On 02/10/2018 18:46, Larry Martell wrote:> I got 2 years of work solving the year 2000 issue.I don't think I've ever said this but I am very envious of all these people who had loads of work due to Y2K or were paid obscene amounts of money to tend systems over new year's eve/day. I was working for an ISP at the time and got none of this. Nothing happened. I don't even recall any special precautions being taken (apart from below). No over time, no obscene amounts of money. Admittedly there was a Y2K audit earlier in the year and so I presume that the consultants who did it got paid some obscene amounts of money. As I recall, they found very little except for one major system that we knew would need updating anyway. And I presume that the contractor who came in to fix the major system was rather well paid too. But no money for me. <sulk> Wrong job, wrong time, wrong place, I guess. Perhaps I should be pleased the actual 99/00 changeover went so smoothly afterall. -- Mark Rousell
On 03/10/2018 02:46, Mark Rousell wrote:> I don't think I've ever said this but [...]Oops, sorry. This was off-topic here. I actually thought this was a different mail list where it would have been on-topic. -- Mark Rousell
On Tue, Oct 2, 2018 at 9:46 PM Mark Rousell <mark.rousell at signal100.com> wrote:> > On 02/10/2018 18:46, Larry Martell wrote: > > I got 2 years of work solving the year 2000 issue. > > I don't think I've ever said this but I am very envious of all these > people who had loads of work due to Y2K or were paid obscene amounts of > money to tend systems over new year's eve/day. > > I was working for an ISP at the time and got none of this. Nothing > happened. I don't even recall any special precautions being taken (apart > from below). No over time, no obscene amounts of money. > > Admittedly there was a Y2K audit earlier in the year and so I presume > that the consultants who did it got paid some obscene amounts of money. > As I recall, they found very little except for one major system that we > knew would need updating anyway. And I presume that the contractor who > came in to fix the major system was rather well paid too. > > But no money for me. <sulk> Wrong job, wrong time, wrong place, I guess. > Perhaps I should be pleased the actual 99/00 changeover went so smoothly > afterall.It only went smoothly because there were people like me fixing the issues ;-) I worked on Wall St at the time, and I got a reputation for being able to find and fix Y2K issues. Really all that I did was grep the code bases for 2 digit years, and code that blindly added 1900 to them. There were a ton of those cases. It was not atypical for me to find 500-1000 or more such cases at each site. The fixes were easy but the testing took a while. I did this for banks, hedge funds, brokerages, bond traders, etc. At one place where I had fixed probably 700 cases, after Y2K came and went without an incident the CEO said "You made such a big deal about this, and then nothing happened."
On 03/10/2018 14:31, Larry Martell wrote:> > It only went smoothly because there were people like me fixing the issues ;-)In that case perhaps I should take some of the credit for writing code that never had a Y2K problem in the first place. ;-)> I worked on Wall St at the time, and I got a reputation for being able > to find and fix Y2K issues. Really all that I did was grep the code > bases for 2 digit years, and code that blindly added 1900 to them. > There were a ton of those cases. It was not atypical for me to find > 500-1000 or more such cases at each site. The fixes were easy but the > testing took a while. I did this for banks, hedge funds, brokerages, > bond traders, etc. > > At one place where I had fixed probably 700 cases, after Y2K came and > went without an incident the CEO said "You made such a big deal about > this, and then nothing happened."I think this shows that it was partly an industry-related issue. At the ISP I mentioned, the vast majority of the systems were Y2K-compliant and had ended up that way through the normal process of upgrades and patches over many years. (Well, apart from the single, major semi-proprietary system we knew about anyway). However, your employer (and your employer's industry) was very different: It clearly ran numerous disparate code bases, many developed in house, many of which were non-compliant and whose compliance was unknown until you found and fixed them. I was definitely in the wrong industry! -- Mark Rousell