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Y2K
Dec 30, 2021 17:59:26 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by Pinetree on Dec 30, 2021 17:59:26 GMT -5
Damn, that was a long time ago.
I feel old.
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Y2K
Dec 30, 2021 18:04:58 GMT -5
Post by LeftyMeister on Dec 30, 2021 18:04:58 GMT -5
9/11 was over 20 years ago. It seems like maybe a decade.
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Y2K
Dec 30, 2021 18:18:07 GMT -5
Post by Ragtop on Dec 30, 2021 18:18:07 GMT -5
At least the world didn't end that night, like some said it would.
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Post by Taildragger on Dec 30, 2021 18:42:14 GMT -5
I was born a year before the mid-point of the last century.
Am beginning to corrode something fierce.
Maybe I should get bead-blasted and powder-coated...
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Post by guildx700 on Dec 30, 2021 20:49:48 GMT -5
Gawd... I was appointed head to check out everything in our factories to see if there were Y2K problems,,,,what a crock. I spent 2 months contacting various manufactures, didn't get very many useful responses.
In the end the calendar flipped, and everything continued to operate properly in the factories. Some things needed time/date displays upgraded, but other than that, no big failures anywhere. I did get big atta boys for "keeping the place running". And yes, I took the atta boys and ran with them.
Why not....hell I did wear my finger out calling and following up on the follow ups. What a waste of time.
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Y2K
Dec 30, 2021 21:22:02 GMT -5
Post by Taildragger on Dec 30, 2021 21:22:02 GMT -5
Look out for the Harmonic Convergence, now...
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Wish
Wholenote
You Were Here
Posts: 157
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Y2K
Dec 30, 2021 22:51:11 GMT -5
Post by Wish on Dec 30, 2021 22:51:11 GMT -5
I wanna party like it's 1999.
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Y2K
Dec 31, 2021 0:05:18 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by rickyguitar on Dec 31, 2021 0:05:18 GMT -5
The good old days.
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Davywhizz
Wholenote
"Still Alive and Well"
Posts: 444
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Y2K
Dec 31, 2021 5:24:06 GMT -5
Post by Davywhizz on Dec 31, 2021 5:24:06 GMT -5
I always suspected Y2K was a scam for IT specialists to make a load of money. When the time came I had to oversee the compliance process on behalf of my (government) organisation and didn't change that opinion.
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Y2K
Dec 31, 2021 5:27:07 GMT -5
Post by rdr on Dec 31, 2021 5:27:07 GMT -5
Damn, I'll be 70 in 2 days. How'd that happen? If I knew I'd live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. Oh well, going hunting In an hour.
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Post by gato on Dec 31, 2021 5:54:08 GMT -5
I wonder if there are still people huddled in caves with their Y2K supplies, waiting to come out when the time is right. Like those groups of Japanese soldiers on isolated islands, who kept turning up for years, unaware that the war was over.
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Y2K
Dec 31, 2021 11:33:59 GMT -5
Post by Taildragger on Dec 31, 2021 11:33:59 GMT -5
Is the phonetic spelling of "Y2K" = "Why Dookie"?
Inquiring minds would like to know...
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Y2K
Dec 31, 2021 11:51:09 GMT -5
Post by Laker on Dec 31, 2021 11:51:09 GMT -5
Playing on that New Year’s Eve was one of the best paying gigs I had that year. We worked a casino where dinner, room and breakfast the following morning were supplied along with $75 in chips and a four digit paycheck for each member of the band.
Thank you Y2K!
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Y2K
Dec 31, 2021 12:23:43 GMT -5
Post by hushnel on Dec 31, 2021 12:23:43 GMT -5
I had mandatory overtime, do to the stupid fear of the ventilators in the ER and ICU units imploding, when the clock rolled over, it was just stupid.
I showed my boss on a Puritan Bennett 7200, I adjusted the machines clock to 11:58pm and had him watch the machine as it rolled over to January 1, 2000, the vent didn’t give a damn and kept right on working with all settings intact. Idiot’s, it had to be a lawyer thing, I still couldn’t get the night off. You think they cared that the dirty A.C., that messed up plenty of circuits, didn’t seem to bother them a bit.
