To ask what it was like to experience the change from 1999 to 2000?

[2020newstart]

Just that really. I was 10, so don't remember much. But oddly I do remember 9/11 all this talk about the new decade makes me wonder how it was like going from 1999 to 2000? If you're old enough to remember, how was the celebration? It must have been so weird writing the year 2000 on forms when you've been used to writing 19.. since you were born

It was brilliant. I was 26, there was a lot if worry over the millennium bug but the fireworks were wonderful best I've ever experienced and the happiness and euphoria were like I imagine the end of ww2 being. There were fireworks everywhere as far as the eye can see in all 360 degrees directions. To the horizon in all directions for what felt like hours. It was quite magical.

Ceefax did a greatest song of the millennium survey. Angels by Robbie Williams won. I remember thinking what a waste of a millennium if that's the greatest

@BrightYellowDaffodil
The reason why your toaster wasn't affected by the millennium bug was because a toaster does not need software to operate.

I was on call for work and worried that Y2K might cause chaos.

I didn’t have a mobile phone as they weren’t anything like as common back then but wanted to go out with friends. So I went and bought a mobile so work could get hold of me. £99 for a PAYG Philips c12....still have it in the kitchen drawer.

All the mobile phone networks went down at midnight as they couldn’t cope with all the calls/texts. Took over an hour to get the networks back up.

2000 that is.

@Taswama - The predicted y2k computer virus failed to materialise.

The y2k virus, which was very real, was fixed by many people working hard in order to ensure the potential effects were avoided.

There were daily mail style scaremongering articles that some people believed but anyone who read a proper article knew that the work was being done and that, while there might be one or two minor issues, it was certainly not going to be a daily mail style apocalypse outcome.

I was 28. We played Prince’s 1999 a lot!

Philadelphia, the electricity grid requires software to operate. There were concerns for all vital utilities because of this.

I remember my parents eating odd canned goods for months in early 2000 - they had believed in the Y2K thing and had been stockpiling bogoff items.

It was very overhyped but really no different from most New Year's Eve, apart from the idiotic stuff at the Dome (now the O2), where Her Majesty the Queen was forced into a rendition of Auld Lang Syne.

The Y2K thing caused a bit of panic and gave work for IT people.

I spent the evening in my local pub where I lived at the time.

I remember thinking how lucky we were to be experiencing the change in millennium - the first for 1000 years. I remember my mother and I polished off a bottle of pink champagne just after midnight - watching the cringey Tony Blair trying to link arms with the Queen was just embarrassing!

It was fine for me, I was fifty on new year's eve 1999 and very much enjoying life. I remember there was much hype about 'the millenium', bugs etc, and I lived not far from the dome but have still never been! All in all it was OK. Soon back to normal.

I was a teenager. My parents took us up to the Southbank in London to watch the fireworks and all the other celebrations. We watched the London Eye wheel start turning for the first time... which was of course an anticlimax as it goes so slowly. Everyone just kinda squinting at it going ‘...is that it?’

Parents hadn’t thought about food and we couldn’t find any anywhere. Some creep groped me as we were walking through a big crowd and I spent the rest of the night feeling really upset and being grumpy but not telling my parents why. Then we got stuck underground at Waterloo for ages waiting to be allowed onto a tube and it was like being on the lower decks on the Titanic.

All in all I wouldn’t recommend it

I was living abroad, 8 months pregnant watching NYE fireworks from my balcony in Switzerland. My exH had just spent the last 2 years working on projects for various international banks to ensure the Y2K bug didn’t crash all the banks’ systems. People were very afraid that some Y2K bugs had been missed and planes would fall out of the sky etc. Most companies took it seriously, which is why there wasn’t chaos.

I was a kid and the thing I remember most was discussing with my elder sister on NYE how we might wake up and there might be spaceships and other futuristic things buzzing around in the morning yes it was very anticlimactic when literally nothing happened!

@Lunde
Well remembered. All 'sensible' people had been stockpiling for months and were v anxious. Piles of food and loo roll stacked in livingrooms around the land.
I remember scoffing in a very young punky way about this and being roundly told off and disapproved of my recklessness for not believing in it, in a number of households.

On reflection it's formed my political opinions somewhat, the sense of rightousness I got when apocalypse didn't happen :)

Still 20 years later people who were too young to be involved are labouring under the impression that the Y2k bug was all a fuss about nothing.

It was pretty much like any other NYE, the run up was full of worries for the Y2K bugs and we had a load of battery powered lanterns in the cellar in case the lights went out so people could keep drinking priorities it was a good call because stopping serving for 10 minutes over midnight so the staff could see in the new millennium too nearly caused a riot so God only knows what carnage would have followed a black out. I went home to bed feeling rough (sober) and woke up with the flu virus that was doing the rounds. Mildly surprised that my mobile worked without issue for a mercy call to my mum on NYD. It was a bit of a let down but probably because I was ill but hadn't realised I was at that point.

We had a massive street party with a marquee up at the end of the culdesac and everyone bringing slow cookers filled with food. Booze was bought cheap at the local American airbase. It was a great night.
And working in IT we got massive bonuses for staying in our jobs through the millennium.

I worked for a supermarket IT department at the time and we had spent the years leading up to it going through code looking for 2-digit dates and building test systems on which we rolled the date forward over and over again, looking for and fixing code that fell over.

Being one of the less experienced members of the team I wasn't one of the people required to be in the office for the moment that 1999 rolled into 2000, but was due to take over at 8am on NYD, so I had a quiet night in on NYE. My team called in the morning to say I didn't need to go in, as there had just been a few minor bugs after midnight which they had already fixed. I got paid lucrative amounts of overtime even though I didn't end up working. I literally can't remember anything else about that time apart from huge relief that everything was OK, and not having to go into work on NYD!

I was very very pissed. And high. I used to keep going for 24 hours straight, back then. I didn't even make it to midnight last night!

Dd was only 2 so dh and I went to stay at my parents' house. My mum cooked a lovely meal with a dessert modelled on the Millenium dome! I don't remember fireworks at New Year before then but not sure if I am mistaken. Dd was terrified of them and so we had a lot of work trying to settle her that night.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/31/millennium-bug-face-fears-y2k-it-systems

It was very real.

I was only 8 and remember being really scared that the world was going to end. Was this something people were worrying about? I assume I must have heard people saying that or maybe it was hearing people worry about the bug that made me think it. I remember being really scared on the count down to the bells that we would all be dead when the clock hit midnight.

My DVD, video recorder and alarm clock did not stop working or combust at midnight. I was a little disappointed. DP and I did have to reset them all to a date in the 1970s though.

I finally got DP's friend to realise that his girlfriend was shallow, self-obsessed and horrible, and he got together with an utterly lovely woman (another friend) that night. As far as I know they're still together, unlike ExP and I, and have some wonderful children together.