Twenty-five years since Y2K, lord what a bruhaha.

[gawdzillasama]

Wednesday it will be 25 years since the whole world was going to implode. Things haven't got all that much better. 

Did your school/job/family etc. have you jumping through hoops over what turned out to be a lead balloon? 

I got paid $200 over and above my regular pay for coming in and watching nothing happen for eight hours. 

[swansont]

It was mostly nothing because people put in the time and effort to update code. Extra scrutiny on the rollover effects was insurance. Pretty cheap insurance, I think.

[gawdzillasama]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

It was mostly nothing because people put in the time and effort to update code. Extra scrutiny on the rollover effects was insurance. Pretty cheap insurance, I think.

I was working at State Farm, handling accident claims, at the time. State Farm had the money to update their systems, but they didn't trust that the updates would work. My position was to ... be there I guess. Supposed to call the service center manager if the US infrastructure collapsed. I wasn't fluent in smoke signal so my options would have been limited. 

[swansont]

15 minutes ago, gawdzillasama said:

I was working at State Farm, handling accident claims, at the time. State Farm had the money to update their systems, but they didn't trust that the updates would work. My position was to ... be there I guess. Supposed to call the service center manager if the US infrastructure collapsed. I wasn't fluent in smoke signal so my options would have been limited. 

A lot of time and effort went into updating code and testing it, but nobody could be sure all problems were caught. Hence expanded scrutiny when things went live. Plus, if you were working insurance claims, you would have been handling issues from other people possibly not fixing all the problems. It’s no different than putting extra staff on duty after a hurricane or tornado. You don’t know how much damage will happen, and being swamped/unresponsive is ultimately bad for business.

[Genady]

1 hour ago, gawdzillasama said:

I was working at State Farm, handling accident claims, at the time. State Farm had the money to update their systems, but they didn't trust that the updates would work. My position was to ... be there I guess. Supposed to call the service center manager if the US infrastructure collapsed. I wasn't fluent in smoke signal so my options would have been limited. 

It was quite exciting and pleasant to watch our systems successfully crossing the date line in the time zone sequence first in Tokyo, then Singapore, London, and finally, NY. Being provided dinner and lodging in the downtown Manhattan, just in case.

[pzkpfw]

I was working at a bank at the time, and had recently built (VB 6.0!) a part of the inter-bank money transfer, so was one of those required to stay home and sober that night, in case I was called in. Got a $1,500 bonus for it.

Lots of it all was pure hype. People in the newspaper writing your microwave might stop working. Really? it might have a clock, but did you ever set the date on a microwave in 1999? Maybe you'd have trouble with the timer in your VCR, but there'd be workarounds for that if it happened.

For banks, given they commonly offer 30 year mortgages, the year 2000 was a thing by 1970, so even with byte saving 2 digit years I don't think every bank system was guaranteed to have been neglected.

But given how far and wide automation was by then, it made sense to be careful. It was entirely possible some forgotten bit of code in a local water supply pump station made the thing turn off, that extra emergency water was good to have ... there are other kinds of emergency too.

[zapatos]

In the 1980s I was a programmer at AT&T and we used to joke how all hell was going to break loose in 2000, but decided I'd probably not be in the field anymore. Then I spent 1999 replacing systems for Monsanto in Asia.

[LaurieAG]

6 hours ago, pzkpfw said:

I was working at a bank at the time, and had recently built (VB 6.0!) a part of the inter-bank money transfer, so was one of those required to stay home and sober that night, in case I was called in. Got a $1,500 bonus for it.

I charged a client $ 550 to Y2K proof their booking system software, no bonuses, but it took many 10's of thousands of dollars to transfer their software from FP DOS 2.6 to VFP 6.0.

[Sensei]

A counter overflow (an error similar to the Y2K problem) caused the spacecraft to fail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Impact_(spacecraft)#Contact_lost_and_end_of_mission

 

Overflow alone will not cause problems. For fatal problems to occur, there must also be arithmetic operations and logic that depend on correct results.

For example, subtracting two dates from each other to do something with them. Restart of the device? Programmed shutdown after a certain period of operation?

 

Alternative code that is executed when the device is 1 year old, 2 years old, 3 years old and so on.... ? The invalid code will be executed after overflow.

[gawdzillasama]

I started Purdue in "Computer Technology". As if COBOL was technology. 🤣 By Y2K I knew what was needed to fix the problems. PLUS my Profs., the military reservists at least, had been AWOL from Indiana for a good bit in 1999, mostly in Washington doing boffin shit. 

I first heard of Y2K from RAdm. Grace Hopper (you know what she did even if you don't know what she did. See below.) She mentioned that new Super Computer Center on North Island NAF (in San Diego Bay) was "proofed against that bug" and then told me what "that bug" was. This was in the mid-80s. She also said she couldn't believe that COBOL was still a thing. I remember that when I got to Purdue. 

 

Lt. Grace Hopper was charged with computing ballistics tables for the big USN guns, up to 16" in bore diameter. You can see pictures of her standing INSIDE her computer, manually reprogramming it (i.e. moving certain cables to certain connectors and running the numbers). BUT one day the numbers were wildly in variance with prior calculations. The team checked the programs, copacetic. Then they checked the physical plant. And they found a moth stuck between two contacts, preventing the circuit to close. SO she took the bug and taped it into the log book, below many frustrated/angry/confused entries. Then she added a note: "Found problem. Bug in computer." That log book is in the custody of the Smithsonian now, as documenting the first verified computer bug. 

[Genady]

According to sources including wikipedia, it was a joke because the term had been in use already for a long time.

