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Can you believe it has been 10 years since we did the big 1999/Y2K New Year's Eve?


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How did you celebrate 10 years ago?

 

Did anyone do anything weird like stockpile food?

 

I remember reading an article about a Amish store that sold equipment that didn't rely on electricity. They had to have a no returns policy, because they were afraid everyone would return the stuff they were buying on 1/1/00. One person called them asking about canning equipment. The Amish sales person asked what they were growing. "oh we're not growing anything." "well what do you plan to can?" "we're going to get vegetables from the store." "Why don't you just buy canned vegetables?" Silence.

 

Hard to believe its been 10 years already.

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I didn't do anything to prepare, but my parents, who spend their winters in Mexico, stayed home that year for Christmas, just in case. It turned out to be a good thing that they stayed home, since my maternal grandmother ended up having a heart attack, and had to have emergency quadruple bypass surgery on January 1, 2000.:001_huh:

 

Lori

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Is it really ten years already?! Wasn't that yesterday? (We've moved 3 times and two thousand miles since then and it still feels like yesterday.) For Y2K we filled up our camping water jugs, planned ahead so we wouldn't need to run to the store or bank and celebrated at home that night. We weren't afraid of Y2K but thought it better to be out of the way of any people using Y2K as an excuse to be crazy.

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We kept everything normal. The whole thing was stupid from the get go. Never really gave any of it a thought.:tongue_smilie:

 

We had a great party , but nothing unusual about it for Y2K. What a crazy time that was! I know lots of people who sold stuff, stockpiled, bought generators, flour grinders. It was crazy. We just went about our usual business.

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We did prepare. It was a no-brainer. Three small children were depending on me. How could I not have prepared?

 

Dh was in mid-level IT management at that time, and he and his team, who built 33 of 36 of Ryder's corporate-wide systems and the 3 large decision-support, sales, and financial databases from scratch (yeah, they were doing that back then) had been working the date rollover issues into their work from the mid-eighties on. B/c they had built most everything themselves, they knew exactly what their code would do. Many other companies, who didn't have the luxury of their own teams of developers were left "hoping" that everything would work. There were glitches, just nothing like the worldwide panic predicted....it's not as though the world didn't see this coming and have time to work on it.

 

Having lived through several natural disasters, namely Andrew, we thought it prudent to prepare. We bought canned goods, disposable paper goods, and propane to cook with on our camp stove. We also bought extra warm clothes. We printed paper copies of online financials. And yes, we bought extra TP...some thing a gal doesn't want to live without. :lol: We were careful not to prepare in a way that would not be part of our normal lifestyle.

 

The kicker was that I badly sliced my index finger NYE afternoon, so I spent my NYE til about 10pm watching fireworks from around the world in the ER waiting room, while the ER tended to the very ill and wackos. Apparently, hand-surgeons don't like to be pulled away from their festivities... :glare:

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Having always lived in places where severe bad weather was possible (hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, snow or ice storms), I have always lived life as prepared as possible for the loss of all utilities, forced sheltering at home, or mandatory evacuation. It always surprises me that people don't prepare, especially those who have others depending upon them. Like so many difficulties in life, the need to be prepared can come upon us in the blink of an eye and then, it's too late to gather the things our families will need. If swine flu had gotten seriously horrible and our government had to close things down for two weeks like they did in Mexico, could your family cope?

 

However, for Y2K I had only the barest minimum of preparations. We had just moved north from Florida to Ohio and I was living in temporary housing waiting for our new house to be rennovated enough to live in it.

 

These days even the government and the American Red Cross are recommending that people have at least three days to two weeks worth of basic supplies stored away. For me, preparedness is like an insurance policy or an umbrella. Nothing that I use daily, but something I know would be invaluable if I ever needed it.

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We had champagne from the gold rimmed glasses that dh's grandparents received as a wedding gift in like 1930. We had never used them before or since because I didn't want to break them. I guess I'll get them out for tomorrow night and we can use them once every ten years!

 

We prepared also. Dh was especially hoping Bank of America's computers would crash irreparably LOL.

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We prepared as well. My dh had me begin stockpiling canned foods/pantry items and bottled water about 6 mos before. We did this so it wouldn't strain our budget to add all these items at once. Also, we purchased a generator and installed a woodstove in our downstairs family room. If we were going to be without power or the ability to buy food for a few days or weeks, we wanted to be ready. Especially since it gets very cold here in January! Oh, we also had withdrawn some cash just in case the banks were affected.

