We weren’t all that certain what would happen if the Y2K Bug reset computers to year 1900

By John Toth

The Bulletin

The year was 1999.

Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” topped the charts; “Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace” was released; Paypal was called one of the worst business ideas of the year; and we started worrying about the Y2K Bug.

It was also called the millennium bug. It was supposed to gobble up all of our computer data and make computers do something really bad.

Media outlets extensively covered the Y2K problem, often highlighting potential worst-case scenarios, further fueling public concern.

Some predicted major disruptions in services like power grids, transportation and financial systems.

The anxiety was fueled by a coding issue where older systems, using only two digits to represent the year, might misinterpret “00” as 1900 instead of 2000, causing various problems in computer systems worldwide.

We really thought that if nothing was done to prevent it, our computers might think that right after midnight, Dec. 31, 1999, that it was only 1900, not 2000. That would have been a big problem.

The potential for widespread system failures led to public fear and anxiety, with some even stocking up on supplies, anticipating potential chaos. Media outlets extensively covered the Y2K problem, often highlighting potential worst-case scenarios.

Of course - that’s what media outlets do all the time. The Y2K story was a goldmine that kept on giving all year long.

The Y2K hype was a period of heightened public awareness and anxiety regarding a real technological problem. While the problem itself was genuine, the extent of the anticipated disruptions was likely overblown.

We at The Bulletin did not know if our computers would stand up to the Y2K bug or fall victim to it. At the time, there was no way we could know. The computers we worked on were not exactly new. We had no idea whether they would know that it’s the year 2000 or think we’re back in 1900.

My grandmother was born in 1900. The catastrophic Galveston hurricane struck the Texas coast, killing an estimated 8,000 people in 1900. The jitterbug and the tango recently had replaced traditional waltzes. I was just hoping that our middle-of-the-road computers could tell the difference.

I spent New Year’s Eve with the family, doing the traditional things like trying not to fall asleep before midnight. After all, it was the turn of the century, a once-in-a-lifetime event. When people asked me later what I did at the turn of the century, I didn’t want to tell them that I snoozed right through it, so I stayed up to witness this momentous occasion.

I was concerned how the Y2K bug would affect our livelihood.

 Would we even be able to put out a paper the following week, since the computer failed to realize that we’re not back in 1900? I backed everything up, but that doesn’t do any good if the computer is waiting for a steam locomotive to roll into the station.

I woke up early on New Year’s Day, went into the office and turned on my computer. It made all the usual sounds desktop models made back in those days, and then it went blank.

After a few seconds, it loaded in Windows as usual, and I knew that we survived Y2K. Those seconds of a blank screen (as my heart started beating in my throat) was a good joke, though. Very funny, Bill Gates. Or, maybe it was just a delay I didn’t notice before because I wasn’t paranoid.

Did you have any good Y2K anecdotes? Send them along to john.bulletin@gmail.com. We’ll share them with our readers.