Why-oh-Y2K-bug?

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~~~~Wavey lines signifying flashback ~~~ wooo!~~~~~

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It’s 1999 and the news is choc-full with shock stories and ‘expert’ consultants warning us of our impending doom…

The problem was achingly simple. The world was on the brink of destruction. Computers couldn’t count to 2000 or something you see, so come the actual year 2000 they wouldn’t know what to do…and when computers don’t know what to do…they crash. Our friends from the media decided to convey the message to the public in the following responsible, not-at-all-sensationalist-way:

'ON THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO SHUT DOWN OR EXPLODE! THE STOCK EXCHANGES WILL COLLAPSE!... IT’S GOING TO BE ANOTHER ICE AGE!...WE.ARE.ALL.GOING.TO.DIE!’

Basically, It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I didn’t feel fine. Far from it in fact. I quite liked the world as it goes, and also owned quite a fair bit of technology-related trinkets that I was rather fond of; and didn’t much like the idea of my precious gadgets imploding up their own micro-crevices

Therefore, I fell for this news hook, line, sinker, boat, reel and tackle.

Clinging to my dignity, I decided the best option at this juncture was to shit my pants, running around in circles doing frantic jazz hands and screaming inanely.

I couldn’t believe how calmly some people were taking our impending armageddon. Not one of them took the sandwich board I regularly wore seriously. As doom-day rapidly approached, some hapless fools, blindly ignorant to the oncoming destruction of the planet carried on as if nothing was wrong and some actually started party plans! Why wasn’t anybody listening?

I had better ideas. I wrote my will. (Well I say wrote, I carved it into a stone tablet that could survive the imminent blasts and world war – not that I had many possessions to leave because I sold everything – what was the point of materialistic goods when we’re all blown to smithereens and the insects have seized control?)

Christmas passed with great sorrow and eerie silence – I couldn’t get excited about presents etc, when our lives were to be extinguished in a mere matter of days? Some of my moronic family and friends had actually bought me things containing microchips! The sanctimonious bastards! I cursed their impudence and sent them packing.

December 31st. Dressed head-to-toe in a bio-degradable suit forged from pages of "Computers in Crisis" (by Jerome & Marilyn Murray) and with my tin foil hat firmly in place, I bid farewell to my family and the human race; before hammering crooked bits of wood against the windows and sealing myself into a concrete bunker; 2 miles below sea level with just a wind up radio for company. I waited for the inevitable as the final countdown relentlessly began…

10…9…I put my head between my knees and rocked gently backwards and forwards…

8…7… I question religion, find faith, lose it again, contemplate the beauty of life, the waste of existence, how it all went wrong...and cross my fingers hoping that my Tamagotchi somehow ‘evolves’ and survives…

6…5… A single tear streams down my face as I reminisce about the things I have never achieved in my life…whilst contemplating a possible new world order in a kind of ‘Planet of the Apes’ way…

4…3…I think of the people I will never see again (I couldn’t let the family in to the bunker – there wasn’t enough room for them and the 7000 tins of Millenium bug-proof beans…Besides, they didn’t seem to be that bothered about the whole ‘annihilation’ thing. Ha! Soon they will see who was right...

2…I shit my pants (again)

1…I close my eyes….. HERE WE GO!!!


…

…

oh.

…

fuck

What a bollocking wheelbarrow full of green, burbling, wanky anticlimax that was!

Boy, was my face red. I don’t mind admitting that I did look a bit of a twat. But it’s not all bad…at least I’ve now learned my lesson…

Subsequently I now ignore all these so called ‘warnings’ I get from the media. Climate Change? Fuck right off. Running out of resources? Yeah..fucking RIGHT! Ozone Layer? Load of twaddle. Terrorism? My hairy arse!

I’m not going to fall for that shite again.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 27 Jun 2008, 10:35, 7 replies)

Beans
Pretty sure my mates old man still has tins of beans and bottled water he stockpiled way back then.
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 10:46, closed)

...
Glad to hear that the Tamagotchi made it.


Oh, and you, of course.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 10:46, closed)

My sister who was about 10 at the time.
Seriously thought that the world was going to end at the year 2000. She had obviously caught on to all the crap being shown on TV etc and it worried her.
( girlinthehole, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 11:27, closed)

Yep,
The "Y2k" thing was utter, utter BOLLOCKS.

Didn't affect me in the slightest. Apart from a tiny computer glitch in Unimatrix One (work) where you entered the occasional thing on the system and it couldn't understand "00" as a year, and thought it was 1900.

Unimatrix One's computer system was changed in summer 1999 so it rendered the problem irrelevant.

I agree with Pooflake about all these warnings. Fuck them indeed.
(Panteneman Isn't entirely sure why he bothered on, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 12:58, closed)

My2k
Yeah, I was actually a little surprised when my car started shortly after midnight on 1/1/00. I think the only real glitch I noticed was an incorrect date on a DVD rental receipt later that year.

But the 2038 problem...we're all doomed!
(chase, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 15:18, closed)

Not to mention
The year 10000 problem.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Sat 28 Jun 2008, 0:07, closed)

The media have lost their power to scare us
It's like 'The Boy who cried Wolf.' Y2K? SARS? Giant meteors, bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs? (Amazing how they know this, considering no-one was around back then to measure it). I've heard my fair share of apocalyptic warnings of doom issuing from the world's media, and every single time the threat has failed to develop.

When the apocalypse does finally happen, when the seas boil, the land weeps, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse stride the flaming skies on steeds of iron, people will read about it in the papers, and say, "Yeah, yeah, heard it all before..."
(Pavlov's Frog figures no-one really reads sigs anyway, Sat 28 Jun 2008, 1:40, closed)