An Open Letter to the Y2K Bug 381
Felis writes "Did you work on New Year's Eve? I did. So did the person that wrote this letter.
It's for those of us that worked while the rest of the world was celebrating something we'll never see again in our lifetimes. Unfortunately, there's no mention of police checkpoints or the plainclothes fuzz that harrassed my coworkers and me. Bitter? Me?"
Re:You didn't miss out... (Score:1)
You are not a professional (Score:1)
Non certified engineers, programmers, and sys admins are not professionals.
Just deserts? (-1 Flamebait) (Score:1)
Perhaps the misery imposed on geekdom on New Year's Eve was some sort of cosmic poetic justice - after all it is the shortsightedness of nerds everywhere that caused the [potential] Y2K bug...
Y2K Party (Score:1)
Re:Bitterness (Score:1)
Re:Bitterness (Score:1)
What about the overtime? (Score:1)
Re:Moderators... (Score:1)
Re:Importance of your job. (Score:1)
that I wouldn't be working on new years eve. I
_knew_ my Linux-systems would be working like a
charm, so why bother? I still don't understand my
boss, who actually was logged in remotely "just
if something goes wrong", while I was drinking
champagne, playing bombard and fire-eating (btw:
a good idea, draws more attention than rockets).
Kirth
--
Didn't have to. (Score:1)
I spent a quiet evening at home. I went to bed at 11:30pm, in fact.
_E
Re:Most important and memorable moment? (Score:1)
None of the other events listed fall into the same category. Things like that can occur any time: we may yet put a man on Mars, for example. Hostage crisis? Uh, see the news from Afghanistan last week? And anyone who seriously needs the thrill of a presidential assassination can always arrange it themselves (as for resignation, didn't Clinton come close enough for ya?).
Yes, it was hyped. Yes, I worked. WTF, there was nothing else worth doing and I wanted the cash. OK, it sucks if you're ordered to work when you'd rather be at a party, but it's not like there aren't other parties and other jobs.
Ade_
/
paper forms (Score:1)
In a word: No.
Re:Importance of your job. (Score:1)
I'm rather proud of it, actually. Anybody can go get drunk off their keester while dancing to loud music, but it takes a certain level of skill to know how to make Y2K a non-issue.
Re:Get Over It (Score:1)
U.S. West Coast stuff wasn't much to miss (Score:1)
We've had loads of Y2K problems (Score:1)
Regards
Mark
My worst new year ever. (Score:1)
Drove home, car broke down 5 miles from home - Recovery services? Hahaha Not likely. - Had to walk the rest of the way and of course I'm thinking well it can't really get any worse... Yup, you guessed, it started raining - pissing down -. Almost enough for me to believe in an almighty.
The *only* redeeming feature of the night for me was the fact that I'm getting a months pay for a single nights work, though it isn't like i'm desperately short of cash.
Re:He can always move to Israel (Score:1)
To paraphrase the matrix: "Jews are a disease, and I am the cure."
Hey, man, where do you live? Are you giving any speeches about fascism any time soon? Because I know a couple thousand ARA [aranet.org] members who would *love* to make your acquaintance.
Be young, have fun, smash fascism. Now that's something I can get into.
Michael Chisari
Re:He can always move to Israel (Score:1)
You seem to be under two false impressions: that I am a facist or other authoritarian, and that I am over 21. Both are false.
I concede the second point, but I stay adamant on the first. Anybody who proclaims "Jews are the disease and I am the cure" is a fascist.
I am a right-leaning libertarian.
Really, now? Okay, so let's see... Don't right-libertarians believe that heirarchy is natural? If Jews really do excel in the areas you've specified (I'd argue it has nothing to do with their heritage and religion), wouldn't you have to accept that as normal and natural?
And by the way, a *lot* of the founding fathers of modern day right-wing Libertarianism are Jewish.
Also - are you threatening me with physical violence?
No, I'm threatening you with opposition. How do you know I'm not Jewish, and that you're not threatening *me* with violence?
But regardless, you want a debate, I'll give you a debate. What you feel is a matter of race is not a matter of race at all.
Racists constantly try and convince people that race is a linking trait between people. That somehow, if I'm white and lower class, I have more in common with Bill Gates than with the hispanic person who lives down the street from me.
That is ridiculous. There may be cultural differences between "races" (which is another ridiculous concept), but the fact of the matter is that a poor white and a poor black person both have to worry about things that a rich person doesn't have to. Getting time off work to get an oil change, being laid off so their factory can move to a third world country (so the rich people who own it can become richer), having enough money to take out their girlfriend or boyfriend on a Friday night, paying for college for their kids so they can have a better life than they did, all these things are *real* concerns of people, and saying that poor Jews don't share these concerns is ridiculous. If you honestly think Jews run the media, I'll introduce you to the old Jewish man who runs a corner store and has barely scraped by for the last 30 years. I'm sure he can call up Ted Turner and have him run any story he'd like, right?
It's not about race, it's about class. The upper class tries to divide the lower class by convincing them that they're different from eachother, but that's BS. The lower class have a common thread, and that's the fact that they have to *work* for a living, not live off of old money or large stock values.
