The Master .Plan

Click here for other Master .Plan columns.

January 28, 2000 - Y2K

Okay, I'm going to take a break from my current series and talk about a rather nasty and "passe" topic. Y2K. You'd think all the idiots who were preaching the end of the world were just a mild intro to the idiocy we hear on TV now.

Beginning of last year right through to the end, all we heard from anyone was "the WORLD is COMING to an END! AHHRRRGGGHHH!". Many highly-paid consultants were brought in to tell people that you had to check EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF ELECTRONICS since it would all just blow up when the big 0 came. Monitors, modems, UPSes, cars (hey-our consultant had his Jeep certified Y2K). I work as a programmer at a company that went through the whole Y2K fiasco, and while we didn't have a lot of problems (our systems were mainly Y32K compliant already), there WERE code issues. They sucked. We fixed them.

And now we have a whole pack of losers running around going "WTF? Why did we waste all this money and time on a non-problem?"

You'd think all the supposed "Y2K experts" and press WANTED to see catastrophe to prove their viewpoint. Hey, all that money was WISELY spent to fix this problem. It wouldn't have been the end of the world if things had gone sour, but they didn't. We can be thankful to all the hardworking, and now completely unappreciated programmers who corrected an earlier generation of programmers mistakes. It could have gone much worse.

Folks, there WAS a Y2K problem. I guarentee this "new millenium" wouldn't be so wonderful right now if it hadn't been fixed. Instead, we get to enjoy the new year in peace. What's wrong with that?