Posted on 09/28/2021 5:16:25 AM PDT by Openurmind
See my post above. It was not a hysterical thing for us or the patients we took care of.
I don’t blame people who weren’t forced to see it or deal with it for not seeing it, but it was real. Not a hoax.
Heck, I probably would have had my head in the sand right up until that thing would have bit me on the rear end. I was glad there were other people further up the chain who drove the process, including driving me...:)
Yup—the Y2K issue was very real, and it was a bunch of hard working folks who turned it into a nothingburger.
Most folks these days are cargo cultists who have no clue how the real world works.
It’s true, but I really understand why many people don’t think it was a real thing. LOL, if I hadn’t had to immerse myself so deeply in it for so long and unpleasantly, I might have thought so too.
I frikking hated it...we had multi-week meetings with up to forty people at it, and gad...I remember thinking “Come on-why can’t we just FIX the issue?”
Well, we couldn’t just “fix” it, it was wormed so far down in this legacy application that rooting out all the branches was a real chore. I learned a lot during that year and a half, I can tell you. I worked side by side with one of the two women who actually wrote most of the program, and that was invaluable to me.
From her, I learned everything about how to draw up and execute a comprehensive and bulletproof test plan, which means that I own that to this day...:) She warned me, too. She said nobody likes doing this part of the job, and if I was good at it, I would get “volunteered”...which is what happened. It can be nasty and tedious, but it is great when you can do it well enough so that when you go live with a new system or an upgrade, it isn’t as “exciting” as it can sometimes be without a good testing regimen!
Part of the Y2K thing was, that the years of hysteria leading up to it DID make people think everything was going to go dark or become non-functional.
I was one of those people who were up all night watching things...and boy, was I relieved.
I was glad it was perceived as a nothing-burger!
Planned obsolescence. The watchword of the industry.
For security certificates, it’s a necessity. I’ll agree , There should be a way to update to newer though.
p
Hmmm...interesting...
OK, maybe you were dealing with something different than I was, Unix servers or something?
I was in a computer repair shop, learning the trade. We tested the typical stand alone home computer and basic small LAN server running NT with about a half dozen Windows workstations, various versions and DOS, so we had every Windows OS in existence and DOS 6.22 running on the network.
DOS
Windows 3.11
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows NT
XP and win2000 didn’t exist yet.
We found one issue.
We set up a computer with win 98, the most common home user OS, two ways. Installed with the date set to 2099 instead of 1999, installed with the date set normal, but Dec 30 1999. Both worked perfect, but the rest of the computers on our network refused to open documents created on the one dated 2099, that date didn’t exist yet. We did the same with Win 3 and 95 too.
Even DOS worked fine, even though the 2 digit date system was supposed to make it crash and the whole world was going to hell in a handbasket in seconds...didn’t happen. The only thing the DOS 6 machine did was not open documents dated 2099. It didn’t seem to try and reset to the year 0 and refuse to function, even though we tried to make it happen.
We installed several times using different versions of Windows, and turned the machine off, let it sit there a few hours until it THOUGHT the date was Jan 1, 2000, it was actually sept 1999, (BIOS dates set accordingly too) and had no problems, every time the computer booted up and ran as if nothing happened.
We let it sit there running until it changed over to Jan1, 2000, same thing, nothing went wrong. That was every Windows OS in existence at the time, and DOS.
The one and only problem we found, was computers set with a BIOS and Windows date in 1999, would not open documents or files created on one that had a BIOS and Windows date of 2099, a century later, I can’t remember the exact error message, but it basically didn’t recognize the date, because it didn’t exist yet, it wouldnt open a file created a century in the future. It may have simply said unable to open file.
Printers, network gaming, transferring files all worked. We could even transfer files created a century in the future, from any computer workstation or the NT server to any other, just couldn’t open them. You could create a text document on any computer dated basically any time, and it would print on the shared printers. Copy and Paste files from any computer to any other, including the server, no matter what the date. The computers installed in 1999 just wouldn’t open files created in 2099, that was the one and only problem we found. I got online and poked around for info and even downloaded files on a computer dated Jan 2099. Just couldn’t open those files on any other machine.
But that was Windows, not Unix or Linux, I didn’t try Linux until several years later so I have no idea how it performed. Never have even seen Unix...
“Ah, c’mon man! Enough of this nothingburger obsolescence thingy! You’re wearing out my patience already. Where’s my damned ice cream?”
In a saner moment.
Welp, guess I get to download a Linux ISO for my trusty 2012 macbook. Dang it!! Whole lotta my life is on that thing.
I remember there definitely were some problems with certain system applications. So it did not come and go without any problems at all.
This software engineer thanks you!
I would wait and see if it actually affects you or not. But it might not be a bad idea to download what you will need to do that and have it ready in case.
I highly suggest this, tried, used, and proven... :)
https://itsfoss.com/install-linux-mint/
Back it up first. Then you can restore it to the Linux install. You shouldn’t lose anything,
In the end, it all worked out because we had the best OCD people working on it.
Also... If you make a bootable USB Linux stick now, You can also boot into the Linux from the stick and go retrieve your files of the main drive to another external drive or USB.
This is why I highly suggest everyone should have a Linux stick around. If your default OS crashes, you can use it to go in and retrieve all your files that otherwise might be lost.
Indeed. A lot of people worked long hours to make sure things worked correctly. At the time the project manager for my company's Y2K project was in an office right next to mine... I often wondered if she ever got any sleep.
Yes...our main program for a large hospital was an IBM mainframe and the application was written in MUMPS.
We were way ahead of our time with an integrated electronic order entry, scheduling, billing...no more five part paper requisitions...send the goldenrod copy here, send the pink copy there, etc.
But we reached block obsolescence in the mid-nineties, but...the money to move to a new massive system was daunting.
OK, you’re way outside my realm of knowledge, never even heard of MUMPS.
Think I had it when I was a kid though... :-)
But for the typical windows crowd, Y2K was a nothingburger. We proved it long before it got there, we had to know what to expect. Whether it was a stand alone home computer, or a small LAN, Windows didn’t seem to even notice the date change. We just advised people to try and not be online at midnight, that was the one thing we had no way of testing.
We didn’t even get any of the Y2K patches Microsludge put out...with all the numerous OS installs we did we weren’t about to go through that hassle every time, even though at that time you could still download Windows updates and save to a floppy or whatever. We kept most of them on the shop server. I still have a CD somewhere with a bunch of updates on it including the XP service pack 2, some fixes for malware and such produced around that time, drivers for tons of hardware on cd...I archived everything I had to download.
I knew it wouldn’t be a problem on Dec 31, I was at an airbase across the Potomac from the White House, and 2 small, single engine planes were flying around 5 minutes before midnight in the White House area...they could only be government planes, that’s restricted airspace, and they absolutely would NOT allow them off the ground if anything serious was expected. Probably surveillance planes but I never found out. My brother had just been transferred there. We went out to watch the fireworks just before midnight, there these 2 planes were, just tooling around...
“The real problem is the smart meter. Your entire house will be throtteld so that those in charge can remain nice and comfy.”
You can’t throttle electric power at the meter. Either power is on, or it’s off. So you still may be right, in that if you ‘somehow’ draw more power above your allocation at the time, they could simply shut off your house at the meter. Fair point!
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