Do you honestly think that OJ Simpson got off because he was black? That the fact that he was rich and could hire that "dream team" of lawyers had nothing to do with it? Do you honestly think that if he was a poor bus driver, that he wouldn't have fried by now?
If, for some reason, you feel that you've been "wronged" by Jews or other minorities, look closer. You'll find that, for the most part, it's the greed of the ruling class that causes oppression and violence in this world, and they are truly color blind. Black, white, jewish, or asian, they don't care, as long as you're a billioniare with congress on your speed dial.
You have the choice to help build a society based on freedom, equality, peace, and solidarity (anarchism), or a society based on fear, heirarchy, war, and adversity (fascism). Take your pick.
Anarchism FAQ [infoshop.org]
Michael Chisari
What's really frightening.. (Score:1)
it sucked. end of story
It's a number people! It just happens to end in a few zeros. It means nothing!
Re:You are not a professional (Score:1)
YOU ARE WRONG....
professional n. A person engaged in a learned profession, specialist.
Clearly, all the people you disqualified fit the definition of the word.
Vermifax
Re:Bitterness (Score:1)
It's pretty easy to say mandatory military service isn't needed when you don't have > 1000km of land border with a previously hostile country with 30 times the people (Russia)
Ah well, I spent my y2k party drinking champagne and shooting fireworks. I did check (remotely) that the servers were ok a couple of times.
If anything critical had broken I probably would have gone to fix it. Luckily there wasn't.
Hmmm.... (Score:1)
I would hope you wouldn't come in on New Year's Day, and a Saturday to boot!
--
Re:OT -- I found a y2k bug in a linux program (Score:1)
nobody to submit to, so i've built a temp home
for it. look for xfinans on freshmeat.net.
OT -- I found a y2k bug in a linux program (Score:1)
XFinans, who's latest version, 5.9, is included in RedHat's Powertools for 6.0, isn't complient at all. The fileformat looked complient, but internally in the code itself, the dates are being manipulated with 2 digit years. saving data results in the file saying 19000101.
Pretty ugly...now i need to decide to fix it or just find an alternative opensource checkbook balancer...
Re:To quote Fox Mulder... (Score:1)
Re:careful what you say... (Score:1)
Holiday! (Score:1)
All of my Linux boxes (clients and mine, including the antique Linux Mobile) would be (were, in the event) perfectly happy, and the Windows boxes would get (did get, in a few cases) precisely what they deserve. (-:
It was very relaxing. I highly recommend a few days being pampered in the country during any potential crisis!
For crying out loud... (Score:1)
That's a hell of a lot of important historic events. As "historic events" go, I'd say the millenium is amongst the least important ones - so who cares?
My EUR0.02,
Thomas
Re:Point Of Order (Score:1)
Speaking of which, have you gotten your flu shot this year?
And don't tell me you weren't holding your breath before the first reports from New Zealand came in. I know I was.
-S. Louie
And another thing... (Score:1)
Damn it must really bug people that the 20th century starts with the digits '19' and the 19th century starts with the digits '18' and so on.
1-800-waaaaah (Score:1)
Herd sheep if you don't want to be the sysadmin who controls the data lives of your coworkers.
Re:Point Of Order (Score:2)
Just as an aside, After Jonah died, God did infact destroy Ninivah (the city God promissed to destroy), because while they repented and lived okay for a while, but their children (grandchildren, or latter?) didn't worship God, and were eventially destroied.
Hmm, does this mean that because we repented of y2, and fix the problem that everyone will call y2036 (2038? I can't recall offhand when 32 bit unix runs out, or something else) just crying wolf.
Re:Get Over It (Score:2)
For the people who had to work at the mercy of colossally stupid PHB's who never wrote a line of code and watched to many media shows about the Y2K disaster, I have deep respect. I was one of the lucky ones. I had to show up Monday morning, "just to make sure" everything started up ok.
It was just another New Year... (Score:2)
It was just another day. There really wasn't anything special about that particular day. The only extra value it had was what we humans invested it with. It happens to be (roughly) the second millenium since the time when we believe a particular religious figure was born. It's not even especially accurate.
Tonight, when you go home and see your loved ones, it's just as important to love them and be with them as it was 4 days ago. Tonight is no less important than the Millenium was. The calendar is something we made up; it's a fantasy that most of us happen to agree about. The simple fact that everyone bought into it doesn't make it any less a fantasy. The media hype is just herdthink.
It's not worth that much heartache and pain for something that is so imaginary.
I was responding to the people below ... (Score:2)
And I was refering to IT people not the Army people. And you reinforced my point - I was saying that IT people shouldn't complain that they have to work on New Year's Eve since they have so many more opportunities and are much better paid than most people (such as the military).
I probably didn't make my point very clearly the first time.
Advantage? (Score:2)
As the countdown rolled down, all the PCs were off, and accounting was closing out the "old-fashioned way", so I headed down to the second basement where all the circuit breakers are.
At the stroke of midnight I turned off power to the 3rd floor (accounting). You could hear em scream all the way down there. =) They won't me cooped up on a holiday with a buncha servers and leftover fruitcake anymore. Muwaa haa haa.
Not a single date-related problem either. Woohoo!
