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

I was 18 and in Sydney and it was a great night but nothing special as such to any other good night out!

It was no different to most New Years Eve but with a slight sense of unease due to rumours of the Millennium Bug, but no planes fell out of the sky etc.

Don’t know if it’s the same for everyone but before then you could go from pub to pub on NYE. The millennium was the point where everywhere became ticketed. We started having parties at homes then because we didn’t want to be stuck somewhere that was rubbish and be unable to get in anywhere else.

What @NoncePieforSanta said on the bottom of P4.
Although techy people may well have been working on it for many months or years, there was still a HUGE nervousness. It wasn't just the press hyping things up. I know several people who were 'on call' who weren't IT, but in Council jobs and were ready to respond to emergencies. Did then all seem a bit flat when all the work paid off and everything just ticked over with no major 'blips'.
Overwhelmingly people I knew went to house parties, as the 'venues' over hyped and overpriced their parties. It was the start of the 'new' habit of setting off fireworks at NYE, which hadn't happened before.

We had a tiny baby and we all had flu including the baby. So it's all a blur of delirium and worry and dozing in bed seeing the fireworks on the tv at I think practically every time zone til it reached ours.

It wasn't how I'd envisioned it.

I was 20 and I remember me and my boyfriend both had flu. It was weird at first writing 2000 and I remember it was weird that when we said 'at the turn of the century' or in the 20s we meant 1900 and 1920s but now there was going to be a new 'turn of the century' and '20s' etc. I remember all the panic about how computers would cope and about everything shutting down because of it. But in the end it was fine.

I was 22, had just done my finals and was working in a café, so the whole year was a massive anticlimax for me. Why I didn't just get a crap job straight out of school and skip the four skint and stressful years of university, I don't know.

So NYE was my first and last NYE spent going out. It was just like a normal Saturday night in Oxford with people on the pavements fighting and puking. The pubs were emptier than usual. Had a row with ex DH over him making advances to an uninterested female friend of his, and he got arrested for drunk and disorderly.

I never knew what the millenium bug was about. It wasn't easy to follow current events before Google: it was like trying to follow the plot of a very complicated serial when you had missed most of the episodes and didn't know who any of the characters were. I think I was more than usually clueless at this time because of the tunnel vision brought on by Finals.

I do remember the song about growing up in the year 2000 because that had been pretty much the soundtrack to freshers week years before. By 1999 I wasn't following pop music any more. When I was trying to revise I was listening to the Poulenc song Tu vois le feu du soir on a loop, which I had forgotten until it cropped up in my YT feed recently. at Angels by Robbie Williams being voted the best song of the millenium!

As dull as any New YeaR'S eVE. Ooh, except the telly was MASSIVELY more dull - The BBC1 whole day ran something like this in the Radio Times:

12pm: 12 hours to go. We visit (insert name of place 12 hours ahead) to see their NYE celebrations.
1pm: 11 hours to go. We visit...(you've got the idea already, haven't you?)

I could not believe it.

I wish those who have smugly posted about the ignorance about the YK2 bug would poke it.
It was constant doom and gloom from every media source. So it was an anti climax when nothing went wron. I wonder if there was any link between your massive pay hikes and bonuses and the constant hype? Weren’t advertising the fact you’d all got it sorted back then were you.

I wish those who have smugly posted about the ignorance about the YK2 bug would poke it.

Much the same that I wish for people bleating on about how it didn't happen.

Weren’t advertising the fact you’d all got it sorted back then were you.

Because, as has been clearly stated, no one knew it had been avoided until the actual live situation of the date changing. 🙄

Jeez @leflic ! You actually wanted everything to go wrong????

And I remember the Millenium Dome - it was so incredibly crowded it was hard to see much of it. All I remember is seeing something about how the human body worked and having to eat lunch standing up as there was nowhere to sit. I remember thinking what a waste it was only open for a year. Interesting seeing a lot of others had the flu - I didn't realise it was everywhere.

DH and I had flu (although we were over the worst of it) along with many of our friends. We dragged ourselves out but by midnight were both exhausted drinking hot chocolate in a pub. We arrived home shortly afterwards. We had planned to celebrate the New Year with a bottle of champagne on the beach watching the fireworks.

I made a month’s salary in one weekend for two days’ work and two days on call in case the Millennium bug hit. New Year’s Eve was exactly the same as all the other uneventful NYEs.

I was at Ally Pally. It was supposed to be catered. Apparently this meant steak sandwiches so I had lettuce and bread (vegetarian) and had given up alcohol very early as knew with nothing to soak it up I would be ratarsed and ill. The 'river of fire' that we'd all gathered to watch from on high was pathetic. That was the last NYE I went out!

I'd just turned 18 and spent the evening vomiting Rose wine - not a good look...

Because, as has been clearly stated, no one knew it had been avoided until the actual live situation of the date changing. 🙄

So people aren’t been stupid for being surprised nothing went wrong then.

Was completely slaughtered at a crap party!
Def made the wrong choice that night...

Y2K did happen. Tech experts worked really hard to ensure the electronics kept functioning. And actually hospitals did have issues with computers failing to comprehend the new dates on patient records, transport timetables got all confused... It was a thing.

Just want to say this thread has really opened my eyes to the work put behind the Y2K bug. I feel very ignorant for having thought it was a fuss over nothing and I'm sorry to those who clearly worked like maniacs so that didn't happen. I really think this needs to be more common knowledge.

I was on duty in a police control room, with three of us assigned to one operational computer workstation, in order to manage an unprecedented demand, should it arise. As mentioned previously, despite much effort to prepare for Y2K, it was simply unknown whether anything would go wrong and we had a large operational order to follow to manage the worst case scenario.

It was the quietest shift any of us had ever worked and, when the chief constable visited to see how we were coping, we struggled to think of anything worth mentioning in terms of incident management as absolutely nothing had happened.

Once our shift was over at 0200, we all went to the station club room, drank copious amounts of rum and celebrated in style. I received a text from a colleague I'd just started seeing and we arranged to meet up the next day.

We celebrate 19 years of marriage this year and have a fabulous 18 year old DC. So it truly was the start of a new era for us. The station closed down and was sold off years ago, along with the memories and mishaps the club room had witnessed.

Don’t know if it’s the same for everyone but before then you could go from pub to pub on NYE
Pubs started being ticketed earlier than that where I lived. I remember a New Year’s Eve in 1993 that was ticketed and I don’t think it was that uncommon although not all pubs did it.

I had a cracking night out in Edinburgh - ahhh the good old days before Edinburgh Hogmanay was taken over by a soul sucking corporate body

Here is the millennium bug actually happening.

twitter.com/basiccomic/status/1099332074983641094?s=21

I was with 3 fellow IT people at a dinner party. None of us worked on anything critical but we had all done a lot of checking and fixing of dates. I think we ranged from 75% to 100% confidence everything had been fixed. I'd still made sure I had a torch with me though