On Call Y2K: A Festive Reflection on the Millennium Bug

Welcome to a special holiday edition of On Call, where we share stories from tech professionals about their experiences during the turn of the millennium—December 31, 1999. As the world braced for the Y2K “millennium bug,” these tales reveal the surprises, challenges, and oddities that occurred as the clock struck midnight.

Graham’s Y2K Experience at a US Cable Network

Graham worked for a major US telco's cable television division during Y2K. While midnight passed uneventfully, a few minutes later, the system manifested its first glitch.

"There was a problem with an old character generator that used an 80286 processor. The clock had stopped at midnight and the machine just froze."

Graham and his team had diligently prepared for Y2K, and when the affected hardware rebooted and resumed operation, everyone felt relief. However, a peculiar incident unfolded—someone shot a distribution amplifier during celebrations, knocking out cable service for neighbors.

"This caused some debate about whether to include the outage on the Y2K dashboard," Graham recounted, highlighting the unpredictable nature of the night.

Kerry’s Power Outage on Y2K Eve at a University

Kerry managed a fleet of Unix servers at a university. Despite instructions to shut down all computers before midnight, he chose to keep his systems running, confident that nothing major would happen.

"I believed the risk was minimal, and my users could continue working from home."

But as he left work and prepared for his New Year’s Eve celebration, disaster struck.

"At around 4 pm, all my electrical devices stopped working. I thought, ‘Is this the end of the world?’”

Spoiler alert—there was no apocalyptic chaos. Turns out, his house’s main fuse had blown due to excessive power usage.

"When I returned the following week, everything was back to normal except for a banner on a print job stating ‘Monday January 3, 1900,’" shared Kerry.

Users’ Troubles and Support Disputes

Throughout the Y2K changeover, several users faced issues with their systems:

A user insisted their screen was blank, only to admit it wasn’t.
A vendor’s concealed “fix” rendered a critical application unusable during business hours.
Network failures caused by careless users, including a prankster who took down the network.

The chaos sometimes stemmed from misunderstandings or mistakes, highlighting the human element in tech support challenges.

Rob’s Near-Miss from Australia

Rob, working at Sun Microsystems in the UK, recalls the tense moment just before midnight when the company’s early warning system kicked in.

"Our Australian office is 11 hours ahead. As the clock approached midnight, I got a call from my boss at Sun Australia, and then—silence."

The silence was alarming until the Australian team burst into laughter.

"It was just the Australian office laughing because everything was fine. That quick call made us all breathe easier," Rob explained, recalling the relief that followed.

Conclusion

The Y2K bug turned out to be less catastrophic than many feared, but these stories show the unpredictability and human stories behind the tech issues of the millennium change.

Happy holidays, and here’s to the ingenuity and resilience of those who kept systems running through one of tech history's most anticipated crises.