Remember the Y2K scare?

[Beetlegeuse]

I refuse to worry about this. I'm still recovering from Y2K.

kelkel posted this in another thread and I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

For those of you too young to remember, the Y2K Scare was a computer code glitch that no one could predict the impact of, so everybody prepared for the world to end.

The problem started when COBOL, a workhorse OS that was run on a great many mainfame computers, was being developed. In the early 1960s, storage memory (RAM) was more expensive that you can imagine. Like $5000 per kilobyte.

A 4-digit number, like the year "2020," takes 4 data bytes to store. Since RAM back then cost about $5 a byte, some wiseacre got the brilliant idea that they could save $10 every time they recorded a year (in the current century) if they simply dropped the two leading digits (indicating the century). So 1960 was stored as just "60," which saved $10 in storage costs.

But with close to 40 years remaining to the end of the century, nobody involved ever imagined somebody wouldn't come along after them (once the economy of scale made RAM more reasonably priced) and fix the problems that might have been caused by their short-hand.

Except nobody did. They were too busy moving forward to be bothered with looking back.

And as the year 2000 approached the handwringing began over the calamity that might befall when the clock ticked midnight on the 31st of December, 1999. And there were a gazillion electronic devices that had snippets of code embedded in them -- everything from traffic signals to washing machines -- and there was no way to test how they might collectively react when the year changed.

So on 31 Dec, 1999, IT staffs all over the world were all-hands-on-deck while they waited for the shit-storm to begin. I was managing a UNIX server farm for an international manufacturing concern, so I got swept up in the panic despite my protestations (my boss got paid to worry, and shit always rolls downhill).

I knew my shit was squared away because UNIX doesn't keep time like anything else. UNIX's "epoch date" is January first, 1970, just because. And it tracks time in how many seconds have passed since the epoch date, so it was absolutely invulnerable to the Y2K problem. I just checked on the Linux box I'm typing this from and the epoch time is 1583523630. That many seconds since the epoch began.

Epoch time 1583523630 ÷ 60 = 26392060 minutes ÷ 1440 = 18327 days ÷ 365 = 50.2 years (ignoring leap year days). Since January 1, 1970.

Neat, huh?

So nothing calamitous happened at midnight. Or all next day. Or ever. Even minor glitches were few and far between. The world was all up in arms over it but nobody died. Not even close.


Anyway, if kelkel's Y2K comment went over your head, that's the story. The moral of which is, don't sweat the small shit (and it's all small shit).

[The road]

kelkel posted this in another thread and I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

For those of you too young to remember, the Y2K Scare was a computer code glitch that no one could predict the impact of, so everybody prepared for the world to end.

The problem started when COBOL, a workhorse OS that was run on a great many mainfame computers, was being developed. In the early 1960s, storage memory (RAM) was more expensive that you can imagine. Like $5000 per kilobyte.

A 4-digit number, like the year "2020," takes 4 data bytes to store. Since RAM back then cost about $5 a byte, some wiseacre got the brilliant idea that they could save $10 every time they recorded a year (in the current century) if they simply dropped the two leading digits (indicating the century). So 1960 was stored as just "60," which saved $10 in storage costs.

But with close to 40 years remaining to the end of the century, nobody involved ever imagined somebody wouldn't come along after them (once the economy of scale made RAM more reasonably priced) and fix the problems that might have been caused by their short-hand.

Except nobody did. They were too busy moving forward to be bothered with looking back.

And as the year 2000 approached the handwringing began over the calamity that might befall when the clock ticked midnight on the 31st of December, 1999. And there were a gazillion electronic devices that had snippets of code embedded in them -- everything from traffic signals to washing machines -- and there was no way to test how they might collectively react when the year changed.

So on 31 Jan, 1999, IT staffs all over the world were all-hands-on-deck while they waited for the shit-storm to begin. I was managing a UNIX server farm for an international manufacturing concern, so I got swept up in the panic despite my protestations (my boss got paid to worry, and shit always rolls downhill).

I knew my shit was squared away because UNIX doesn't keep time like anything else. UNIX's "epoch date" is January first, 1970, just because. And it tracks time in how many seconds have passed since the epoch date, so it was absolutely invulnerable to the Y2K problem. I just checked on the Linux box I'm typing this from and the epoch time is 1583523630. That many seconds since the epoch began.

Epoch time 1583523630 ÷ 60 = 26392060 minutes ÷ 1440 = 18327 days ÷ 365 = 50.2 years (ignoring leap years). Since January 1, 1970.

Neat, huh?

So nothing calamitous happened at midnight. Or all next day. Or ever. Even minor glitches were few and far between. The world was all up in arms over it but nobody died. Not even close.


Anyway, if kelkel's Y2K comment went over your head, that's the story. The moral of which is, don't sweat the small shit (and it's all small shit).

I was in a 40 acre field holding downa wounded doe whitetail as the clock rolled over.

Shot it with a .22lr out of season.
We didnt give a fuck about y2k or deer seasons.
Just took what we wanted and were ourselves.

Kinda like that today except I am being myself lifting a girl off my cock as she rolls over.


I am apoet.
Need to write a book.