Be Excellent To Each Other

And the millenium bug!

And Brexit!

::grinds teeth to powder::

The millennium bug was absolutely a thing.

Nothing happened on the day, therefore it was nothing to worry about.

I've seen that used as an example of why Brexit will be fine a few times

Doc is wrong so Brexit will be fine?

I wouldn't even be mad.

Millennium bug means Millennium bug.

My employer was working balls to the wall for pretty much all of 1999 to get an insane number of systems ready for Y2K, when it tipped over and basically nothing happened and everything carried on working albeit with just a few glitches, of course then it was 'Well what a waste of time and money that was, boy who cried wolf' etc etc and we're like DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH FUCKING WORK WE PUT INTO MAKING SURE ALL THIS SHIT DIDN'T BLOW UP FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

And then if we hadn't done all that prep and a load of stuff did go wrong, then it'd have been 'Useless IT guys what do we pay them all that money for eh?'

This is why I try not to interact with people as much as possible.

Just as well the government's been spending the last five years planning for March 2019 then.

But on the other hand as someone who also works in IT I don't feel that I'm owed a debt of gratitude every time something I'm paid to be responsible for doesn't completely shit the bed. Some acknowledgement from my managers if I've had to do loads of stuff out of hours or whatever but not from anyone else.

I guess it's just that the millennium bug, troublesome as it was, got hyped to the point where it was going to cause an actual apocalypse so people felt like they just saved the world or something. But isn't it more accurate to say that although people were having to rush about fixing things at the last minute by the time it was making tabloid headlines it was never really going to end the world, having largely been fixed throughout the previous decade?

No. The industry mightily fucked up.

It was absolutely going to be a big fucking apocalypse. Banking, telephony, air traffic control, all would have shut down/gone bad overnight if they hadn't been addressed.

The issue is that the Millennium Bug should be a case study in identifying a problem in advance, correctly highlighting its importance, and putting sufficient resource and expertise into resolving it before it causes major issues.

Instead it's treated as a case of crying wolf and used as an excuse not to critically evaluate things like Brexit.

Yes like my mum, who stocked up on tinned food (also, chocolate and crisps) in the lead up to Y2K.

But don't you agree that they mostly already had been in updates years earlier by the time that the newspapers were trying to sell the doomsday scenario?

I dunno, I spent a lot of 1999 working on it, the company I worked for was really worried because most of the hardware and software being used by our customers was from the 70s and 80s.

No. I was doing Y2K testing with my own two hands in the nuclear power industry in the summer of 1999.

The tabloids over-egged it, because of course they did. But there were very real and significant risks.

I remember fixing Y2K bugs, and I didn't start work until September 2001. Admittedly they were shitty little display bugs where no one had noticed the year was marked as "19101" instead of 2001 in a barely used bit of recruitment software, but even so.

The time and attendance system we used back then was DOS-based and we had to do Y2K testing for that. Turns out the update didn't work so we had to wait for another one and retest again. Our company spent a huge amount of time and money fixing various systems to be ready and the clocking-in system was just a tiny part of it, but if we hadn't prepared for it, we'd have had hundreds of unhappy employees when their pay was messed up.

The reporting system for it was also DOS-based but it was no longer supported and I ended up having to run two lots of reports for pre and post 1/1/2000. Good times.

I R Y2K BUG. NOW SHUT UP OR GET OWN THREAD
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It's Mali's fault.

It normally is...

Who was it that told you about Beex, Kov?

Yup, Mali..

not even close to the case. It was a hugely profitable thing to be doing in 1999.

ENOUGH.

An accurate, concise summary of the amount of work that was done.

Now the nights are drawing in, we ended up being out in the superb in the dim with the lights on. It lights up like a spaceship, all white LEDs with the surprisingly great electroluminescent strip that runs around the cabin just below the windows in a lovely shade of red.

After lunch yesterday there's a road where people park along one side so there's juggling to keep both directions moving. A colleague in the back saw a gap and said "Go!" So I went and he said "JESUS!"

Which was nice.

The beemer has decided for me whether to fix the abs warning light... It has started cutting out when idling every so often, and is burning quite a bit of oil. I know what the problems are (crank position sensor for the idle and blocked crank case breather vent for the oil burning), both are cheap to buy but in bastard places to fit, so labour costs will be way out of whack.

It'll be ok for the year if need be, while I keep my eye out for something else.

Booked in for custom remap on Monday

Currently convincing myself that buying this is a terrible idea

https://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds ... hp/8863083

SWB 760i. You don't see one of those very often!

Swallow some brave pills! 135k V12 has big bills written all over it!

What are you having done, and how much?

I see....... many invoices in your future, for all the millions of known issues that Beemers of this age and mileage have.

A chap at work has an E60 M5, he pays nearly £2000 per year to BMW for a Mondial Warranty just to hedge against it not costing him more than that on repairs in any twelve month period.

He also doesn't drive it very much, so that it doesn't end up off the road with some crippling problem or other. AND THIS IS WHEN HE'S ALREADY PAYING FOR BMW TO FIX IT IF (WHEN) ANYTHING GOES WRONG.

Man logic is telling me that I don't use my current car (I do about 250 miles a month at the moment, on average), so it won't be an issue as I won't use the new car. If I don't use it, it can't go wrong, right?

That's literally about the only way you could prevent anything going wrong with it, putting it in a garage and never trying to start it.

I fully accept this is a terrible idea, absolutely, 100%, no doubt about it.

Fucking do it. Do it now.

I'd have thought the reason he doesn't drive it very much is because he doesn't want to deprive the rest of the Isle of Man of unleaded.

Just a stage one map at local Volks wagon specialist. They're APR dealers (£200 + VAT) but they also do their own custom maps with rolling road before and after for (£250 + VAT)

When I was working at the PC store in '99 we used to have this kid who, on his way home from school, would walk sideways like a space invader past the shop shouting "I AM THE MILLENNIUM BUG AND I AM GOING TO DESTROY YOU".

Did used to make us chortle.

that engine spec is hilariously terrible. However, it should also mean it's so lazy nothing will ever go wrong.

I'm assuming it has a ZF 6HP transmission though and it will almost certainly want a 'spensive rebuild soon.

440bhp is nothing to be sniffed at!

No, but the torque is barely above what my 535d did. The capacity is double, the emissions are double, the fuel economy is half. And the power is only 30% higher.

73 ponies per liter is, though...

Also buy it, you nutter. I bet it's an overtake monster.

I mean yeah, don't not buy it