--
Re:"gentiles whine like little bitches..." (Score:2)
Q: Why is this year better for Jews than for Gentiles?
A: Because Gentiles have been bunkering off for Y2K while the Jews just entered the 60's. (*)
(*) the 5760's, that is.
A way to get around the whole shebang (Score:2)
As a result I was looking for failures at 7PM on New Years Eve, well before the party
Re:An Open Letter To The Y2K Bug? (Score:2)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
The only problem we saw... (Score:2)
The other problem came Monday January 3rd - CADD techs plotting out of Microstation SE - things with automatic date strings in them. They read Jan 3 2000 on the newer builds, but Jan 3 100 on the older builds - not a hard fix but you would have thought Bentley would have notified one of their SELECT customers 'their service plan and stuff for high-volume customers' that there was this glitch. :-P --
Re:Get Over It (Score:2)
Trust me, things like the Moon Landing and the fall of the Berlin Wall are infinitely more significant events (as would be any birth, death or marrage) - you missed nothing real.
Re:Well, damn! That's something to be proud of! (Score:2)
I'll say. Sure as heck beats "I spent it getting shitfaced in the company of thousands of people I didn't know."
I find it interesting that... (Score:2)
But what troubles me, ever so slightly, is that nothing happened anywhere. Not in Russia, not in China. Not in Pakistan. Not in East Bumfsck.
We sank a huge amount of effort and cash into side-stepping a problem. Other, less capable areas of the world, had fewer resources to throw at the problem - and it didn't materialize there either.
Now, I know. The level of computer dependence in less developed nations is less than here. Duh! But there are computers there too. They are airports, and power grids, and telephone systems and hospitals - and I'm sure that at this point, it's all computerized to a good extent.
Nothing happenned anywhere. No blackouts in rural India. No telephone faults in Albania. No stray nukes in Azerbaijan. No Saudi oil refineries ground to a halt. In fact, all I heard about was a U.S. spy satellite that went fruity for a few hours (y2k related) and a Polish gas turbine burned up (not y2k related) on Jan. 1st... Now the Scandinavian train wreck (unrelated) and a bug in HotMail (hmmm)....
$200 to $500 billion spent on remediation. Did we over-react? No doubt that we worked hard. I know I did. But was it needed? To this extent? Worth working the roll-over shift? Worth showing up at 6 or 7am on the Monday after?
In 20/20 hindsight, we could have partied like it WAS 1999, and slept in. Hell, taken the week off! Did we over-work the problem? Or did we just make it under the wire?
I'm sure I'm not the only one who would love to hear of the glitches that we fended off.
I'll be damned if (Score:2)
...I miss the birth of my childern.
...I don't make my son's little league game.
...I am late for my wedding.
...I let down a loved one who depends on me.
...I put off a holiday with my parents.
...I forget my mother's birthday.
...I neglect a friend.
...I don't stop to smell the first flower of spring.
...I drive by a 'just happened' accident without stopping to help.
...I don't return the smile of a stranger's child.
...I trade my morals for stock options.
...I allow money to set my heart's priorities.
Work New Year's? If I've nothing better to do, sure.
hey.. WAIT A MINUTE!! (Score:2)
All these people.. sitting around, claiming that 2001 is the real millenium.. i couldn't figure out their motivation. i didn't know why it mattered. i mean, the entire date system is totally arbitrary. The only reason we say this is the year 2000 is because the vast majority of the people think it is the year 2000. there's no good reason to call it the year 2000; a lot of people in muslim countries think it's some totally different year, and their opinion is no less valid than those of us who think it's 2000. Therefore, since it's only 2000 because most people think it is, wouldn't it make sense to say 2000 is the millenium because the most people think it is? i mean, since this is all so arbitrary, can't we let the words "second millenium" be arbitrary as well? and it's not like it matters. i mean, second millenium of WHAT? 2000 years since WHAT? it's not like there's any kind of meaning to the date 1 AD; nothing special happened then. Even for you christians it has no meaning, Jesus was born in either 2 or 6 BC according to most historians. it makes about as much sense the new millenium starts 2000 years after 1 BC as 2000 years after 1 AD.
But now i've got it figured OUT!! see, you people who were claiming it mattered so much that the millenium starts in 2001.. you don't actually care about the fact there was no 0 AD!!
i'm on to your little scheme here..
Re:He can always move to Israel (Score:2)
how is this possible when:
Jews are like parasites. They enter a country, and they destroy it. They take over the media - they've done this in the US. They're trying to take over the internet, with their filtering software, and by passing "hate speech" laws.
They enact gun control, to make you powerless to stop them
Your own statements are simply blanket condemnations of a religion's followers without any real meaning beyond that you hate jews?
How do jews control the media? ted turner isn't jewish, and he owns about half the damn news companies on the planet, including CNN, which is where everyone on earth gets their news outside the BBC (which isn't owned by jews either). Your statements are illogical.
The truth of the matter is that when Christianity was gaining early popularity with the Romans, the blame for Jesus' death couldn't well be placed where it belonged (at the feet of the Romans themselves, who crucified and tortured him) so it was blamed primarily on the jews.
