Do you remember Y2K? If you were in a programming or operational support role ten years ago in 1999, I’ll bet you do! While the general population was living it up on December 31, 1999, the technologists of the world were working, monitoring their systems and watching the event unfold on the web.
My Y2K started at 6:00 PM central time. We watched the clocks on the network equipment we supported roll over to 00:00:00 Greenwich Mean Time. I didn’t live far from the office, so I drove home and celebrated the new year, decade, century and millenium by watching the the ball drop in New York City at 11:00 PM central time. After a quick New Millennium kiss from my wife, I went back to the office for the central time rollover.
All of our preparations paid off and we didn’t have a single Y2K-related incident on the network! As we predicted, Y2K was just another working holiday.
For the kids out there who don’t remember Y2K, watch the video for a taste of the pre-Y2K hysteria. For those of you who were there, what do you remember most?
I remember that night fondly. I was a contractor at the same company. I chose to give up my new years even celebration for time and a half pay to work the phones at our helpdesk.
I don’t think a single call came in for 93 or 21. Helpdesk was playing Age of Empires against Desktop support since nothing was going on. Then I recall around 2am our Team Lead (Joe K) tunneled in to join in… after his first child was born earlier that morning 🙂 )
Now we need to worry (with concern at this point) about Y2K32 😉