No wonder they tried to fire me, and they weren’t even competent enough to pull that off. The band was pissed, but they all worked at various hospitals and cut me some slack. The Sax player was the head of the University of Miami’s psychology department, the drummer was the head of Miami Children’s Hospital Emergency Medicine Department and the Guitar player was Security at Jackson Memorial Hospital. They were all off that evening, but pretty much always on call anyways.
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stl80
Wholenote
Posts: 216
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Y2K
Dec 31, 2021 17:56:16 GMT -5
Post by stl80 on Dec 31, 2021 17:56:16 GMT -5
Not sure but I may still have some Y2K cash C-notes stashed. Jim
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Y2K
Dec 31, 2021 18:32:29 GMT -5
Post by funkykikuchiyo on Dec 31, 2021 18:32:29 GMT -5
I remember the first time I heard about the dreaded millennial bug. We had just gotten our first family PC loaded with Windows 95 (prior computers were hand downs and horribly obsolete by the time we got them). I went to the date/time thing and checked to see if I could set the date past 1999, and it worked just fine. I went into school and asked someone about it in our computer lab, and he said everything was fine, even though it was an ancient LAN and most of the computers couldn't boot to anything past Windows 3.1. I don't recall losing much sleep over it.
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Post by Taildragger on Dec 31, 2021 19:30:05 GMT -5
As impressionable children, many of us had to participate in regular drills wherein we'd be required to "duck and cover" under our desks at school, waiting for a shower of Soviet, A/H-bomb tipped ICBMs to fall.
Is it really any wonder that some of us are susceptible to having those fears of "impending doom" reawakened?
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Y2K
Dec 31, 2021 20:45:02 GMT -5
Post by guildx700 on Dec 31, 2021 20:45:02 GMT -5
As children, many of us had to participate in regular drills wherein we'd be required to "duck and cover" under our desks at school, waiting for a shower of Soviet, A/H-bomb tipped ICBMs to fall. Is it really any wonder that some of us are susceptible to having those fears of "impending doom" reawakened? What I always got a kick out of were the local "fallout" shelters. Hell they did not have enough capacity for a fraction of the population. Basically it would've been put your head in between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye.
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Y2K
Dec 31, 2021 20:45:38 GMT -5
Post by Harleyboy on Dec 31, 2021 20:45:38 GMT -5
"I wonder if this COVID-19 thing is going to create a similar thread in 20 some years?" Says the guy with the arm that feels like a pin cushion.
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gbfun
Wholenote
I eat cookies to provide you with the best possible experience.
Posts: 463
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Y2K
Jan 1, 2022 6:54:57 GMT -5
Leftee likes this
Post by gbfun on Jan 1, 2022 6:54:57 GMT -5
Well, skeptics have their place in the world, but for you Y2K skeptics, you're more than a bit wrong this time.
I was there on the ground floor for a major hospital, along with 20 other contractors whose specific duty it was to scan and fix dates in the software.
And yes, all across the USA and the world, computer budgets were emptied fixing dates as fast as possible and testing the changes and returning software to production.
And even though I was not supposed to be working on Y2K, I still got dragged into it because it became an "all hands on deck" situation, even with 20 contractors.
The bottom line was, if date fields blow up, a program stops, and all the programs depending on it's processed data stops, so the 24 hour processing cycle stops, and patients can't be processed, bills can't be generated, procedures can't be done, all hell breaks loose, and people die.
But then, sadly, if skeptics are allowed to prevail, man wouldn't fly in airplanes, and people would die or be damaged unnecessarily in times like these.
Luckily, the many unsung heroes of the world, the dreamers, the military, the firemen, the scientists and the inventors etc., the people who keep the world running despite the "skeptics"... have mostly WON so far, and progress occurs, whether the skeptics thought they were dead right.
Sorry skeptics, the world isn't flat and reality exists.
Y2K was a necessary exercise and this massive task was completed due to a lot of careful work and a lot of money and time.
I'm PROUD of that accomplishment by so many unsung heroes and heroines.
It was an exceptional triumph by all.
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Y2K
Jan 1, 2022 8:29:18 GMT -5
Post by HenryJ on Jan 1, 2022 8:29:18 GMT -5
I was born a year before the mid-point of the last century. Am beginning to corrode something fierce. Maybe I should get bead-blasted and powder-coated... I'm a year older than you. I fear that my decline is beginning to accelerate. Can't see in the dark and can't respond to Jeopardy like I used to.
