[Memories] Y2K
All this talk about the new year, decades, and whatnot have conjured up memories of past new years, and in particular, New Years Eve, 1999.
I was a computer programming student at a community college, still living with my dad. I wasn't involved with my ex anymore but we'd see each other here and there and occasionally fuck around. And I worked the bookkeeping/customer service counter at a grocery store.
The day was already bizarre, as said ex insisted, after lunch, on taking me to a gun shoppe, which had a range out back. He was so paranoid about looting and riots that he felt he needed ammunition and other supplies. I just stood in the middle of the store, trying to ignore all the gunshots that resonated through the place, wondering if the place was always so busy, or if people indeed were that scared of the inevitable DOOM that we would face.
But surely you remember that, right? How all of the computers would stop, finances would be in shambles, planes would fall out of the sky, yadda yadda fap fap. Everyone bought into it; even I had my concerns -- I mean, hell, people were going my school just to learn COBOL to fight Y2K, and really, isn't that one of the signs of an upcoming apocalypse? :: laugh ::
My ex drove me to work, and there were people buying tons of canned supplies, bottled water, etc. How we kept anything that wasn't perishable on the shelf, I don't know, but there were certain people that just assumed that they would have to stay in bunkers or something for the next few months. As it got closer to closing time, my coworker Jamie turned the phone onto speaker, and we could hear a regional office.
"Why did you do that??"
"It says what we're supposed to do this in this memo," she replied. "That way, if we're getting looted they can hear us."
"... O_o"
We did our cheque and cash deposits, counted the safe down, and locked the store up. Nothing happened. Not a thing.
No riots. No fires. No looters. No crazy Chinese women crashing through out window in their cars like Christmas. Nothing.
It felt all anticlimatic. I went to my friend Bob's house, and he showed me a Japanese Castlevania game on the PlayStation, and that was about it. It made me feel kind of silly to even buy into the whole "DOOM" spiel, and for the next couple of months it became laughable as the media insisted that there was still a chance of somthing cataclysmic happening.
I was a computer programming student at a community college, still living with my dad. I wasn't involved with my ex anymore but we'd see each other here and there and occasionally fuck around. And I worked the bookkeeping/customer service counter at a grocery store.
The day was already bizarre, as said ex insisted, after lunch, on taking me to a gun shoppe, which had a range out back. He was so paranoid about looting and riots that he felt he needed ammunition and other supplies. I just stood in the middle of the store, trying to ignore all the gunshots that resonated through the place, wondering if the place was always so busy, or if people indeed were that scared of the inevitable DOOM that we would face.
But surely you remember that, right? How all of the computers would stop, finances would be in shambles, planes would fall out of the sky, yadda yadda fap fap. Everyone bought into it; even I had my concerns -- I mean, hell, people were going my school just to learn COBOL to fight Y2K, and really, isn't that one of the signs of an upcoming apocalypse? :: laugh ::
My ex drove me to work, and there were people buying tons of canned supplies, bottled water, etc. How we kept anything that wasn't perishable on the shelf, I don't know, but there were certain people that just assumed that they would have to stay in bunkers or something for the next few months. As it got closer to closing time, my coworker Jamie turned the phone onto speaker, and we could hear a regional office.
"Why did you do that??"
"It says what we're supposed to do this in this memo," she replied. "That way, if we're getting looted they can hear us."
"... O_o"
We did our cheque and cash deposits, counted the safe down, and locked the store up. Nothing happened. Not a thing.
No riots. No fires. No looters. No crazy Chinese women crashing through out window in their cars like Christmas. Nothing.
It felt all anticlimatic. I went to my friend Bob's house, and he showed me a Japanese Castlevania game on the PlayStation, and that was about it. It made me feel kind of silly to even buy into the whole "DOOM" spiel, and for the next couple of months it became laughable as the media insisted that there was still a chance of somthing cataclysmic happening.