I just stumbled upon an old email I sent out to my fellow geeks on 2/25/99. The industry was full-bore into Y2k refactoring of all systems to prevent potentially cataclysmic consequences (purportedly anyways). That’s all any of us talked about. The email was in regards to a conversation I had late at night with my wife MaryAnn. Here are the details from that evening’s events:
Late last night (Feb 25, 1999) I was working on my home PC with my wife MaryAnn sitting on the bed behind me. I was pretty involved with what I was doing because of the importance of the software that I was installing. MaryAnn was making out a grocery list, asking me the occasional question about it as I worked. Here's the dialogue:
MaryAnn: "Oh, by the way, do we still want a humidifier? When I was at Wal-Mart the other day, I saw a humidifier for $19.99."
Boyd: "A humidifier for 1999???? Since when did anyone care what year a humidifier was supposed to be used in??? What the heck is it.....Y2K compliant or something???? What, are we gonna have a world-wide crash of all pre-Y2k model humidifiers??? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of!"
Needless to say, MaryAnn looked at me with a "did you check your brain at the door?" look on her face. When I finally comprehended that she meant $19.99 and not the year 1999, we both had a good crack up for a good 10 minutes or so. I was crying.
I guess it's more obvious with some of us than with others that we've been spending way too much time slinging code.
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