Puh-LEEZE!!!

Let's see. Now I am supposed to panic because a proportion of the technologically dependent cannot use update packages, write their appointments in a notebook, or pay their bills on time while we change the date of Daylight Savings Time. Evidently, a number of these people can't do this stuff now.

I repeat the mantra I used from 1996 to 1999: Bullshit.

My favourite Y2K story is guaranteed to annoy geeks who took the panic seriously, or at least pretended to. You may recall that at one point, the panic-mongers assured us that traffic lights systems around the world were all going to fail. Somewhere amid the panic, it occurred to someone that centrally-controlled traffic light systems hadn't been around all that long, and that there must still be some engineers around who had designed them.

There were, of course. A flock of panic-stricken geeks descended on one of them to ask how many date states were programmed into traffic light systems: two, or four?

Well actually, he replied, we used seven.

Seven? Why seven? What were they for?

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Although I'm glued to the computer screen and use a cell phone, I retain enough of a Luddite streak to keep appointments and grocery lists on paper. I'm also fond of paying my bills a couple of days ahead of time, to guard against electronic snafus whilst getting most of the float.