canadaland.com/podcast/was-the-y2k-bug-really-a-hoax/
Below is a partial transcript of the episode.
My name is David Robert Loblaw and I worked for the federal government in the public service in computer systems from 1991 till the first week of 2000. I just met my new girlfriend and we just moved to Edmonton. I was looking for work at a file clerk job at the federal government, and I'd worked my way up and then I got interested in computers.
It was just so thrilling that the potential of the Internet in the early 90s was just such an exciting, thrilling time. Those websites were horrific in today's terms. It took you three hours to upload, but it was exciting.
So I created this kind of this very basic website that would help people troubleshoot our equipment around the country. I had a conference in Ottawa, I showed it and they loved it. So they handpicked me right from a file clerk in Edmonton, right to national headquarters in the Government of Canada in Hull to do that. So it was this massive career jump from a file clerk, right to coding things for the mainframe of the Government of Canada was fantastic. So that was in 96 and 97 and I was thinking, this is my career, this is fantastic and reading everything about the internet, the potential of it, or even called the superhighway, the information superhighway was the goofy term in cyberspace. We're in cyberspace right now and that was such a big deal.
And then I would say the Y2K circus came into town, set up their tent, and everything stopped.
Everything was Y2K. It was a major line item in every meeting. Everyone talked about it. It just took over everything. And the main thing, Y2K was real. The year 2000 bug was real. We had to check all codes and all different computer systems to see what would happen when it went to 99 to 00. Well, this was important, essential work. It can't be emphasized enough just how utterly monotonous it was. For the people on the ground. It was simple” and boring as heck. Looking for that code dates is the most dullest thing. Let's say I gave you a dictionary and sat you down at a desk with a pen and I asked you to circle every E in that dictionary. Go do that for the next six months and that's your job.
We had tons of projects, everything pretty much ground to a halt, like any type of new research into any type of telephony or anything. And we had to just go through all of the old code. And I always say that, gotta say, the Y2K was a million-dollar problem that morphed into a multi-billion-dollar industry, just because of the hysteria, the fear of it.
Mine was at Angel Fire. And I think the front, very top had all these flames, huge flames. Then I had all my theories and a bunch of links. And it was really a bare bones kind of thing.
I was expecting some friends and a couple of geeks to answer. Getting 100 emails in a day at that time was mind boggling. It was incredible. And I don't know if you remember seeing all the old websites when they had the hit counter at the bottom and then they had flowers and they were so ugly, ugly as hell. And so looking at that, I think, oh my God, you're watching in real time the hit counter. And my problem was I created the hit counter was only five digits and was getting to the 90,000s. I think I just created my own Y2K problem.
And that was my most exciting part because there's people that were cursing me to hell. I got a curse on me and my family forever, which is interesting because he cursed me and then nothing happened. So, I emailed him back. I said, I'm still waiting. What do I do? There's a curse. What happened? So, I did it a couple of times and he ghosted me. But yeah, there's a lot of those emails and all the, but really sad ones too, saying, 'I'm a retired person. If the power goes out and there's no food.' There are sadder, unbelievably sad ones that I got too, which is really awful. Then there's really angry, insane ones that were just scary as all hell.
So I was at home, my home office, knowing nothing was going to happen, you know, surrounded by computers, all my feeds to Ottawa, five or six different computers.
Oh, I open a beer, have a drink.
Two of their waitresses, they were just hysterical. They were so jittery that they were so happy. They had filled the car with all these gasoline tanks. They had food and canned goods, toilet paper. They'd taken out like $5,000 of cash. And their car was filled with all of this stuff. And I think I was a bit rude to them.
I don't know why I got cocky and that was my biggest mistake. And so that's when I think the Globe and Mail reached out to me. And that's when I wrote the full-page commentary in the National Globe and Mail on January 6, 2000. And their terrible headline, which they chose, was called, 'You Got Conned and I Told You So.' Ouch! Ouch!
And then I realized there's a lot of people in the room, and then they introduce themselves and there are a lot of the higher-ups. And they pretty much said, we read your Globe and Mail article, and that wasn't a good thing to do. And they didn't fire me at the time. But as I was talking, I had five computer systems monitors and I lost my feed. So I was kind of being terminated in real time. So that kind of hit my gut thinking, oh, this is bad.
Oh yeah, my entire world, my entire '90s was computers and it stopped dead. So after my contract was terminated, and then I went to work in my wife's restaurant. With no restaurant experience before, I was the worst waiter you could ever imagine, worst bartender, which is awful. I went from coding the mainframes of the government of Canada to saying, 'are you finished with your plate, sir?' So that was my drop. That was a really bad time. That was a very, very odd time.
