Robert Hilliard's [Website of the World] Year 2000 Date Crisis Humor Page

If you have a
suggestion or comment,
feel free to send
me e-mail.

Robert Hilliard's Website of the World is featured on such websites as:
ZDNet
Microsoft's MSNBC Technology
miningco.com Orlando, FL.
CMPNet NetGuide
America Online
The Miami Herald
The Dallas Morning News
Peter deJager's Year 2000
BugNet
GeoCities
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Robert Hilliard's Website of the World has been featured in the following publications:
Web Guide Monthly, (Sept. 1998 Issue)
Rochester Engineer, Rochester Engineering Society, (Oct. 1998)
IFMA Notes, International Facility Management Association, (Sept. 1998)

This website is best experienced with Microsoft Explorer 4.0 (or higher) or Netscape Communicator 4.04 (or higher) at 800X600 display size. Some pages are formatted in frames.

This site

Notice:
The information and material contained on this page are provided "as-is" without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, including without limitation, any warranty concerning the accuracy, adequacy, or completeness of such information or material or the results to be obtained from using such information or material. Robert E. Hilliard will not be liable for any claims attributable to any errors, omissions, or other inaccuracies in the information or material contained on this page. And in no event shall Robert E. Hilliard be liable for direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages arising out of the use of such information or material.

About this Website

The following is Humor
...with a Y2K twist.

(If any of this is copyrighted, let me know
and credit will be given.)

Will Your PC Go Kablooey On The Millennium Midnight?
By Robert E. Hilliard

(To the tune of "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavor on the Bedpost Over Night?"
with apologies to Lonnie Donegan)

Oh me, oh my, oh you.
Whatever shall I do?
Hallelujah,
The question is peculiar.
I'd give a lot of dough,
if only I could know,
the answer to my question, is it yes or is it no.
Will your PC go kablooey on the millennium midnight?
When your conscience says "Go test it", do you run and hide in fright?
And you find it's not compliant and you heave it out of sight?
Will your PC go kablooey on the millennium midnight?

My computer is not quite clear,
As to this date the 2000 year.
Will I loose my data,
The fix is still in beta.
I've read the scary stories,
About the effect of just two zeros.
And if I test my PC, what a hero I would be.
Will…your…PC go kablooey on the millennium midnight?
When your conscience says "Go test it", do you run and hide in fright?
And you find it's not compliant and you heave it out of sight?
Will your PC go kablooey on the millennium midnight?

Now the world rises,
to fix Y2K's surprises.
A hole for me is dug,
All due to this millennium bug.
I voice my discontent,
Unto this nations President
upon the burning question which has swept the continent:
If my PC is not compliant, do I buy a cave or a tent?
Boom, boom!
Will your PC go kablooey on the millennium midnight?
When your conscience says "Go test it", do you run and hide in fright?
And you find it's not compliant and you heave it out of sight?
Will your PC go kablooey on the millennium midnight?

On the millennium mid...
I need ya' and I want ya' and I gotta bootup now.
I've gotta test my PC, but I'm afraid I don't know how.
On the millennium mid...
A BIOS is a BIOS, and a byte is a byte;
I'd execute a program, but it's after midnight.
On the millennium midnight!

