I suppose in the grand scheme of things, Facebook Memories aren’t nearly as painful to read as the ones in my own blog…

This came across my BlueSky feed a few days before the New Year…

I dunno…was the NY Times ever really the paper of record they’ve always claimed to be? All the news that’s fit to print is it? Whatever.

One of my first contract software engineer jobs was for a utility company that had a timesheet/work measurement system that would have absolutely failed after December 31 1999 if it wasn’t fixed. It stored and sorted dates as YYMMDD strings, which means that 000101 (January 1, 2000) would sort Below 991231 (December 31, 1999) since its the smaller number. It would look to the system as though January 1, 2000 came Before December 31, 1999, not after. Time does not flow that way but, as they say, garbage in, garbage out.

Instead of fixing that system they moved to a new third party system that tied into their mobile data terminals and which of course was Y2K compliant. I wrote a bunch of updated Visual Basic stuff using Microsoft’s 32 bit date-time serial number functions. I worked on that migration years before Y2K. Lots of work had to be done years before they day the rollover happened.

People snarking about how Y2K was a non-event almost never understand the scope of the problem and how there were lots of systems that had to have the fix in Years before midnight December 31 1999. Things that had to calculate over the Y2K boundary years in advance. I read stories about retired COBOL programmers who came back to work on it and made some money fixing some big iron stuff. So the fixes were rolled out over a period of years beforehand.

But there was also a bunch of stuff that needed fixing Just for the millennium turnover. And it got fixed. I think the day after I only heard about a couple minor things like a bus token system that failed somewhere.

I’m surprised people are Still snarking about it. I shouldn’t be I suppose, given the last election. We fixed the problem, those of us in the trade. So everyone taking pleasure at snarking about that non-event…you’re welcome.

Excerpted from a previous blog post…

It’s almost not worth looking for that first love, or any of the other might have beens from back in the day. But I can see why gay people of my generation and before do it despite the risks. Something was taken from us when we were young, some deep and essential part of our humanity was cut out of our lives. So offhandedly. So thoughtlessly. So very righteously. So other people could make their stepping stones to heaven out of the broken pieces of our hearts. It is only natural that we try to reclaim it. All the vocalizing about politics and discrimination in jobs and security in the workplace and in our homes and on the streets and even the right to marry, flows like a bottomless sorrow from the one central fact of our struggle: we were not allowed to love.

Not even to imagine it. Others got the happily ever after. We got the gutter. Other kids got Prom Night, school dances, boy meets girl stories, love songs on the radio, in books and magazines. We got every filthy lie that could be imagined hurled at us, at our deepest most tender feelings of love and desire and hope, and taught to believe them. The part of our lives that makes everything worthwhile was reduced to dirty jokes and sneering obscenities, so they could point at us and call us broken.

It’s only natural now, so many years after Stonewall, now that we can marry, now that we can be people, that we try to reclaim the parts of our lives we lost to that mindless hate. Even if it means getting cut even more deeply. I don’t think any of us can stop ourselves. We’ve won so many of the battles we never thought we’d live to see won. There is hope. But beneath it, for so many of our generation there is a bottomless sadness that never goes away. Never.

I saw in my server logs that someone several weeks ago went looking through my older blog posts and came across this one and I revisited it. There’s a nugget of truth in there about me that I don’t think anyone who knows me gets, and I’m all alone with that too.

So now I’m two and a half decades past the year 2000. You should have seen what the future looked like when I was a 1960s teenage boy.

I began the year 2024 two years fully retired, vagueing out on life and unable to be creative about anything.That first year of retirement was pretty good. But I began to spiral inward after that. 2024 began to resemble a bad period of my life back in my twenties when I just sat all night in my bedroom listening to music and zoning out. I couldn’t draw, my photographic eye would not open. The difference between then and now is I’m in my 70s and a heart patient, and I’ve given up finally on ever having a boyfriend, let alone a spouse. It never happened and never will now. So once again I was just coasting along spiraling inward.

But then I ended the year back at Space Telescope working part time. That’s perked me up somewhat, but the initial thrill of being back among people and places I knew for decades is wearing off, and while I still love this job and the workplace I’m still that lost empty soul when I’m back on my own time. I took a train ride to Oceano (I love train rides), bought a small sketchbook here to try and do something, anything, to get that creative spark going again, even if it’s just practicing drawing hands, but it’s excruciatingly hard. I brought the Leica M3 along (it’s good for travelling light) and I think I managed to get a few good shots while I was here, so my photographic eye has opened up a tad. I have the office laptop with me and work to do that I enjoy because I don’t yet have enough leave time banked I can just take the holiday weeks off completely.

I’m 71. How did I make it this far without someone to love and be loved by. I feel like I died years ago and I just never noticed it so I’m still going through the motions of a life. I’m in reasonably good health. I just got a good review from my cardiologist, who would probably disapprove of the Cuban cigar I smoked tonight, let alone my intake at Old Juan’s. I should count my blessings, but I feel so empty. And given the situation here in the United (sic) States I am not looking forward to 2025. I can’t bring myself to wish anyone a happy new year considering, though I’ve wished it back whenever someone passing by has wished it me. Sorry. It just seems unreasonably optimistic.

Soon I’ll be back in my little Baltimore rowhouse, my solitary life, and a job I love for as long as the Republicans will let NASA have a budget for space telescopes, or they get Executive Order 10540 restored, and someone comes to my desk and tells me I can no longer legally work for a NASA contractor. Drifting along through the rest of my life is probably for the best. Paying attention to the world around me is only going to make me unhappy, which I really don’t need.

Happy As Best You Can Manage New Year!