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Y2K
Jan 1, 2022 19:23:38 GMT -5
Post by hushnel on Jan 1, 2022 19:23:38 GMT -5
“The bottom line was, if date fields blow up, a program stops, and all the programs depending on it's processed data stops, so the 24 hour processing cycle stops, and patients can't be processed, bills can't be generated, procedures can't be done, all hell breaks loose, and people die.”
Where did that happen?
Nothing like that occurred at Jackson Memorial’s 1,550 bed Hospital in Miami. Or any of the satellite hospital and clinics, Miami Children’s Hospital had no glitches either, nor any other facilities in Dade and Broward Counties, that I’m aware of.
Not saying it didn’t happen somewhere but I didn’t hear of it. If a program crashed because of an inevitable date change program, it seems to me that could of been avoided as the change from the 20th century to the 21st century was a certainty.
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Y2K
Jan 1, 2022 19:26:00 GMT -5
Post by Taildragger on Jan 1, 2022 19:26:00 GMT -5
I was born a year before the mid-point of the last century. Am beginning to corrode something fierce. Maybe I should get bead-blasted and powder-coated... I'm a year older than you. I fear that my decline is beginning to accelerate. Can't see in the dark and can't respond to Jeopardy like I used to. Yeah: I avoid driving at night when possible. especially on poorly-lit, badly-marked rural roads.
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Y2K
Jan 1, 2022 20:23:21 GMT -5
Post by guildx700 on Jan 1, 2022 20:23:21 GMT -5
Well, skeptics have their place in the world, but for you Y2K skeptics, you're more than a bit wrong this time. I was there on the ground floor for a major hospital, along with 20 other contractors whose specific duty it was to scan and fix dates in the software. And yes, all across the USA and the world, computer budgets were emptied fixing dates as fast as possible and testing the changes and returning software to production. And even though I was not supposed to be working on Y2K, I still got dragged into it because it became an "all hands on deck" situation, even with 20 contractors. The bottom line was, if date fields blow up, a program stops, and all the programs depending on it's processed data stops, so the 24 hour processing cycle stops, and patients can't be processed, bills can't be generated, procedures can't be done, all hell breaks loose, and people die. But then, sadly, if skeptics are allowed to prevail, man wouldn't fly in airplanes, and people would die or be damaged unnecessarily in times like these. Luckily, the many unsung heroes of the world, the dreamers, the military, the firemen, the scientists and the inventors etc., the people who keep the world running despite the "skeptics"... have mostly WON so far, and progress occurs, whether the skeptics thought they were dead right. Sorry skeptics, the world isn't flat and reality exists. Y2K was a necessary exercise and this massive task was completed due to a lot of careful work and a lot of money and time. I'm PROUD of that accomplishment by so many unsung heroes and heroines. It was an exceptional triumph by all. Huh? There wasn't a single issue will all the stuff in all our factories, nothing, zilch , zero. Sounds like another world somewhere else what you are describing.
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gbfun
Wholenote
I eat cookies to provide you with the best possible experience.
Posts: 463
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Y2K
Jan 2, 2022 7:02:46 GMT -5
Post by gbfun on Jan 2, 2022 7:02:46 GMT -5
The point of Y2K was make sure nothing happened.
Mission accomplished !
Just because one can't see, or refuses to see, other worlds, doesn't mean those worlds don't exist...AND CAN AFFECT THE WORLD YOU DO SEE.
2020 and 2021 should have been sufficient to drive that point home with Capital Letters. Sadly, some unseen world killed millions. Did it not exist ?
So here's a clue. In the days before 1990, space on disk drives was very expensive and thus, very limited. The early programs in government, transportation, medical facilities, power facilities etc, were likely to a)use the least space possible to describe dates b)use custom unique date code(not in libraries) c)have a majority of programs that keyed off dates and d)and had code that was created with little thought of a far future because this code had to be functional QUICKLY and the hardware was changing so fast no one thought there would EVER be 40 and 50 year old programming languages still in use on machines that were doomed to be obsolete within months or years.
Surprise !
This is HOW the issue started.
Extrapolate market pressure and limited resources for the rest of the story !
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Y2K
Jan 2, 2022 8:37:41 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by Vibroluxer on Jan 2, 2022 8:37:41 GMT -5
I understand what you are saying. I was a systems guy working directly for the pres of a doomed insurance company.
I was new and relied on the real systems group to help me learn the backend of the mainframe data structures so I could create on the fly custom reports for the powers that be. The VP of systems told me " if we see you coming and turn and walk the other way, it's not your imagination."