And since Christian beliefs prohibited usury (or what we might call a "loan" these days) and jews coincidentally were discriminated against for most other jobs, they wound up filling that professional void and getting the lovely reputation of greed (not that the christians weren't happy to borrow money from them when necessary).
The history of judaism is, as you describe it, one of persecution. not because of any evil intrinsic in them, but because those who are "different" make convenient places for the blame of our communal shortcomings. if the economy isn't working out, blame the jews and the gypsies and the queers. Why not? -- we've got them outnumbered!...
I was at work too... (Score:2)
Nothing happened. I left at 2:30 AM and nearly got my car crashed into by a Green & White cab traveling at exceedingly high speeds. I didn't see a single police car out at night, although I saw about 6 just on a two-mile trip to the grocery at 3 PM. I just don't get it.
Well, damn! That's something to be proud of! (Score:2)
What, that's not something to be sad about! That's something you tell your grandkids with pride!
Not me (Score:2)
It is called optimizing resources. (Score:2)
Back in the days when computers were expensive, your manager wouldn't buy you that extra hard disk for your database because it cost REAL MONEY(tm).
So you had to try to optimize your disk usage, just like you tried to optimize your code. Remember code optimization? Big O notation, finding the best algorithm?
Squeezing 2 bytes per date meant a lot of savings. I can't really fault them for it.
Now we know better. Your code will be around in 20 years, so code for it.
Joe Computer is a whiner... (Score:2)
Ob Millennium: besides the next millennium doesn't start until Jan 1, 2001.
Freedom of religious expression (Score:2)
There are well known court cases where people used freedom of rel. expr. to defeat things like bicycle helmet bylaws (Sikhs want to wear turbans instead). Don't blame others for not getting a day off if you don't ask for one. If you need a lawyer, your community will usually stand behind you.
Now I'm NOT sure if that would come as paid day off or unpaid day off.
However, the tone of the post was definitely overboard and quite insulting to Christians, so I'm inclined to write it off as a flamebait.
Importance of your job. (Score:2)
Re:It was a non event BECAUSE of the Media Coverag (Score:2)
Just yesterday I was talking to someone who spent a full day repairing a non-Y2K compliant database that puked his dads stock/portfolio information all over everywhere. The majority of failures won't come immediately unless you look at it closely enough, however like a feedback loop it will be small errors and just keep building on that until its big enough that you do see it.
The stuff that was supposed to break at the stroke of midnight were power grids, the telephone network, sewage systems. Those things seem to have made it, but just like many, many websites were broken, so too are many databases and programs, and unlike websites where its in plain view constantly, you may not notice it until its quite a big problem.
-- iCEBaLM
Re:Not true. (Score:2)
This is very true, and this is what I thought at very first myself. However look deeper into it, here is a scenario.
Say you have an old embedded chip, something which isn't Y2K compliant, only uses 2 bytes of data for the decade and year numbers, no century number.
Ok, you have this in, say, a microwave. Most microwaves show the date and time when not in operation, doubling as a clock.
Now midnight strikes, the chip increments the year 99 by 1, thats 100 the chip thinks, but it can't store that in the 2 digit memory space set aside for the date and this causes a fault, the chip locks up.
This is what happened to my friends microwave...
Of course a simple power cycle via the plug and keep the year somewhere in the 80's and you're fine, but think what would happen if some of these chips did the same with elevators, or power plants, etc. Sure, the operation wouldn't depend on the date itself, but the chip would fault causing failures anyways.
-- iCEBaLM
Re:Get Over It (Score:2)
Get a grip, dude.
Re:To be honest... (Score:2)
Well... The problem here is people are celebrating for the wrong reasons.
I'm not getting into the 2000-2001 thing, I've worked Helpdesk for too many years (IBM and an ISP) to know that the stupid people outweigh the smart ones :)
What I am saying, this was an event... The earth made it through another rotation around the sun (number 4,586,245,973 or something like that ;) ) and with today's polution/wars/etc/ad nasuem, that my friend is a reason to celebrate.
Seattle was hopping, at least in Fremont (Score:2)
That plus not having to drive home was a plus.
OK, the Space Needle was a downer. And our mayor is a major wuss - even the NYTimes said so, and some other countries commented on it. But that doesn't mean you can't have fun anyway!
Personally, fireworks wise, Paris was THE PLACE TO BE. I think I'll go there for Y2K+1 and party with the fun people. If I don't, I'm still planning a bike trip of the wine and champagne regions in May/June 2001.
Re:strange... (Score:2)
Um, you get overtime? Some of do salary and bonus, maybe with options.
Loved the party food left over on Monday morning though - tons of supplies from the weekend that wasn't - and I just had to be on call with a beeper (first time in years).
Re:Your decisions, your responsibility (Score:2)
This is exactly why he couldn't just quit. If your job, and thus your ability to support your family was threatened, then there's no way he can simply quit. He wasn't guaranteed a job elsewhere, so the (possibly hollow) threat of termination was very real to him.
I for one am very grateful to all of the IT workers who did work long hours the past months making sure that Y2K did flop. I was fortunate enough to be able to party a little, but that doesn't mean I don't respect others' desires to be allowed to join in what was the biggest event in years.
