25 Years Later:
How Y2K Destroyed My Life
June 1997
|
Canadian federal government employee magazine from 1999
|
1. Introduction
It’s nearing midnight on Friday, December 31, 1999, and I know nothing is going to happen in a few minutes.
I’m sitting alone, feet up, in my home office surrounded on three sides by humming computer monitors. I have an unopened beer waiting on my desk.
Since the mid-1990s, I’ve been employed by the Canadian federal government as a Computer Systems Analyst and am one of their first ever “tele-work” employees.
At this momentous moment in human history, I’ve spent the entire last day of 1999 monitoring computer news from around the world, waking up at 6am to witness Australia at their midnight flipping to the Year 2000 with no issues, then continuing through every time zone around the world towards us.
Every tiny computer blip made the news, but all were minor and most were not even connected to the year-date. Journalists, aching for a big story, were so sadly disappointed: no news is NOT good news. I find myself muttering “I told you so,” to myself.
My bosses, 3000 kilometres away in Ottawa at National Headquarters of Computer Systems of the Government of Canada, don’t yet know my Y2K secret.
I’m sitting alone, feet up, in my home office surrounded on three sides by humming computer monitors. I have an unopened beer waiting on my desk.
Since the mid-1990s, I’ve been employed by the Canadian federal government as a Computer Systems Analyst and am one of their first ever “tele-work” employees.
At this momentous moment in human history, I’ve spent the entire last day of 1999 monitoring computer news from around the world, waking up at 6am to witness Australia at their midnight flipping to the Year 2000 with no issues, then continuing through every time zone around the world towards us.
Every tiny computer blip made the news, but all were minor and most were not even connected to the year-date. Journalists, aching for a big story, were so sadly disappointed: no news is NOT good news. I find myself muttering “I told you so,” to myself.
My bosses, 3000 kilometres away in Ottawa at National Headquarters of Computer Systems of the Government of Canada, don’t yet know my Y2K secret.
2. Why I was fired in January 2000
This 3-minute video explains why. This excerpt is taken from the 'Surviving Y2K' podcast clip (see below.)
3. Podcast: Surviving Y2K
Dan Taberski created an entire season of podcasts on how Y2K personally affected a varied group of people. I was one of them. (dantaberski.com)
This 22-minute video is a compilation of my interview clips distilled from the 8-hour series.
4. Podcast: Canadaland
45-minute podcast produced by Canadaland. Click banner for more info, credits, and link to their podcast.
5. My infamous 1997-99 website
In 1997, I anonymously created this website at home in the evening while I spent my days supposedly fixing the "Y2K bug." It grew beyond any expectation.
Now, inexplicably, 24 years after losing control of it, the website in still on the internet:
angelfire.com/oh/justanumber/
angelfire.com/oh/justanumber/
6. The commentary that got me fired in January 2000
I took off my anonymous mask in the first week of January 2000 and did a public media blitz, the highlight being a nationwide newspaper commentary. Ya, I regret that.
7. The 1996 article that started my Y2K skepticism
"The Year 2000 as Racket and Ruse"
by Nicholas Zvegintzov
first published in American Programmer in 1996
Click for full article.
by Nicholas Zvegintzov
first published in American Programmer in 1996
Click for full article.
8. Feature article in The Globe and Mail, December 2019
BBC News website in July 1998 with a link to my website. I originally called it "Millennium Hysteria" but narrowed it down to "Year 2000 Computer Bug Hoax."
I was a fanatical fan of WIRED Magazine in the '90s until this ridiculous issue was published in April 1999. The all-black cover was titled LIGHTS OUT: Learning to Love Y2K.
What my office looked like at Y2K
|
|
I miss these old website hit counters