FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for December 08, 2010

ha haa Y2K, I remember that hyped up joke.

Hey don’t knock it. I got 48 hours of double time for that.

My workplace was an IT Shop and we had a management order sent out December 01, 1999. All corporate air travel was banned over the year’s end and personal vacation air travel was “strongly discouraged” for out technical staff.

Yes, it was overkill in hindsight but only because we in the IT profession had started the fixes early enough to handle that 2-digit year problem. The fear was an appreciation of the complexities of computer programming and how easy a “cusp event” could trigger “bad outcomes”!

Y2K was great! I was able to pry a bunch of antiquated computer gear out of the hands of folks who never wanted to throw away anything, and get it finally tossed.

Your favorite game: A repetitive, overhyped piece of trash unworthy of serious gamer attention.

My favorite game: A classic of the “new literature,” offering a sublime balance between innovative gameplay and a life-changing story that draws you into a virtual world created by sheer genius.

We did our Y2K testing in July of the previous year starting on a Friday afternoon. The QA Staff came in and decorated the office for New Years.

Time for you to behave so you can get a new updated version.

What game you talking about, Nairebis?

Reminds me of a Star Trek: Voyager episode aired in 1999 in which someone (speaking in the past tense for them) mentioned that “not a single light bulb went out because of the Y2K hoax.” The writers were obviously quite confident in their prediction, and they were of course correct! (It’s amazing how many morons thought 00-99=100!)

If I get an old Apple Powerbook and it successfully says “enter new date” when it turns over to 12/31/2037, I think I’ll be all right.

2037? I thought we weren’t going to survive past 2012!!!

Not sure if anyone is still reading these comments, but at the time I had a computer attached to a lab instrument that wouldn’t run properly if the computer date was set to the year 2000. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, and it caused a lot of annoyance. The effects of Y2K may not have been nearly as far-reaching as the hype suggested, but the bug really did exist.

I was just mocking Darkeforce. :)