That was the best thing to do. You just get the people hyped up and fix it, and then accept their money because nothing was going to happen on the year 2000. Even at the time, I knew they were going to win because this is the perfect scam. It's a win-win for them.
It was just so thrilling that the potential of the Internet in the early 90s was just such an exciting, thrilling time. Those websites were horrific in today's terms. It took you three hours to upload, but it was exciting.
So I created this kind of this very basic website that would help people troubleshoot our equipment around the country. I had a conference in Ottawa, I showed it and they loved it. So they handpicked me right from a file clerk in Edmonton, right to national headquarters in the Government of Canada in Hull to do that. So it was this massive career jump from a file clerk, right to coding things for the mainframe of the Government of Canada was fantastic. So that was in 96 and 97 and I was thinking, this is my career, this is fantastic and reading everything about the internet, the potential of it, or even called the superhighway, the information superhighway was the goofy term in cyberspace. We're in cyberspace right now and that was such a big deal.
And then I would say the Y2K circus came into town, set up their tent, and everything stopped.
Everything was Y2K. It was a major line item in every meeting. Everyone talked about it. It just took over everything. And the main thing, Y2K was real. The year 2000 bug was real. We had to check all codes and all different computer systems to see what would happen when it went to 99 to 00. Well, this was important, essential work. It can't be emphasized enough just how utterly monotonous it was. For the people on the ground. It was simple” and boring as heck. Looking for that code dates is the most dullest thing. Let's say I gave you a dictionary and sat you down at a desk with a pen and I asked you to circle every E in that dictionary. Go do that for the next six months and that's your job.
We had tons of projects, everything pretty much ground to a halt, like any type of new research into any type of telephony or anything. And we had to just go through all of the old code. And I always say that, gotta say, the Y2K was a million-dollar problem that morphed into a multi-billion-dollar industry, just because of the hysteria, the fear of it.
Mine was at Angel Fire. And I think the front, very top had all these flames, huge flames. Then I had all my theories and a bunch of links. And it was really a bare bones kind of thing.
I was expecting some friends and a couple of geeks to answer. Getting 100 emails in a day at that time was mind boggling. It was incredible. And I don't know if you remember seeing all the old websites when they had the hit counter at the bottom and then they had flowers and they were so ugly, ugly as hell. And so looking at that, I think, oh my God, you're watching in real time the hit counter. And my problem was I created the hit counter was only five digits and was getting to the 90,000s. I think I just created my own Y2K problem.
And that was my most exciting part because there's people that were cursing me to hell. I got a curse on me and my family forever, which is interesting because he cursed me and then nothing happened. So, I emailed him back. I said, I'm still waiting. What do I do? There's a curse. What happened? So, I did it a couple of times and he ghosted me. But yeah, there's a lot of those emails and all the, but really sad ones too, saying, 'I'm a retired person. If the power goes out and there's no food.' There are sadder, unbelievably sad ones that I got too, which is really awful. Then there's really angry, insane ones that were just scary as all hell.
So I was at home, my home office, knowing nothing was going to happen, you know, surrounded by computers, all my feeds to Ottawa, five or six different computers.
Oh, I open a beer, have a drink.
Two of their waitresses, they were just hysterical. They were so jittery that they were so happy. They had filled the car with all these gasoline tanks. They had food and canned goods, toilet paper. They'd taken out like $5,000 of cash. And their car was filled with all of this stuff. And I think I was a bit rude to them.
I don't know why I got cocky and that was my biggest mistake. And so that's when I think the Globe and Mail reached out to me. And that's when I wrote the full-page commentary in the National Globe and Mail on January 6, 2000. And their terrible headline, which they chose, was called, 'You Got Conned and I Told You So.' Ouch! Ouch!
And then I realized there's a lot of people in the room, and then they introduce themselves and there are a lot of the higher-ups. And they pretty much said, we read your Globe and Mail article, and that wasn't a good thing to do. And they didn't fire me at the time. But as I was talking, I had five computer systems monitors and I lost my feed. So I was kind of being terminated in real time. So that kind of hit my gut thinking, oh, this is bad.
Oh yeah, my entire world, my entire '90s was computers and it stopped dead. So after my contract was terminated, and then I went to work in my wife's restaurant. With no restaurant experience before, I was the worst waiter you could ever imagine, worst bartender, which is awful. I went from coding the mainframes of the government of Canada to saying, 'are you finished with your plate, sir?' So that was my drop. That was a really bad time. That was a very, very odd time.
That was the best thing to do. You just get the people hyped up and fix it, and then accept their money because nothing was going to happen on the year 2000. Even at the time, I knew they were going to win because this is the perfect scam. It's a win-win for them.