-

A sticker on the front of a beige minitower computer case reads: REMEMBER Turn the computer off before midnight on 12/31/99 ~ Best Buy Elron of The Lord Of The Rings says: I was there. 3,000 years ago…

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:17:39 +0100

Dgar

dgar@aus.social

show all 33 comments

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:22:57 +0100

bazkie 👩🏼‍💻 bitplanes 🎵

bazkie@beige.party

@dgar that was really something. planes were falling out of the sky, nukes where exploding in major cities worldwide. it was wild

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:27:05 +0100

Cafou

cafou@raru.re

@dgar
c'est toi Dgar

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:29:03 +0100

Dgar

dgar@aus.social

Ironically, it was the date formatting featured on the sticker that was the reason the sticker was printed in the first place.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:29:10 +0100

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

@Dgar 😂

Oh yes, we prepared for the ultimate battle against all evil in the world 😎

Our entire enterprise was on high alert, lots of colleagues were on active duty, everyone else was on standby service.

And then nothing happened, absolutely nothing 😂

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:30:17 +0100

Dgar

dgar@aus.social

@cafou 😝

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:31:35 +0100

Borris

BorrisInABox@fwoof.space

@dgar The sticker is not Y2K compliant. OH NO!

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:32:20 +0100

Cafou

cafou@raru.re

@dgar

T'inquiète je suis dans la même situation

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:32:29 +0100

Dgar

dgar@aus.social

@hans 🤣

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:33:07 +0100

Dgar

dgar@aus.social

@cafou 🤭🤗

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:36:33 +0100

Albert Hickey

winkleink@mastodon.social

@dgar A friend was working for a satellite company and he said it was August 1999 when the testing was done for air traffic control.

Also 9/9/99 was used as a marker in some inventory systems in the expiration date to mean no expiration date. Meaning after that date the tils did not let products be sold. Most were fixed before hand but I remember hearing of a retailer that had issued.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:42:14 +0100

Odradek

Odradek@chaos.social

@dgar so you are admitting that a "mm.dd.[y]" format is worse than the y2k ever was?

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:43:14 +0100

Dgar

dgar@aus.social

@Odradek right??! 😂

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:45:49 +0100

Séleste 🚲 🏳️‍⚧️

missbullitt@masto.bike

@dgar I was on duty that night so my computer was on with a big clock fullscreen. One second after midnigh I had full tests to run on the servers to check if everything was OK

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:51:07 +0100

katzenberger

katzenberger@tldr.nettime.org

@dgar

I tried to be there and fully aware, on the 12th.

Sadly, I could not figure out, for the life of mine, what the name of the 31st month was, and so the date just passed, without me noticing any details.

#ISO8601 #ISO8601ultras

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:51:42 +0100

katzenberger

katzenberger@tldr.nettime.org

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:54:42 +0100

Verđandi K Soldusty

Soldusty@beige.party

@dgar
Needs an updated sticker:
Never forget
All the computers that died on this date at midnight.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 13:00:02 +0100

katzenberger

katzenberger@tldr.nettime.org

@dgar

BTW:

☝️ For an average person, turning off the computer before midnight is a great idea on any given day, not just once per millennium.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 13:19:53 +0100

Fardels Bear

riggbeck@mastodon.social

@dgar

Somebody did forget to turn their computer off. Look at where we are now. It's the tech equivalent of stepping on a butterfly during your trip to the Jurassic.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 13:59:11 +0100

Tommi Nieminen

tomminieminen@mastodontti.fi

@dgar Yup, I stopped at the uni that night to take a leak and check if I still could boot up my PC.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:00:35 +0100

Petra van Cronenburg

NatureMC@mastodon.online

@dgar I remember Y2K too well! The day when Microsoft tried to take over the world by simple sabotage! 😂
For weeks, we lived like primeval humans in caves, afraid that all the aeroplanes would fall on our heads. Chats were scribbled on paper, paintings on the cave walls. 😎

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:10:42 +0100

Ian Robinson

ianRobinson@mastodon.social

@hans Because of the patching beforehand.

I had a colleague who did nothing but upgrade NetWare servers for about 6 months across Northern Ireland.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:26:58 +0100

Hans van Zijst

hans@social.woefdram.nl

@Ian Robinson I know, it's the prevention paradox.

But it was funny to see that absolutely nothing happened while many were expecting the world to explode 😃

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:47:07 +0100

Ian Robinson

ianRobinson@mastodon.social

@hans The mobile phone network went down in Belfast for about 10 minutes around midnight. But that was due to service load ☺️

I was on call for The Stormont Hotel. I called them when the mobile network recovered to check if their It systems were okay. They were. They were one of the NetWare systems patched in the run-up to the date change.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:58:21 +0100

cthellis@urusai.social

@dgar @mdmrn Haha, too true!

I missed my opportunity, sadly. We had family friends over for a simple NYE celebration that year, and I had MEANT to sneak away in time to get to the basement and pull the main power breaker right as midnight ticked over, as a prank, but hadn't been paying enough attention to the time until someone started chanting from 10s in the other room.

No way to sneak at that point. My life's purpose! Ruined! 😢

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 15:17:16 +0100

Kim Possible :kimoji_fire:

kimlockhartga@beige.party

@dgar remember the funny commercials after it was over? There was one that had a post-apocalyptic landscape, with crashed airplanes, and a loose giraffe running down the street for some reason.

My dad, who had been a C programmer, came out of retirement to make BANK fixing lines of code for big companies. Really a windfall for the older IBM guys.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:11:28 +0100 last edited: Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:12:42 +0100

Yes I'm Antifa. Why Aren't U?

MugsysRapSheet@mastodon.social

@dgar
As a tech, I kept telling everyone #Y2K was nonsense: "Computers aren't going to crash just b/c they get the date wrong." 🤦‍♂️

The giant Nothing-Burger that Y2K turned out to be made me look like a genius to my friends.

But I nearly got fired when I joked to my boss our first day back that we "were struck by Y2k." It was her worst fear. I couldn't believe how gullible people were. 🤦‍♂️

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:25:09 +0100

Ichinin :verified: :verified_paw: ✅🎯🙄

Ichinin@infosec.exchange

@dgar I spent the entire night drunk off my ass, playing StarCraft with a friend and it worked just fine.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:31:43 +0100

⁂Krafty⁂ #NoKings

tkk13909@fosstodon.org

@dgar didn't know they had computers in 99CE

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 16:39:57 +0100

[user@mint ~]$:BlinkingCursor:

user@mastodon.de

@dgar 😂😂😂😂😂😂

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 17:07:59 +0100

Bill Ricker

BRicker@fosstodon.org

@dgar 👍

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 17:08:10 +0100

feliz

feliz@norden.social

Sticker to remember you to prepare for the Year 2038 problem: “REMEMBER: Turn your computer off before 03:14:08 on 1/19/2038”.

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 17:58:51 +0100

DJ Purrperl

purrperl@noc.social

@dgar

Humblebrag:

Laugh all you want. I was literally on Wall Street, at JP Morgan, across the street from the NYSE. Prototyped a solution to the Y2K bug in 2 days. Delivered it in 3 days more. Took some teamwork to test it out, switching the system clocks to this millennium, pumping historical data to verify that calculations ran as before.

Told my wife we were going to stock up on food & supplies for a month. She said, "Aren't you working on the Y2K bug?" I said, "Yes, I know. That's why."

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 18:14:46 +0100

Krypt3ia

krypt3ia@infosec.exchange

@dgar I was standing next to him, at the foot of Mt. Doom.