Doug
Holidays? Bah, humbug! (Score:2)
First of all, most Christian holidays were superimposed on either Jewish or Pagan holidays to begin with, back when Christianity was a small splinter sect of Judaism that was getting persecuted.
Secondly, Independence Day, Labor Day, even New Year's day are essentially secular holidays.
Most "bank holidays" present an excuse to run around the mall, rather than focusing on the original religious or cultural meaning of the holiday. Yep, even Thanksgiving and Christmas. Why the heck do you think Blockbuster is open on those days? (I know, my boyfriend works there and worked Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day.) Because families would rather consume canned entertainment than TALK TO EACH OTHER. But I digress.
Then, of course, are the folks that really fry me: my fellow non-Christians who want BOTH sets of holidays off from work. They request their holidays off, and then complain because they have to work on Christmas Eve. Oh, the horror!
Exactly! Thank you. (Score:2)
I saw just enough in the way of "little things" get screwed up (like a friend's ISP giving him an error message to the effect of "Our records show your account will be created on June 26, 2097. Please try back after that date.") to be fully aware of just how much worse things could have been.
I work for a power company. A power company that owns a nuclear plant. And did I mention that it's really damn cold in upstate NY, and the heat going off would NOT have been good? Fortunately, they had the sense to start dealing with Y2K-related issues back in 1996 or so, and we had no problems on the big night.
Re:Joe Computer is a whiner... (Score:2)
There's a reason I made sure that my job, although computer-related, did not have anything to do with the infamous bug. (No, I won't type those three characters.)
Mr. Joe Computer said it himself: he did, in fact, have a choice not to be there. He could have skipped out and just accepted his termination (then again, it's not unheard of for such a threat to be made but have it turn out to be unfounded). The tech industry is a sellers' market as far as labor goes. We all know this. And I'm sure that we all know that bug-related consultants were in even higher demand than the rest of the tech industry. I have no sympathy for Mr. Computer's whining.
Did he ever stop to consider that all of the other professions that he mentioned (police, medical, entertainment, etc.) usually have to work on holidays, but are probably in worse environments and paid less to boot?
Choices one makes for money usually have consequences down the road. Get some foresight. And realize that you are still better off than most people. Then deal with it. My step-father had to work Friday night. Although my mother was allowed to spend the magic moment with him, they went out for dinner the next night and celebrated then.
Yes, Joe, perhaps becoming a corn farmer will do you good. You'd probably soon realize how good you have it now.
Re:It was a non event BECAUSE of the Media Coverag (Score:2)
In general I agree with this. But I think that you can't ignore the fact that some of the Y2K hype just didn't pan out. Most of the reports about Y2K readiness seemed to suggest that the vast majority of businesses/goverments/whatever had not come anywhere near to completing their Y2K preparations.
If that's true, and I know it's true where I work, and Y2K were really as big a problem as everyone thought, then you'd expect to see some problems.. wouldn't you? I mean really, if we didn't manage to finish Y2K readiness, then shouldn't something have broken?
Practically nothing broke! We're talking about worldwide, here. I take this as evidence that Y2K was more hype than anything. I can't discount that the preparation probably fixed a great number of problems. But the fact that we didn't finish and that nothing broke suggests to me that, for the most part, nothing was broken in the first place.
$.02
New Years and what makes it *special* (Score:2)
What makes this special?
I spent this all with 3 friends and my girlfriend. The days we spent there were interesting, learning and seeing new things, but what it comes down to is that the most important thing about any time that you have is that you spend it how you want, and if that's with people you love (as the author of the letter seems to imply), more power too you.
Every day is special, it's not every day that we (personal group) can get together and do what we did.
I didn't get drunk or high or anything like that. I was just with friends.
And I wouldn't want to work when I could do that.
At my work, we were told that there would be NO vacations (especially for IS personelle) for 30 days around New Years. But I told my boss at least a month beforehand that we had plans and reservations and all that.
I would have rather quit than to have missed out on what I had experienced.
Thanks for your time
Re:It's pretty much true (Score:2)
The various bosses arrived about 11:30pm from thier parties, waited to 12:30, saw nothing much happened and went back to the parties again.
I had to stay in work until 8am. At least for the first time in my life I got paid well to hack Linux code for 12 hours.
I'd have much rather been watching the fireworks with my wife.
Re:Get Over It (Score:2)
Oh come on, there is more whining and bitching on
If I was wrong his article would have never been posted,
You guys should be mailing the head honchos here and tell them to pick some real news instead of this. Or at least have a vote for every article for approriateness.
Re:Just deserts? Wrong!!!!!!! (Score:2)
After all even the smartest geek is a servant to industry and capitalism, regardless of what some
Most important and memorable moment? (Score:2)
What an important moment. Our arbitrarily-set year rolled over from 1999 to 2000. A bunch of computer-related disasters didn't happen. The world suffered the largest collective hangover in history. May I ask, what made this past New Year's Eve more important than the moon landing, or anything else for that matter? I just don't see it.
Maybe it's just because the party I was at sucked. Or maybe not.
:-P
Way to go! (Score:2)
--
Re:Not me (Score:2)
_____________________________________
Re:It's OK (Score:2)
That said, I really don't care either, and agree that 1999-->2000 is more interesting a date change than 2000-->2001, even if the latter is the REAL millennium change.
