Y2K

At the moment the year 2000 rolled around, computer clocks and software the world over were supposed to go haywire (a quaint term we oldsters used to utter in the last millennium). They would all be victims of the Millennium Bug, the name given to the problem caused by hardware and software which use only the last two digits of the year rather than all four. As the clock struck Midnight on December 31, 1999, essential computer systems would tick over from 99 to 00 making some of them interpret the year as 1900 and plunging the world into chaos, or so it was thought.

As January 1, 2000 approached, apprehension increased, along with considerable confusion: Some people phoned hospitals saying that they feared they were infected with the millennium bug ! These were no doubt the same individuals who in the mid-1960s called the U.S. Coast Guard to report four individuals stranded in a place called Gilligan s Island and demanded that they be rescued.

As the Moment of Doom approached, some people began hurridly stockpiling canned goods and toilet paper to get them through the impending disaster that was allegedly approaching.

Even Yours Truly was ready in the old bunker with several hundred bottles of Pepsi (which I normally keep on hand anyway), cans of Campbell s Chunky Soup, a large aging plastic canister of Brylcreem I had brought back from London in 1995 (I figured I might as well slick my hair down in case there was a...