Edited December 29, 2024 by Genady

[Peterkin]

I knew a number of people who worked in IT at the time, and they were genuinely concerned about the rollover. They also put it in a vast amount of overtime, fixing what they could in various industries. My best friend, a contractor, worked days in one and late nights at another government agency over 1999 and took three months off afterward to recover from burnout.

Even so, there were problems arising, including - so I heard - a few near misses at air terminals. Of course we were relieved to avoid disaster, but it it didn't seem as risible as was later made out.

[John Cuthber]

On 12/28/2024 at 6:00 PM, gawdzillasama said:

Wednesday it will be 25 years since the whole world was going to implode. Things haven't got all that much better. 

Did your school/job/family etc. have you jumping through hoops over what turned out to be a lead balloon? 

I got paid $200 over and above my regular pay for coming in and watching nothing happen for eight hours. 

It's a bit like that thing where they put lots of effort into eliminating smallpox.
Total waste of time because you just don't see it anymore.
 

[swansont]

54 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

It's a bit like that thing where they put lots of effort into eliminating smallpox.
Total waste of time because you just don't see it anymore.
 

Or how earthquakes are no big deal in some parts of the world because barely anybody dies. 

[CharonY]

It is weird and self-defeating how putting sucessful efforts into dealing with things don't seem to get recognition.

 

[iNow]

41 minutes ago, CharonY said:

It is weird and self-defeating how putting sucessful efforts into dealing with things don't seem to get recognition.

 

Kind of like the economy Bidens team successfully rebuilt is finally growing strongly and Trump will get all the credit for benefits he didn’t enact a single policy to influence. 

[Peterkin]

45 minutes ago, iNow said:

Kind of like the economy Bidens team successfully rebuilt is finally growing strongly and Trump will get all the credit for benefits he didn’t enact a single policy to influence.

If it's any consolation, he'll wreck it before any credit is given.

At least we did get the benefit of all that Y2K effort, earthquake-proofing and vaccine research, if not the recognition.

[KJW]

49 minutes ago, iNow said:

Kind of like the economy Bidens team successfully rebuilt is finally growing strongly and Trump will get all the credit for benefits he didn’t enact a single policy to influence. 

I don't think so. By the time Trump and his ship of fools are done with America, the current strong growing economy will be a distant memory.

 

[iNow]

1 hour ago, KJW said:

I don't think so. By the time Trump and his ship of fools are done with America, the current strong growing economy will be a distant memory.

We’ll see which one of us is correct. My money’s on Americans having a short and extremely inaccurate view of economic happenings and who to thank for the good / blame for the bad. 

On 12/28/2024 at 12:00 PM, gawdzillasama said:

what turned out to be a lead balloon? 

I mean, thanks to taking it seriously and actually working to resolve it. 

Look at all this weight I’ve lost. It was obviously a mistake to focus so heavily on diet and exercise. Lol

[gawdzillasama]

On 12/28/2024 at 4:34 PM, swansont said:

A lot of time and effort went into updating code and testing it, but nobody could be sure all problems were caught. Hence expanded scrutiny when things went live. Plus, if you were working insurance claims, you would have been handling issues from other people possibly not fixing all the problems. It’s no different than putting extra staff on duty after a hurricane or tornado. You don’t know how much damage will happen, and being swamped/unresponsive is ultimately bad for business.

There was absolutely nothing I could have done if things had gone south. But I got three free lunches from a very nice Italian restaurant plus $200 extra for sitting there and reading a book. 

23 hours ago, Genady said:

According to sources including wikipedia, it was a joke because the term had been in use already for a long time.

Hopper coined it in during WWII. The Smithsonian has the log, if you ask them they'll show it to you. 

[swansont]

11 minutes ago, gawdzillasama said:

Hopper coined it in during WWII. The Smithsonian has the log, if you ask them they'll show it to you. 

popularized, not coined

“The term "bug" has been used in engineering and electronics for a while before the era of modern computing. Notable inventor Thomas Edison is known to have used the term "bug" to describe a technical malfunction in his works in the late 19th century, as noted in Princeton's Thomas Edison Papers.”

https://www.dbvis.com/thetable/why-are-they-called-bugs/

[Genady]

1 hour ago, gawdzillasama said:

Hopper coined it in during WWII. The Smithsonian has the log, if you ask them they'll show it to you.

From Bug (engineering) - Wikipedia:

Quote

Computer pioneer and rear admiral, Grace Hopper, popularized a story about a moth that caused a problem in an early electromechanical computer.^[7] While Hopper was working on the Mark II and Mark III as Harvard faculty in about 1947, operators traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. The moth was removed from the mechanism and taped in a log book with the note "First actual case of bug being found." ^[8] Reportedly, the operators, including William "Bill" Burke, later of the Naval Weapons Laboratory, Dahlgren, Virginia, ^[9] were familiar with the engineering term and probably making a joke by conflating the two meanings of bug (biological and defect). Although probably a joke, the story indicates that the term was commonly used in the computer field at that time.^{[10] [11][12][13]} The log book, complete with moth, is part of the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.^[12]

 

[gawdzillasama]

The lady was a serious dude. 

[Janus]

I remember at the time getting a letter from my pension plan early on, assuring me that they had already updated their systems to avoid any issue.

[zapatos]

Due to the need for personnel as both the dot com bubble and Y2K occurred at the same time, IT people were being pilfered from other companies right and left. In early 1999 I was called into my boss' office and told they were giving me a 20% raise just to keep pace with the marketplace. They clearly felt their employees might chase better pay and were taking no chances. It was a great time to be in IT.