I couldn't persuade her that a 12mm fusible link had no idea what date it was.

[JulieM]

TWELVE millimetres? How many kW were you pulling? 30A fuse wire is only 0.73mm.!

[FirstTangoInParis]

And the next ….

For techies involved in putting things where you can’t get in your car to do a service call eg earth orbit, the moon, deep space, the Y2k38 needs to be worried about. Yes guessing most has already been fixed but it’s another line on the test to-do list.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: And the next ….

so.. is Voyager affected by Y2k38?

[David Hicklin]

Re: And the next ….

> is Voyager affected by Y2k38?

It will be out of power long before then but could be a problem from the aliens when they try and connect it up again....

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: And the next ….

They just refill the 238Pu, and then wait what happens.

[WowandFlutter]

Was that it?

I spent my Y2K night in a hole in the ground, at a place I can't say, working for someone I can't mention.

The worry was a mixture of DOS and Windows machines that provided the usual office stuff but also some custom comms infrastructure and switching. Lots of effort was put into checking everything for Y2K compliance, each item proudly displaying a sticker to prove it had been given the once over. I could never work out why a 13amp electric kettle needed to be stickered as part of this regime though?

Come midnight, doors tightly closed, monitoring video and satellite feeds from around the world for anything unusual. Nothing... nothing happened! The only fault of note was a small mobile phone network falling over, not for Y2K reasons, but due to the capacity not able to cope with the number of people ringing each other to say 'Happy New Year'.

0600 emerged I from the hole, the grass was still green as it was 12 hours previous but with a bit of frost. Went home to bed.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Was that it?

WowandFlutter,

Of course the kettle was tested! You seem to have a disastrously cavalier attitude to basic workplace health and safety! If people can't get their regular cuppa (or even coffee), then there is going to be trouble, followed by strife, immediately followed by violence! Hence the checking of vital, strategic equipment is a necessity.

[mcswell]

My Y2K problem

I did have an actual Y2K problem. My printed checks had room for a month and a day, and then the number 19, with room for another two digits to be written in.

[David 164]

It would have been negilent of the Australians not to have played a prank on their colleagues, in fact a sackable offense!

[I ain't Spartacus]

Strewth! Oh my God! It's the Y2K Bu...nyip!