Weird Wednesday: Why To? Que?
Twenty-five years ago, you may have emerged from your backyard bunker and thought, “Well, that was a waste of money.” Then you may have looked back inside at the shelves and thought, “That’s a heck of a lot of dried beans.”
You may not even remember the problem if you were born in 2000 or later, so briefly:
On January 1st, 2000, the world was going to explode because the stupid computers would not recognize the digits “00” as a valid year (only two digits were used to denote the year in computer programs to save on memory). It was feared that bank would lose all records of their money, planes would fall out of the sky, nuclear weapons would launch, and worst of all, the Hostess Twinkie line would grind to a halt.
But, we are all here, so nothing happened, right?
In Spain, a worker received a notice for an industrial tribunal in Murcia which listed the event date as 3 February 1900.In Australia, bus ticket validation machines in two states failed to operate.In New Mexico, the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division was temporarily unable to issue new driver’s licenses.In New York, a video store accidentally generated a $91,250 late fee because the store computer determined a tape* rental was 100 years overdue.In Norway, a day care center for kindergarteners in Oslo offered a spot to a 105-year-old woman because the citizen’s registry only showed the last two digits of citizens’ years of birth.150 Delaware Lottery slot machines stopped working.And the list goes on of many other events around the globe, but now the worry is that the AI robot uprising will enslave the human race.
Probably another non-event, but at least you still have all those beans.
-Leon
*Ask your parents
Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words, and his latest sci-fi mystery, Euphrates Vanished.
My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/
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