It’s Sunday afternoon and after a week of rain almost every single day it seems the sun is going to stick around today. I typed that before deciding to check the weather radar, which shows rain moving in around 8:00 this evening. I guess that showed me.
This week was a good one even if the workdays were long and filled with commuter meetings. One of the most unique things at work was my discover that Y2K decided to strike. Of course, I also had to explain what Y2K was to some of the folks I work with because they hadn’t been born yet, but the long and short of it is that as we approached the year 2000 a great many computer experts raised concerns that when the date changed from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000 it would cause havoc within the computer programs themselves as they would read 01/01/00 as “01/01/1900” thanks to their default values.
Many people spent many months updating various programs and pieces of software to ensure this did not happen, and were so successful that a large percentage of Americans think Y2K was a bit to-do over nothing – kinda the same way they think about the ozone layer, if they think of it at all.
Anyway, what you may not know but which I did thanks to listening to podcasts and talking with one or two people who actually did the work is that in many cases they “fixed” the problem by updating the base/default year to 1930, assuming that by 2030 either a more permanent solution would be created or deployed or that the software would be obsolete.
You can see where this is going.
So last week saw me working with data points five years in the future, or trying to, and getting a variety of errors that all boiled down to:
Start: 8/1/2025 | End: 5/1/2030
ERROR: END DATE MUST BE BEFORE START DATE
I knew what I was looking at and reached out to IT, along with the suggestion they look into their default dates or their Y2K documentation. They replied back that I should try using the calendar date picker rather than typing my dates, which did not work. They said they would look into it.
On Thursday I ran into one of the senior system administrators (who had been out when I first raised the issue) who told me they found the issue and were working on a fix – and that not only was I correct, but I was also one of the first in the state community college system to find/notice it, and so as other colleges began to report/talk about the same thing happening we were in a position to offer assistance/solutions.
Of course the solution was to once again kick the date down the road, but by the time we get to the new dateline the software should be replaced (at least for us) and/or I’ll be retired.
Any way you look at it, it’s now someone else’s problem, and not one for this edgerunner.
You know, now that I think about it, last week probably seemed so busy because we had Monday off and had to fit a typical five-day workweek into three days thanks to summer hours. Going back to my journal I see this for my Monday entry:
I had the day off and it was gently raining.
Things I wanted to do today:
❌ enjoy the rain
❌ do laundry
❌ clean a little
❌ journal
❌ play rainy day LoFi music
Things I did today:
✅ make tea
✅ disassociate for ten hours
I eventually got around to that laundry on Friday and Saturday, but the cleaning has gone really, really well.
A little over a month ago I decided to try a self-care app where you can set goals and as you complete them you earn energy to send a digital “birb” (I named mine Cheesecake) on adventures or earn gems that can be used to buy clothing and accessories, “birbhouse” furnishings, color schemes, or travel to new exploration areas (I’m currently visiting Bhutan).
And I hate to admit how effective it’s been at helping me complete small goals. After two weeks of things like “clean a little”, “put one thing in it’s place”, and “spend five minutes sorting the junk drawer” my living room feels almost like a new space – and I haven’t even done anything new. I just straightened shelves, dusted, and rearranged a few small things that’ve made a huge difference.
Who knew that I’d do those things just to push a button to make a digital friend happy? It’s not like it would know if I was lying – but I would know.
Of course on Friday the big news was Taylor Swift buying back the masters/rights to her entire catalog, something she said was only possible thanks to the success of the Era’s Tour. Billionaire or not, owning the rights to your own work is a huge deal, and I’m glad she finally did it. I’m glad my $140 ticket helped her do that.
We didn’t have D&D this last Wednesday and our World of Darkness campaign that would normally have been today has also been postponed, but last Sunday we had another installment of Welcome to Harper’s Calling – a folk-horror game set in West Virginia c. 1984 that began as a Call of Cthulhu game but has switched over to using Old Gods of Appalachia rules, which is itself based on the Cypher system. It’s a super fun game; last week we met a crocodile and a ghost and talked to a witch about breaking a fertility curse, all while being observed from a distance by a pack of Catawampuses. Catawampi? Multiple catawampus.
Last week I also picked up the first three books in the Game of Thrones series. I finished the first book last night, and maybe it’s because I saw the show first, but I’m struck by just how unlikable almost every single character is. I know there’s something to be said about creating characters with depth, but so far the character flaws seem to outweigh any redeeming qualities. And maybe that’s the point.
That said, the actual plot and worldbuilding is pretty interesting, even if the people inhabiting that world are somehow less interesting. I’m going to continue reading, though – I don’t dislike it enough to stop.
When I went grocery shopping on friday my local source of stroopwafel had them on clearance, which does not bode well for restocking. Yes, I bought a box.
I think that about does it for me for now; I’m planning to do a kind of chicken-based burrito bowl for supper.
What have you been up to?
Running In My Head 