A wakeup call (Score:2)
I thought that my New Year's eve sucked. I stayed at home. I didn't go and party, or celebrate in any fancy way. However I appreciate my quiet evening a lot more after reading this. It did make me feel better about my NYE. However, this letter, or at least these sentiments, should be expressed in the "mainstream media". People should understand what media hype does.
Uhhhh, he said he was Army.. (Score:2)
Whatever, life be may what you make of it, but God bless the ones that make those sacrifices EVERY DAY, and not just some day when there is a damn party...
-Dextius Alphaeus
Y2K a fraud (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but as a computer science student, we learn that computers work in binary... hell, I learned that "officially" in middle school. Well, 100 is not a "roll-over" in binary. 64 and 128 are, but 100 is insignificant in a binary system.
There were potential Y2K issues, but these were ALL dependent upon UI problems. In interfacing with humans, decimals are used and there was a potential for Y2K issues. For example, the credit cards with expirations of xx/00, the reader had to be told how to determine the year from two decimals.
However, internally, there is NO conceivable way that the year 2000 would cause roll-over problems in embedded systems. "We could only store 2 digits." You morons, you wouldn't use two bytes, and a single byte stores up to 255 with an unsigned value, and 128 with a signed value. Either way, there NEVER was a risk of real failures until 2028. Apparently the experts should have studied some middle school math.
While there was a risk of database records getting confused, there was NEVER the risk of the embedded systems that the media made them out to be. There is nothing more annoying than the media making stupidity out to be fact.
i.e. The millenium/century change is 2001. I'm sorry, you can cellebrate all you want, talk abnout pop culture all you want, you're WRONG.
Alex
what a waste (Score:2)
working the 1200-2000 shift was a great way to spend a company holiday ; i mean, what the fuck, i just wanted to sit around with my wife and kids...
I loved coming in the next day at 0300 to restart my RS6000s, and then keep an eye on things "just in case". Once again, I'd already lived through this six months previously in validation.
Someone is convinced somewhere in the convoluted management chain way above my head that my machines know the difference between 01-01-2000 when it happens on june 24, 1999, and when it happens 'for real'...
i know we're all in a thankless industry, and i really feel bad for people who weren't offered some sort of compensation for having to work (though, truth to tell, does money really make up for anything?) - my company offered some compensation (though behind it were very thinly-veiled threats about what would happen if you chose not to come in).
between the commute, the moron non-technical people telling me what i can and cannot do to my servers ('scuse me, i thought >iadministrator), too many missed hours of homelife, and this past weekend, i've had enough.
time for a career change - maybe i'll go south and raise alpacas in south america...
Re:Razvekchik, get out of the Army now (Score:2)
And, the Army sent me to language school to learn Russian, at about a total cost of $100,000.
Now I get about $30,000 to go to school. Too cool.
Re:Bitterness (Score:2)
Your post is funny to me, I guess I have a warped sense of humor.
Not just Srebrenica... (Score:2)
As far as I'm concerned, though, we are bringing a temporary peace to the region, but most militaries in the area are just retraining, professionalizing, and getting ready to go at it again.
I quit! (Score:2)
Anyone else escape Y2K by getting a new job?
Re:YK2 Party (Score:2)
I did get laid, but there was no one else in the room.. oooo Miss Palm...
Sometimes gotta take what you can :-)
Re:Importance of your job. (Score:2)
Some bogus consultants made a lot of money (Score:2)
I am not denying that there was a problem, and, that a lot of honest people did a lot of hard work to make sure that Y2K bug was nothing but a harmless tick, but for some unscrupulous people, it was a source of lot of easy money.
I am pretty sure those ones partied happily over NYE because they had there ill-gotten gains to spend.
Re:Just deserts? Wrong!!!!!!! (Score:3)
If you would take a look at the history of the Y2K problem, you would understand much more. In the 50's and early 60's the cost of storage was very high compared to today's mulit-gigabyte drives. Companies made decision (as today) and went for the cheapest cost when building systems. This was often decided by groups of people including managers at the time, it has always been very expensive to build enterprise wide computing. After these systems were in place and creating large databases, they became difficult to update and change. The people makeing the decisions could not have forseen software and data layouts surviving for 30 or 40 years. I suspect you can point to nothing in your life that you have predicted 30 years in advance. Learn a little, before you open your mouth.
It's pretty much true (Score:3)
I know that at my company, ALL of the UNIX admins and database people were required to be present from at least 11:00PM till whenever they thought it was OK for them to leave (which happened to be in the wee hours of the morning)
You can't really blame the guy for holding a grudge and of course everybody that knows something about the computer was right along with "Joe Computer" in despising the media sensationalism that brought the pseudo-terror to the masses and the very real profits to those of the media that were doing the fear-mongering.
I don't think that this "Open Letter" was the best worded or the best written thing that I've ever seen, but I think it does a decent job of summing up why the whole Y2K thing sucks from the administrator point of view. A decent read, anyway. I'm sure that some of the people at my job would get a chuckle out of it, so I'll pass it along.
With some of the acid in the letter though, I don't understand why the writer bothered to keep up the facade of sarcasm with all of the "Thank You"'s.