They were working full bore on the y2k situation.
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Post by funkykikuchiyo on Jan 2, 2022 9:03:52 GMT -5
Makes sense. As recently as 2016 I can remember an employer relying on a database system that was essentially MS DOS (run in a virtual environment, I'm sure) because it was too ingrained to change easily. It just amazes me because so many computers/bits of software I encountered in the '90s that were already old and janky and had no problems.
How many companies modified their old software, and how many decided that 1999 was the time to stop running everything in BASIC and upgrade their software?
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Y2K
Jan 2, 2022 11:41:43 GMT -5
Post by hushnel on Jan 2, 2022 11:41:43 GMT -5
Yeah, I guess it’s just my perspective in the smaller universe I was part of. We couldn’t entertained any type or forrm of planned obsolescence in a life or death environment. Short cuts and expeditiously cobbled together systems would not survive the FDA.
Cobbled together systems based solely on immediate needs, based on cost and bandaid technology, including programming would be a total cluster propagation in the medical world.
I do understand what your describing, the industry I was involved with was probably nervous and scared of the failure probabilities because of the weaknesses you described. These top level management type in health care are generally concerned with law suits, the actual medical staff and support, work around these occasional clowns, that wind up at the top.
I’ve mentioned before about a Vice President of the Public Health Trust firing me. He eventually lost his job for trying. If it had gone through the Hospital would have been forced to outsource most of the ventilators and Anesthesia machines etc. As I was the only employee with factory training certificates. The hospital itself would not be able to purchased parts and PM kits, do to liability issues and insurance problems.
So if these problems and concerns of the Y2K catastrophes, happened, the blame and liabilities would be traced back to the source, I can see that some percentage of the industries may have had serious concerns based on the weaknesses in their process. The equipment I worked on, by definition, was life support and the manufactures covered all possibilities including the Y2K turnover.
So, yeah, I can understand that some systems may have had great concerns of software glitched based on the clock, but even at that I don’t recall hearing about any catastrophic failures, like a dam flooding the valley, or ICBMs starting a count down.
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Y2K
Jan 2, 2022 12:41:19 GMT -5
Post by Vibroluxer on Jan 2, 2022 12:41:19 GMT -5
Me either. I think it was an ounce of prevention sort of thing within the insurance industry. For better or worse, we used Julian dates which were a pain for me to convert.
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gbfun
Wholenote
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Posts: 463
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Y2K
Jan 4, 2022 6:28:02 GMT -5
Post by gbfun on Jan 4, 2022 6:28:02 GMT -5
Yep, much to my astonishment, I didn't hear of any real problems either. I guess this was the first real "computer age" crisis and the powers-that-be took it extra seriously. Most business and medical programs have dates as central to their application, and a lot of those had screen input dates for the more modern sites. But I also know there are places that accidently LOST the source code for key applications that couldn't be changed without reverse engineering source code for it. And if you think that those precious tape backups are reliable enough to do that, not exactly. Been there and done that nightmare for one company. And a super programmer contractor friend actually encountered a program he couldn't work on because it was spaghetti coded to the max. I was really shocked to hear such a tale but a couple years later, one contract I worked on cell phone 36K line switch program where I was instructed to add spaghetti code to "make it work" on the cheap rather than take 2 months to rewrite and test it thoroughly. Suffice it to say, all these circumstances would have taken an unexpected investment to fix and I'm sure these aren't the only examples. So yes, as many old machines and/or old code that could be thrown out around Y2K was thrown out. I had most of my contracts with a multi-state hospital or the software house they used around that time, and they had critical date fields on screens, servers, databases, utilities and reports and the effort was large scale and tedious. I was a special project troubleshooter contractor that had helped solve crisis issues for this client since day 1, and I was working on another one, so I wasn't really part of the Y2K project...yet they got desperate enough to take me off a high priority billing program to join the other 20 contractors. That's pretty desperate ! This hospital was notable for having over 100 million records in its main database and over 3K input terminals live every day. Naturally they had several different mainframes, servers, and languages and operating systems passing information around in often strange ways. And as the goto guy for strange programming projects...I sure got some doozies ! But my part of the contract was done at the same time I completed the Y2K stuff I got, and over strong objections I left because I was moving to another city. Did they have Y2K problems after Y2K ? With 20 other contractors ? I doubt it. And I too didn't