I flew around the USA like a MAD man prior to 2000 AD as all of our customers were going WILD that all their systems would fail because the traditional way of encoding dates was MM/DD/YY instead of MM/DD/YYYY.
Most of their legacy code was written by legacy programmers that were either elsewhere or gone to that massive punch card machine room in the sky (or below, depending on the quality of their code – heh!).
The long and short of it was that when that clock went 01/01/00 00:01, not much happened. At all. Yes, with all of the concern, a lot of capital was expended – new software was purchased (jettisoning the “where the heck is it and why doesn’t anyone know anymore” legacy code) and hurriedly getting it installed and configured as well as human capital (I was on the tarmac every week the first 6 months of working for my new employer).
But come that date – nothing happened. Oh, a few areas in our economy had a few minor glitches but not the hard economy-wide crashes that everyone seriously forecasted. Pretty much, everything just worked – electricity flowed, gas pumps pumped, retail stores sold stuff, trains and planes flew on time, and financial transactions went through (almost) flawlessly.
A big whoop-de-do of badness simply didn’t happen. At all. Life was normal.
I’m going to reiterate what I said here (“Is It Just Me or Is The FBI’s Warning About State Capitals Just a Bit Disingenuous…”) – this is being ginned up (by the politico and pundit types) as Big Hype. Big, big hype. WAR, INSURGENCY, SEND IN THE TROOPS! kinda insurrection panic-porn that we’re hearing now that almost is eclipsing that of WMUR’s WuFlu panic-porn. Given my absolute PERFECT (ahem!) pronouncements in the political world (/sarc), I will BODLY go on record that the inauguration of President Asterisk will turn out just the same.
A big Zero. Like his two month term until President-in-Waiting Commie Kamala delicately shoves him into the nearest ditch.
Y2K, inauguration. Lots of vim and vinegar ahead of the event. Ho hum afterward. A month later, just a spec in the rearview mirror.
And just remember – its worth every penny you didn’t pay for it. You can take it to the bank!