Okay everyone, let's stop whining now (Score:3)
I may not like the amount of compensation that I received for working New Year and I have grumbled a bit, but overall, I won't complain too much.
Why?
Because there will always be a trade off of good things and bad things for a job. How often do you hear people in your workplace gloat at how good the job market is, how easy it is too change jobs, how much money they get paid etc etc? IT people are living in a golden era at the moment where we are in demand. Go out to the real world and see how the rest of the population lives!
In Australia (where I live), only 20% of the population earns above $50k - be thankful that you have a job (probably one that puts you in well into that top 20% group), and not only just a job, but one which has opportunity, most likely pays reasonably well and one which has a future.
Focus on that, and not on the small inconveniences like working one night a year which will be forgotten soon anyway.
Get Over It (Score:3)
Your decisions, your responsibility (Score:3)
Shoot, where I was on NYE2000 [phish.net], the party was just gettin' started at 2:00 and wasn't over till the sun came up. How many of you saw the first (post) sunrise of the second millennium? (and I know you nit-pickers were working, so go ahead a tell me how many years it will be before the big number in our year system changes again)
Sorry, but I have no sympathy for whiners. If Y2K was that big a deal, you should have made sure you got it off, if you couldn't and it still irked you, quit. It's not like there's a shortage of IT workers or anything. I spend two months planning my trip(!) and it was all worth it. This article is like all the whining here about shitty posts, like bitchin' makes it better.
Happy Year 2000 to everyone, and if you didn't get to celebrate it (and are bitter), learn that a job is a job, but your life is your own.
Re:What about 2038? (Score:3)
No offence, but we didn't wait until 1999 to fix the 2000 date problem.
Back when I was in college in 1993, they were teaching us COBOL, and what did we do with COBOL you ask? Simple.. we wrote programs that looked at databases and other programs and appeneded four digit years instead of two digit years.
(Sarcasm alert) Gee.. I wonder how that became useful ;) (end sarcasm)
Banks had to worry about it in 1996 when they started making bank cards with '00' expiration dates. Some with those new cards were unable to get their money.
The media didn't hype it until this year, meanwhile, those that were actually hard at work fixing it were sick of dealing with it by the time the media made a big deal out of it.
That's why nothing happened, we've been working on it for years, no-one noticed until the media got their suits in a wad.
That's a very good point ... (Score:3)
What was it an old medical text my friend was looking through said? "A wise physician always states the case is grave, that he may be praised for his good work if he brings his patient back to health, yet is known to have seen the truth of the illness should the patient die."
It was important to be prepared for problems. And this is one case in which information, and information overkill, was probably MUCH BETTER than lack of official information, and people left to fill in the gaps based on rumor.
I don't know if the rest of the country had it as together as Rochester seemed to, but there was always a remarkable lack of panic here (aside from a few bored paranoid suburbanite slackers who wanted the apocalypse to happen so they could lead an army into battle for real). My biggest fear was of the Y2K bug in people's brains, and given the way my neighborhood generally responds to things like snow emergencies, I realized that despite some Cassandra types saying "don't be in a big city!" I was safest right here, three miles from downtown Rochester.
And I was right. The worst thing that happened was that my friend Devon decided to be a smartass and trip the circuit breaker at midnight. We could see lights on from across the street, so nobody got worried, but he seems to be having trouble re-setting his VCR.
I made half-joking, half-serious "stockpiles" of various sorts, but now I have enough toiletries and pasta for several months. Nothing wrong with that; I bought on sale. Everything went well.
Re:Bitterness (Score:3)
Yes, but most everyone in this forum chose to be in the job that they are in now, just like razvedchik.
If Management wants you to work on NYE and this is unacceptable to you, quit. If you are too afraid to quit, organize with your coworkers and raise hell. If you are too afraid to organize, well... maybe that's why Management asked you to work on NYE in the first place.
In many regions the job market is at it's healthist point in decades, especially in the computer industry. Use this to your advantage.
You are your own boss.
-= Stefan
Not Working on NYE (Score:3)
I didn't stockpile, I didn't run & hide. I sure as shit didn't want to work over NYE (irrespective of the year change, a party is a party
My friends who remained on the projects had the joy of working through NYE and being (mostly) bored shitless. I was with my wife & child and enjoyed myself with various mind altering substances (mostly booze - I'm getting old
Those who worked NYE and didn't get well compensated may well want to be reviewing their resumes
Re:"gentiles whine like little bitches..." (Score:3)
I am an Orthodox Christian. Christmas is 13 days later for me than for everyone else. Easter is usually on a different day, and no allowances are made for Holy Week observances regardless of when it falls. And there are 11 other major feast days throughout the year that the Protestant denominations - and therefore work holiday schedules - take no note of whatsoever. I get none of these days off gratis. During Lent and Advent, which are seasons when I am required to abstain from meat, dairy products, fish, alcohol and vegetable oil, the company cafeteria continues to offer the same old deep fried, greasy, cholesterol-laden fare.
I could bitch a blue streak about it. Or I could just do as I do: bring my own lunch when necessary, and use comp time, flex time and vacation days to fulfill my religious obligations. If you really resent the days off you are obligated to take, why don't you offer to cover for those days (if staffing is required) in exchange for days off when you could use them?