Twas the Night Before 2000

'Twas the night before 2000 and all through the tower, applications were failing, more by the hour.
The programs were running on the mainframe with care, in hope that the millennium bug was not there.
The programmers were seated in front of their PC's, while visions of blank paychecks danced in their heads.
With Amy in her office and I at my desk, we had just settled down for a night with no rest.
When up on my screen there arose such a ding, I sprang from my chair screaming .. "I didn't touch a thing!"
Away from my computer I ran real quick, tore open the drawer and picked up a stick.
I glared at the PC, evil and mean, then realized ... it's just a machine.
What to my wondering eyes should I see, but a miniature window, and a message for me.
With tired eyes, I gave a glance, only hours left .. we don't have a chance!
More rapid than eagles the languages fell, and we whistled, and shouted, and called with a yell;
"Now COBOL! now, NATURAL, Batch and On-Line! Oh, FORTRAN! Oh SAS! Now CHORE went flat-line!
From the front of my face, to the face of the wall, now bash away! bash away! bash away all!
As the team gathered together for one last try, the word from management came... "Fix it or die!"
So they sat in their chairs, in the up-right position, with a desk full of work, and a nasty disposition!
And then, in a dinging, I heard the speaker mention, "Attention, the building, Attention."
As he tried to speak the next word, the crashing of the mainframe is all we heard.
The programs were a mess, from start to end. My screen was tarnished with an ugly abend.
The team assembled, into one huge pack, we looked like hungry wolves, ready to attack.
Our eyes - how they twinkled! Our fingers typed with a clank. Fix Payroll we said, because our paychecks are blank!
The sweat on my face was falling like rain, while the coding of COBOL drove me insane!
The stump of a pencil I held tight in my hand, I chewed nervously, hoping I would not get canned!
I coded some Windows and a Bridge too, that took a program from version one to two.
I was tired, weak, and in a delusion state, and I laughed when I saw it, in spite of fate.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, soon let me know that bug was not dead!
It spoke not a word, but went straight to work, crashing the remaining programs, then turned with a jerk.
I placed the cursor next to the bug, pressed the delete key to remove the little thug.
But I heard it exclaim, as I erased the line.....
"Happy Millennium for now, 'cause I'll return in 9999!"

Two Digits for a Date
(to the tune of "Gilligan's Island," more or less)

Author Unknown

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
Of the doom that is our fate.
That started when programmers used
Two digits for a date.
Two digits for a date.

Main memory was smaller then;
Hard disks were smaller, too.
"Four digits are extravagant,
So let's get by with two.
So let's get by with two."

"This works through 1999,"
The programmers did say.
"Unless we rewrite before that
It all will go away.
It all will go away."

But Management had not a clue:
"It works fine now, you bet!
A rewrite is a straight expense;
We won't do it just yet.
We won't do it just yet."

Now when 2000 rolls around
It all goes straight to @#%&,
For zero's less than ninety-nine,
As anyone can tell.
As anyone can tell.

The mail won't bring your pension check
It won't be sent to you
When you're no longer sixty-eight,
But minus thirty-two.
But minus thirty-two.

The problems we're about to face
Are frightening, for sure.
And reading every line of code's
The only certain cure.
The only certain cure.

(key change, big finish)

There's not much time,
There's too much code.
(And Cobol-coders, few)
When the century is finished with,
We may be finished, too.
We may be finished, too.

Eight thousand years from now I hope
That things weren't left too late,
And people aren't then lamenting
Four digits for a date.
Four digits for a date.

Y2K CONVERSION by Jeffrey A. Rice
To the tune of "HOTEL CALIFORNIA", with apologies to The Eagles.

In a lofty corporation, cool chill up my spine, reading estimations, of a buck or more per line.
Up ahead in the future, though the budget's been tight, we must convert the programs, where legacy code saved 2 bytes.
Desperately needing people, I met the contractor from Hell, and I was thinking to myself, "He could overcharge us and do quite well."
Then we surveyed the system, and it ruined my day. I get E-mail more and more; they would mostly say:
"Welcome to the Y2K conversion. Every companies fate, to find an invalid date.
Welcome to the Y2K Conversion. Every program we fear, contains a 2 digit year."
Our annual budget got twisted. We don't have MVS/ESA. We got a bunch of slow programs, that run all day.
As they talk in the meetings, Some tempers hot, Some things are remembered. Most things are forgot.
So I call up the vendor, "Please fix our online". He says "We won't be compliant here, till 1999."
And still our clients are calling, from far away. Wake me up in the middle of the night just to hear them say:
"Welcome to the Y2K conversion. Every companies fate, to find an invalid date.
Welcome to the Y2K Conversion. Every program we fear, contains a 2 digit year."
I don't manage Systems, They wouldn't take my advice. We are all just prisoners here, of a slow device.
To complicate our problems, our analysts look like fools. Instead of careful research, they argue leap year rules.
One thing to remember, when your programmers want paid more, They can get a big offer, from that high tech firm next door.
"Good Lord!" said our founder, "Am I to perceive, all this work with no improvements? This I can't believe!"

