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

the milenium globe fiasco was what i can remember lots of.
big party
people making a huge deal of celebrating it and then the meh.
no problem in writing new date.at all
the millennium bug.

I remember being shocked by the body zone in the Millennium Dome. You walked in through a vage! It had a pierced hood and pubic lice. Far to trendy for a country girl ( and frankly pretty pointless as any sort of educational exhibit).

@doritosdip my house deposit was
courtesy of the Y2K ‘hoax’. And I’m not even a programmer!

I had just given birth prematurely and DC was in the neonatal unit. They pooed their nappy just before midnight, so when the new year arrived I had both arms in the incubator holes sorting their bum while a nurse was on the other side holding the tubes out of way. We shook hands through the incubator, then carried on.

Outside there were fireworks and cheering. Inside, the ward was very still and quiet, the lighting down low; various digital lights flashed on the apparatus displays, the only sounds from the equipment. I was the only parent there, with a couple of nurses on duty, while a dozen or so sick babies slept through it all. It was incredibly peaceful, and the celebrations outside seemed like a world away. I hope all these babies got to celebrate their 20th birthdays recently, like mine just did.

Recent article on millennium bug. Think it was more of a big scary deal in the USA, but I was only 18 at the time so might've missed it here.

I was also at the Manics millennium gig! Loads of fun. Apparently I've got the video of it somewhere...
Feel bloody old now as it seems like a lifetime ago.

Forgot to post link www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a30338692/y2k-panic/

We all woke up and went "YAY Its the year Two Zero Zero Zero? Twenty O O? Y2K? Shit what are we calling this year?"

Seems silly now but saying Two Thousand didn't come naturally after the Nineteens.

Many of the bars, restaurants, etc. in my city closed for the night instead of hosting millennium parties - hardly anyone wanted to work even for extra pay and they were worried that staff just wouldn’t turn up and that crowds would get out of control. So there were lots of house parties. We hosted one as we did most years back then. Most people I knew were going to some sort of party, even folks like my mum who normally stayed home on New Years Eve and went to bed early. We had a particularly good time at ours and afterwards climbed a local hill to watch the sunrise (not something I’ve done before or since!).

I took the kids to the millennium dome exhibition and we loved it!

Techie here too - tons of work done to make sure old systems would not crash. Why were people worried? cascade effect, think about those large domino sculptures where a whole model village collapses because one domino is pushed over. The way code used to be written it was really hard to pick up every single knock on effect. The IT industry did a fantastic job in the years leading up to it, having key staff on standby was the only sensible thing to do as there were so many unknowns.

Well, if I’m honest, the thing I remember most is when my friend, Sally, copped off with Doug at the pub and having to console a devastated Dan as he thought he was Sally’s boyfriend. And then all having hangovers in the morning. Sally and Dan are now married and as miserable as ever.

I'm not a programmer either- I was a university student who wasn't studying Computer Scirnce. Shame it's not so easy for uni students these days

Massive anti-climax, although all the fireworks were lovely in our town (don't remember NYE fireworks being a thing before that except in big cities maybe?).

Went to a house party but it was fairly quiet as loads of people had paid ridiculous amounts of money to be underwhelmed at various millennium "events".

Would have gone to our local pub but when no one took up their offer of £50 entry fee, they didn't even open. Twats.

Yes @lilmishap you’re right it did take a while to get used to saying 2000 and not twenty after saying nineteen . But now we’re back to twenty twenty!

I spent it on the banks of the Thames watching the fireworks. Memorable moments:
The fireworks themselves
Walking for miles to the tube.
Walking for miles to get a cab at the other end.
Some knob peeing on a girl I knew's foot in the crowd. Her BF shouting "WTF You're peeing on my GF foot"
Not memorable: Any glitches at all in computer systems.

Strikes me that all the people who think that because nothing went wrong there was never a problem in the first place are a bit like those who think childhood illnesses are nothing to worry about because they've never seen them, thanks to vaccination programmes.

Anyway. It was a NYE like any other for us. We did go to the Dome a few weeks later. Waste of money, for us as a family, and for the country as a whole. I wish Blair had done something more constructive with the money, e.g. plant lots of trees or pay for more renewable energy infrastructure. I was pretty cross about the waste of money at the time. Little did I know that compared with the bunch of incompetents we have now, Blair would come to seem one of our better PMs.

Rather underwhelming!

I was working in a pub that night so that was good fun, but otherwise it wasn't anything special.

Also -
The Y2K crisis did happen, but it “happened” in the preceding 5 or so years. I know because I worked a lot of overtime fixing bugs that would have ruined stock control and voice mail systems, I had friends working ridiculous hours in the banking system to get it all squared away before it caused problems.

Yeah it was like nothing much! I’m not a massive NY fan (I was drunk at a party though as I was a student ) and it was as much of a nothing as every new year. It’s a really arbitrary date anyway.

Didn’t really feel I’m like that much.

No different from any other year.

Well my friend worked in IT and got himself based in Sydney and said all along it was bollocks and nothing was going to happen 😂

Same as any other year. I do remember at the strike of midnight checking to see if the computer still worked due to the millennium bug. I was working so didn’t go out.

One of the very few years I actually did anything - but that was more because we went to the Manic Street Preachers concert than anything else

I suspect I got the date wrong when writing it - but I do every year

Also, didn't a lot of the London fireworks fail IIRC? So it was literally a damp squib. The Dome got panned but the London Eye (meant to be a temporary thing) has been a spectacular success although I think it was late.

It was underwhelming for me. I had DS1 who was 2, he was just getting over the awful flu from that winter and had fallen asleep at the party we were at on ExH’s lap. DS2 was 2 months old and asleep on my lap. We could hear the fireworks outside, first time we’d gone in for them big time, but were trapped on the sofa by our DC.

I’d worked a bit on the YK2 bug, but in 1995-97. All done and dusted by 2000.