Incidently, the original post ought to have been moderated down "offtopic." There is nothing particularly Christian about when the New Year begins. It's a result of the calendar reforms of Julius Caesar. In the intervening centuries, a number of other dates were used for the beginning of the year, and these generally were chosen for religious reasons, but January 1 is a purely secular holiday.
If you're going to go on a self-righteous tirade, it helps to have actual facts in hand.
You didn't miss out... (Score:3)
Re:He can always move to Israel (Score:4)
I guess this is the part where I get lost. I find it hard to believe that any person is INHERENTLY evil (not hitler, or stalin, or even the guys who wake me up doing construction across the street at 7am). Especially a whole group of people with no real biological relationship. What is the cause of the evil? And how do they get through breakfast every day?
I mean, seriously -- how could an inherently evil human being survive? you'd kill your parents as soon as possible, never make any friends, and probably be strangled in your crib for being such a brat.
Certainly people do evil things (although they usually think they're doing good things -- they just turn out to be evil after the fact). The closest thing to an inherently evil person would probably be an amoral person -- one who literally doesn't understand or subscribe to morality, meaning that they just do whatever they want. But even that isn't EVIL, because some of the things they want to do will be good and some will be bad.
So these jewish kids who go to your school, do they kill people on a regular basis or eat babies or something? I would suspect that they probably get nervous giving presentations in front of the class. Probably some of them are popular, some of them aren't. One or two of the girls might even be cute, though the rest are nothing special. Some of them are smarter than the others, some of them are funnier.
I'd suspect they're not all that different from your regular group of white suburban kids, other than the occassional Jewish thing they do together (but Young Life doesn't exactly keep a low profile on most campuses either, so you can hardly single them out for showing religion on occassion).
I think everyone should live in New York City at least once in their life. Seeing so many people working so hard to get by in a city with a hundred languages is pretty interesting. Everyone gets the same embarassed look on their face when they trip on the sidewalk, regardless of where they come from.
It just strikes me as odd that we have to come up with such arbitrary distinctions in order to make an "us" and "them" -- Good lord, we're talking about people who essentially believe in Christianity 1.0. Just because they never upgraded doesn't make 'em evil, it makes them contented users (although God sure did get a lot friendlier in version 2.0, at least in the documentation). And then all the Christians sat around and missed the upgrade to 3.0 courtesy of Mohommad -- what's up with that? Granted, I don't see a lot of compelling new features in the upgrade. 30 days of not eating while the sun is up? We paid for this? give me a resurrection any day, but i can hardly work up the energy to hate a guy just because he refuses to eat pork!...
It was a non event BECAUSE of the Media Coverage! (Score:4)
This is false logic.
The reason nothing happened is a direct result of the media blasting this home, so that businesses and governments would start moving their asses to get this looked after. If the media DIDN'T cover it we'd all probably be without a lot of infrastructure right now.
People see nothing happening as a sign that Y2K was a waste of time, breath, and money. They think that because nothing happened that all the preparations were for nothing. They just don't seem to understand that the preparations worked, we survived. A threat to our civilization was brought to the forefront and we mobilized to stop it, we fought off the invisible invasion of time.
Yet people are angry, because nothing happened.
This is a testament to what the human race can do when motivated. You shouldn't be angry, you should be PROUD nothing happened.
All this while some other people are angry that they were stuck at work during the celebrations of the turn of the millennium.
To this I say "You're in luck, thats not until next year."
-- iCEBaLM
Point Of Order (Score:5)
In the story, god comes down and tells Jonah that humans have to fix their ways or they will be destroyed. When humans fixed their ways, nothing happened to them and Jonah was peeved at god for making him go to the trouble of fixing their ways if nothing was to happen.
The point I'm making is we spent billions upon billions of dollars fixing this bug. The bug is squashed. Y2k comes along, and the bug is already dead and as such doesn't bite. Everyone cries because they didn't get hit by the bug to know it was real.
Disclaimer: I don't "believe" in god or subscribe to organised religion other then culturally, but the religious texts are there for just this kind of occasion. The events that have been built around them are just to make people remember that there is this set of texts as a
Bitterness (Score:5)
I've missed anniversaries, birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and anything in-between so that I could go stop two races of small, rakija-drinking people from killing each other.
Take the time when you can get it. When you have days off, have DAYS OFF. A fact of life is that sometimes you have to work on fun days. If that is below your station, quit, get a job shoveling trash.
At least your computer didn't blow up or try to shoot you. That's not more than I can say about some of my holidays.
Top ten things I've learned from y2k. (Score:5)
9) There aren't 200,000 virus writers on the face of the earth.
8) Microsoft has code that reads: "99 + 1 = 2000 for purposes of getDate"
7) Some of my web pages are now Y2.1K noncompliant
6) Seattle is not a party town.
5) New Years is not an event.
4) Microsoft still has more bugs and viruses than all of y2k put together.
3) Pulling your server because the date changes makes you look like a fool.
2) 2600.com really does have a sense of humor.
1) Don't release the doves and launch the fireworks at the same time!