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.

This came across my Facebook stream just now…

This.

IMO the constitution does confer a right to individual citizens to own their own firearms. IMO the right to own your own firearms is an eminently democratic right. I own a few myself, though I’m not an NRA member (have you Seen the people they endorse for public office??).   And every time I hear someone babbling that private gun ownership is a check on government power, that it was intended by the founders to prevent tyranny, I just want to scream.

The ballot box is our check on government power!  Without that America is a lost dream of liberty and justice for all and it won’t matter how many guns you own.  How can anyone seriously think a disorganized armed rebellion can possibly succeed against a government that has, never mind the shear force it can bring to bear on a situation, the vast array of intelligence gathering technology it can put to use. They weren’t shooting everyone right and left in East Germany during the cold war.  They didn’t need to.  They just watched…everyone.

It is pure absolute genius how the tyrannical right manipulates this issue so they can keep chipping away at access to the ballot box. Do you approve? Do you think they won’t come after your vote too? Do you think that when Those Awful Other People can’t vote anymore you’ll finally get your country back? Lenin had a way of describing people like you.