Where were you on Y2K?

Pop quiz – Where were you on the night of December 31, 1999?

If you were sane, legal drinking age and NOT involved in he IT industry, chances are you were ushering in the dawn of a new millennium (no, I’m not going to debate whether or not the new millennium actually started at 2000 or not!) and partying like it was 1999.

But if you were like me, a paranoid IT contractor – working in the heart of Canada’s financial center – you were holed up in a homemade Y2K bunker waiting for the end of the world as we know it…

Well, that’s not entirely true, I did go out to enjoy some fireworks (“would they actually go off – the computer timers might not be Y2K compliant!!!”) but I made sure to bring my pager (no cell phone!) in case I was called back to save the world.

My pager never went off…

So, why all the the paranoia?

Well, in the lead up to Y2K I worked as an IT contractor for all of the major banks and the Toronto Stock Exchange. For months I saw frenzied IT managers and microserfs like myself pulling their hair out trying to get their systems Y2K compliant before the clock struck 12:00 AM on January 1, 2000.

Yes, Bill gates was wrong – the world did need more than 64K of memory – and at least (Y?) 2K of that memory should have been devoted to storing a 4 digit date field. But alas, who could predict that just 10 years later, your average home PC would come with 1 terabyte (that’s 124,000,000,000K, Bill!) of storage capacity.

But this is now and that was then…

So, in their miserly attempt to conserve space, programmers of yore (that’s IT speak for the 80’s and 90’s) created 2 digit date fields instead of 4 digit date fields.

The terrifying result (well terrifying to me anyway) was that computer systems that did not allow for a 4 digit date field would get confused on January 1, 2000 when the date would be registered as 00.

Banking systems will crash! Airplanes will fall from the sky! Cats and Dogs will be sleeping together!! The end of the world was nigh…

And I believed the hype – lock stock and bunker.

You see, even a year before the new, paranoid post 9/11 world, I feared that sabotage, not necessarily the computer systems themselves, would be the downfall of civilization come January 1st, 2000.

I was one of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of contractors given full access to the data centers of the largest banks, clearing houses and stock exchanges in the world.

I never had to pass a security clearance, all I had to do was say “Y2K contractor” and I was ushered behind the green curtain with all the austerity and intrigue of a bomb disposal expert.

After all, I was going to SAVE THE WORLD!

But all around me I saw confusion and panic and frenzied activity that proceeded relentlessly forward – “No time to double check that block of code – the clock is ticking…”.

With all the focus on code, I could not help but think how easy it would be for a malicious individual (or perhaps an end of the world fanatic?) to launch an attack (not with box cutters as would happen a year and half later) but with wire snippers.

A quick snip here or there in any number of servers, connections, power supplies, etc. and because all the focus of fixing the Y2K problem was based on code, a hardware failure might trigger a whole host of false negatives for Y2K compliance.

And that is why I holed up in a bunker on New Year’s Eve.

In my mind I saw lineups and looting of grocery stores as people could not get access to the money in their bank accounts.

In my mind I saw the fear in people’s faces when they realized there was no where to go to escape the downfall of modern civilization.

And I was never so glad to be so wrong!

Now, it’s 10 years later…

I have a wife and family, a 20 year career in Information Technology under my (expanding) belt. I have a house of my own. Where I really should be MORE paranoid about impending doom and gloom, I’m actually much more mellow, much less paranoid and I suppose much more accepting of the fact that ‘what will be will be’.

And worrying about it (and buying 2 years worth of groceries and arming myself to the teeth) is probably not the most productive use of my time TODAY!

In other words, would I be holed up in a bunker if Y2K happened today?

I don’t think so.

So now, as the first decade of the new millennium closes and a new one begins, I ask you:

How would you react if a technology induced ‘end of the world’ scenario happened today?

Have we really learned anything over the last 10 years about how closely technology has interwoven itself in our lives? Does it matter?

More importantly, have we learned anything about ourselves over the past decade? Have we changed?

I’d love to hear your perspective – and so would others!

Where were you at 11:59PM, December 31, 1999?

Please leave a comment below, and if you’re on Twitter, click the ‘tweet this’ button below to see if we can get some other folks’ to tell us where they were on Y2K!

Thanks for sticking with the story this far! Who knows where our stories will lead in the years ahead…

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU AND YOURS!!

- Don

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Tagged as: 10 Years ago, end of the world, Happy New Year, New Year, personal growth, technology, technology dependence, Y2K