 

What I learned from all that was that it is wise to have a well stocked pantry in case of emergency. Although nothing happened on 1/1/00, we have since needed that backup pantry and used our generator for other emergencies (ice storms/nor'easters). During the ice storm last year, we lost power for over a week and we couldn't get out of our neighborhood to get to a store because there were huge trees blocking the way so having food/water and minimal power was a life saver!

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I had just found out I was pregnant with dd. Had had the stomach flu followed by a horrible cold and couldn't take anything. I spent the night watching the great run of movies they had on and trying to stay still so I wouldn't cough so much:tongue_smilie:

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We didn't prepare because my mother (who is in computers) said it wasn't going to be anything like the media predicted. She was right - it did mess up some systems, but not many.

 

We were in IA and I don't remember if I did anything. Tax season was gearing up and the only thing I was preparing for was 60 hour weeks.

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I spent it in a hotel room b/c dh's cousin had just been dx'd with stage IV colon cancer. (He died 13 mos later) We took a few hundred dollars out of the bank and that was it.

 

Like pps, I do think that we should be more prepared for unexpected events, but we never seem to be. :tongue_smilie:

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We did minimum prep. We had some cash on hand, and I stocked up on canned veggies, fruit and rice.

 

I spent the evening at the office with DH. He works in computers, and at that time was working security for a MAJOR international Corp. in CIncinnati. He was on the phone all night with people from all over the world celebrating and downloading MacAfee or whoevers security/hacker/virus protection updates, which were coming out about every 5 minutes. We watched the ball drop on a small b&w tv. NONE of us wanted to miss what 'might happen' at times square.

 

Jeez, I just realized, 12 days later, his dad died. Wow, time flies.

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How did you celebrate 10 years ago?

 

Did anyone do anything weird like stockpile food?

 

I remember reading an article about a Amish store that sold equipment that didn't rely on electricity. They had to have a no returns policy, because they were afraid everyone would return the stuff they were buying on 1/1/00. One person called them asking about canning equipment. The Amish sales person asked what they were growing. "oh we're not growing anything." "well what do you plan to can?" "we're going to get vegetables from the store." "Why don't you just buy canned vegetables?" Silence.

 

Hard to believe its been 10 years already.

 

:lol::lol::lol: I love it!

 

Well I had just graduated college (98), and I was still single (but engaged)-- so I was on cloud nine. I wasn't panicking...

 

I think most of what I was thinking (praying) was "Lord please let us make it to our wedding day and honeymoon"... :lol:

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That was B.C. for us... Before Children. Actually, I was 6 mos. pregnant with my first, so I didn't really feel the need to prepare too much. I think we had some water, canned goods and cereal... the normal stuff. I remember that night Dh and I sat watching Disney movies until midnight & while talking about how our life was about to move into a new stage :001_wub:.

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I was working 3rd shift at the front desk of a hotel. Least eventful end-of-year ever!

 

ETA-

We didn't prepare because my mother (who is in computers) said it wasn't going to be anything like the media predicted. She was right - it did mess up some systems, but not many.

"They" spent so much time & money on fixing all the date issues that I wasn't worried that anything was going to happen. So I didn't do any preparing at all. It was silly when afterward everyone was complaining that all that money had been for nothing--duh--what did they think kept all the computers from crashing?;)

Edited by gardening momma
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We basically prepared like we would for a major winter storm - a little extra food, put up a few gallons of water, propane for the camp stove, did my laundry, etc. I didn't buy anything that we wouldn't ordinarily use. I expected that there might be minor interruptions of services, but did not think it warranted a worldwide panic.

 

However, I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth things went. As a computer professional, I had seen how little priority some information technology departments put on testing procedures (many shops were "load a little data and see what happens" instead of plan data for each condition that needed to be tested.) I expected things to be worse than they were.

 

On December 20, 1999, we moved into our house. The neighborhood had planned a New Years Eve block party where each house would host a decade in their garage. This being the Chicago area, they all had space heaters and hot drinks. Well, it was unseasonably warm, so much so that the kids were riding their bikes and the party was moved to the street. We did a "ball drop" at 8 for the younger kids and again at midnight for the rest of the adults. One family made ornaments for all the kids, including ours. It was a fantastic welcome to the neighborhood and we reminisced about that when we put up our tree. We went inside well before midnight as we had two small boys and were expecting our third. We watched the town fireworks from our front window. Dh had two glasses of champaign - one for him and one for me since I was pregnant. We toasted our new house and our 9 years since we got engaged (he proposed on New Years' Eve 1990) and our baby on the way.

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