hear of any Y2K either. And I was surprised too. It was like it was all a hoax. But...I've seen and worked on a LOT of code in my time. And I was aware of some extremely bad code in aerospace and airline and military applications that must have been a bear to modify and test. And I'm quite aware of stories where key programs are running that no longer have known program code. From that and more possibilities, surely there were issues ? But then, things can, and are, often hushed up. So we don't really know what happened everywhere, and every country. And the idea that planes would be falling from the sky is definitely ridiculous. However, the idea that a whole Airline companies planes would be stuck on the airport tarmac due to some glitch in the software handling flight schedules and billing due to date issues was a serious threat indeed. All one has to do is look how many flights have been canceled just from "illnesses" lately. And for sure, with all the dates used by insurance companies, well, most of their business is all about dates isn't it ? And my multi-state hospital would have come to a screeching halt. Just having the insurance companies frozen up would have done that too ! And our State government with all their different mainframes and "social payment systems". No one would get their foodstamps, unemployment checks, disability, etc...and worst of all worst...TAXES could not be collected and used etc. Heaven forbid. So stuff could have broken, but it didn't. I've seen broken. One of the weirdest challenges at the multi-state hospital I got was when I walked in one day(which was rare because I only worked for 6 months every 6 months) and the senior programmer and supervisor slammed a couple feet of printouts on my desk and said I had to figure out what happened to push the daily 24 hour processing to 27 hours IMMEDIATELY. In short, the hospital WAS broken indeed. Not much different than if bad dates had stopped the daily processing. Obviously the senior staff didn't have a clue, and I didn't either. But I lit into researching the whole freaking system performance info for 7 straight hours until it was clear that it wasn't any of the current programs or database causing the problem. At that point I had been the recipient of the loving scrutiny from an uncomfortable number of higherups and I hadn't had any lunch. So I took a short break in the men's room. It was there that I remembered a past job where I was coding applications in C and somewhere unknown, there was a system group that had the source code to the operating system and were making changes to the actual programming code statements without telling us or me. This of course, pissed me and my co-workers off tremendously because each time they did that, often 3 times a week...none of my group's carefully coded application code worked anymore. But nobody had the source to the operating system in the hospital, but...the hardware company did. So I asked my supervisor to find out if they did a sysgen lately. Yep..the night before. But what could be causing this ? My memory went back again to my fabulous C job and remembered what the system guys often did to us was change or add undocumented parameters to the basic commands, which of course our compiler knew nothing about. Then I asked the senior programmer if they had recompiled all the programs to pick up the new system version already. Yep, yesterday. Any problems ? No. Huh. Luckily, I had been shadowing a temp performance expert and I had programmed all sorts of tests of language speed, and command speed experiment programs, and we had used, out of my curiousity, a very obscure parameter from my manual studies that I never thought I'd use...a way to expand commands into their underlying machine code. This wasn't particularly interesting to him, but it was to me from my C days, so he had a full expanded Cobol program compiled under the previous Sysgen version. I needed that to compare to whatever I'd find from the new sysgen. It was pretty near time to go home and I wouldn't be going home if this didn't show me something, so I jammed the required special compiler parameter into the code to pick up the new sysgen and recompiled one of the programs to see if something popped out. Sure enough, the new sysgen had added an extra parameter to the Read command ! And this was slowing down the 24 hour processing cycle hitting our 100 million plus database to push it past the 24 hour processing window...a data DISASTER. I told the supervisor to have them go back to the old version and recompile everything and I called the sysgen guys in California and explained what happened. As we were one of the heaviest users in the USA it affected us, but not the smaller users that much. They said they'd fix it and I went home only a half hour late ! And it took over a WEEK for the whole teams in several departments to clean up all the system data mess...just from one DAY of being down. If the dates had not been fixed, that multi state hospital would have been down for WEEKS, and the cleanup might have lasted MONTHS. Dang good thing THAT didn't happen ! But then, I was home trying to figure what end was up... on my first electric guitar, thanks to contracting fees...when Y2K went down. I slept like a baby during Y2K, but I bet a big bunch of computer pros didn't ! In short, Y2K could've done some real damage...but didn't. Judging from the misadventures seen in the glorious year of 2020, we all probably dodged a bullet. Somehow... Coming next, the crash of the internet. I plan to sit out that one too....
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