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itsnotmymindI stumbled on this conversation on Tumblr, and it made me think of my own stories about Y2K.
My dad works in computers, and he was able to reassure my sister and me that the world was not really ending. Unlink the parents of some of the people in the linked discussion, he didn't work to prevent the Y2K catastrophy: he avoided that kind of work because he was worried he would be laid off once the crisis was passed.
The funniest Y2K story I know is about my grandfather. Convinced the apocalypse was coming, dismissing his son's reassurances, he hoarded bottled water. In 1999, a hurricane passed through my grandparents' area. My grandparents had to boil all their water.
"It's a good thing you have all that bottled water stored in the basement," my father said.
"That's for Y2K!" my grandfather retorted, and refused to use it.
A little over a decade later, my aunt was visiting my grandparents. She and my father spoke on the phone, and he told her the Y2K water story.
"Oh, that's what all that water in the basement is for!" my aunt said.
My dad works in computers, and he was able to reassure my sister and me that the world was not really ending. Unlink the parents of some of the people in the linked discussion, he didn't work to prevent the Y2K catastrophy: he avoided that kind of work because he was worried he would be laid off once the crisis was passed.
The funniest Y2K story I know is about my grandfather. Convinced the apocalypse was coming, dismissing his son's reassurances, he hoarded bottled water. In 1999, a hurricane passed through my grandparents' area. My grandparents had to boil all their water.
"It's a good thing you have all that bottled water stored in the basement," my father said.
"That's for Y2K!" my grandfather retorted, and refused to use it.
A little over a decade later, my aunt was visiting my grandparents. She and my father spoke on the phone, and he told her the Y2K water story.
"Oh, that's what all that water in the basement is for!" my aunt said.
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Date: 2018-11-12 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-12 10:46 pm (UTC)(Things were OK, but my understanding is that this was because programmers and IT people had patched up most of the issues ahead of time, not because there hadn't been a risk. And we also knew enough programmers and QA folks to know that for all the bugs you do find and fix, there are some that slip through and bite you :P)
Also, weirdly, Y2K came up as a plot point in a book I started reading the same day I saw your post. What are the odds! XD
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Date: 2018-11-12 11:19 pm (UTC)What was the plot point in the book you were reading?
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Date: 2018-11-13 03:57 am (UTC)Yeah, I think that's true. It's just that all kinds of relatively ancient S/W had to get updates.
What was the plot point in the book you were reading?
It wasn't a major plot point, but one of the protagonists was working on Y2K fixes, and that was his reason for being in the setting where the plot kicked off. (And the book was written well after 2000, although, obviously, set in 1999, so it was just so random to encounter that.)