Code On By Jeffrey A. Rice
To the tune of "Dream On" with apologies to Aerosmith

Every time I program I fear all these lines and that date getting nearer It never ends I run tests, I fix abends Isn't that the way everybody's got to get through Y2K
Yeah, I know nobody knows the results of those zeros I know no one's laughin' when the abject terror, sets in
Half our lib's have loads without source code Seems quite clear the team's gone to crunch mode You know it's true All this work comes down to you
Scan for the day, scan for the year Scan for the month, and 19's my dear Scan with me, if it's just for today Maybe tomorrow recruiter might take you away
Yeah, Scan for the day, scan for the year Scan for the month, and 19's my dear Scan with me, if it's just for today Maybe tomorrow recruiter might take you away
Code On Code On Code On Code until compliance come true Code On Code On Code On Code until compliance comes through Code On Code On Code On
Code On Code On Code On Code On
Scan for the day, scan for the year Scan for the month, and 19's my dear Scan with me, if it's just for today Maybe tomorrow recruiter might take you away Scan for the day, scan for the year Scan for the month, and 19's my dear Scan with me, if it's just for today Maybe tomorrow recruiter might take you away.....

The Top 15 Unforeseen Consequences of the "Millennium Bug"

15. IRS demands a hundred years of interest from stunned taxpayers.

14. "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" song gets stuck in infinite loop.

13. At the stroke of midnight, Windows 99 turns back into DOS 1.0, the Pentium V turns back into an 8088, and the Handsome User is left holding a beautiful glass mouse.

12. Internet Movie Database now lists "1901: A Space Odyssey"

11. Residents of Indiana have to figure out if they're off by 999 years, 364 days and 23 hours, or 1000 years and one hour.

10. Bob Dole's age erroneously listed with only 2 digits.

9. Mel Brooks's "2000 year old man" skit stops being funny.... oops, too late!

8. Sales of Coca Cola jumps drastically after original cocaine-laden formula becomes legal again.

7. Software engineers point out that since computers think it's almost 1900, we technically have to "party like it's 1899," which, frankly, doesn't seem like much fun.

6. Microsoft declares the year 1900 to be the new standard of the "Gatesian" calendar.

5. Jesus shows up late for His second coming, blames it on COBOL programmers.

4. Computers temporarily fooled into thinking Strom Thurmond is only 103.

3. First Top 5 List of the year? "Reasons No One Would Ever Assassinate President McKinley"

2. Using a computerized adoption service, Michael Jackson mistakenly takes home some octogenarians.

and the Number 1 Unforeseen Consequence of the "Millennium Bug"...
1. Unexpected demand for COBOL programmers results in severe understaffing of fast-food restaurants.

33 Reasons Why You Haven't Started Your Conversion Plans Yet

1. You honestly believe the year 2000 isn't a leap year
2. You're getting into Real Estate.
3. You like midnight phone calls from irate CEO's.
4. You want to surprise your stockholders.
5. You believe a crisis is good for organizations. It brings focus to your work and builds good, strong, team spirit.
6. You think the problem is exaggerated.
7. You've got lots of time, it's only 1997.
8. It's a hardware problem.
9. Your Mission Critical Systems aren't.
10. The problem doesn't affect your applications.
11. It's not a problem....it's a 'challenge'.
12. You're afraid to deliver the news to your management.
13. You haven't been able to find your management.
14. You're waiting to see what happens before you react.
15. You believe that if you ignore the problem, it'll go away.
16. You'd rather drink coffee, than champagne on New Year's Eve.
17. You like paying COBOL programmers $240K/annum to implement10 year projects in an afternoon.
18. You believe that a year has 365 working days.
19. You enjoyed your grandparent's stories about the Great Depression and would like to experience them for yourself.
20. You're focused on IS strategies ... not day to day support issues
21. You're not the head of IS you only work here.
22. You are the head of IS and your people assure you there's no problem.
23. You wrote the legacy systems affected and are reluctant to admit the problem exists.
24. When the time comes you'll pay someone else to solve it for you.
25. You're already up to your neck in alligators.
26. You can afford to be without your Account Receivables for a year or two.
27. You're waiting for everyone else to go first.
28. The excitement of watching your systems fail is better than Bungee Jumping without a cord.
29. You're doing the monkey impersonation ... Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil.
30. You believe maintenance is for wimps, real managers create new systems.
31. You're scheduled to start working on this in 1999.
32. You bought a magic bullet from a software salesperson.
33. You believe this is all a plot by consultants to create a problem where none exists.

The following is Humor...with a Y2K twist.

The following is Humor
...with a Y2K twist.