People think Y2K was a bust, thus proving it wasn't

I read an article recently about a significant virus or some other kind of security problem that people were being warned about. One of the comments on the article said something like "Yeah, well they warned us about Y2K as well, and that was a bust." I have read similar comments before and even heard similar sentiments from people I know. The truth is that Y2K was a real problem that would have caused real chaos if it hadn't been fixed in time. However it was fixed in time, and the fact that no significant problems occurred on January 1, 2000 is a testament to the amount of planning and work that went into fixing it. The fact that the general public thinks it was a bust proves that it was successful.

I know that there were Y2K problems in the database server that I worked on at the time (and continue to work on), and I know that they were fixed beforehand. Our problems were fairly minor, but I know of other problems that were not. Gail worked for a large steel company at the time (still does, kinda), and some time in the late 90's, they did some Y2K testing. They simultaneously reset all the clocks on all the computers in the plant to 11:30pm December 31, 1999 and fired 'em all up again. A few seconds after the clocks hit midnight, everything shut down. The problem was eventually traced to an exhaust fan deep in the bowels of the plant, which decided that it hadn't had any scheduled maintenance in a hundred years, so it shut down. All the systems that depended on that fan to be running also shut down, and the failure cascaded upwards until nothing was running.

If they hadn't done the testing, the plant would have shut down a few seconds after midnight on New Year's Day, and it might have taken them a couple of days to find the problem and a couple more to get a new fan installed. This is assuming that the fan was the only problem. When every hour not producing steel costs your company hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars, a five-day outage would be devastating. Now think: what if that same brand of exhaust fan was used in your local power or water treatment plant? Could half your city live without power or running water for a week in January? What if a similar failure occurred in an air traffic control system? Or some safety-related subsystem in a nuclear power plant? Or the computer controlling the respirators in your local ICU?

The fan was fixed or replaced and the test was repeated. I don't know how many times they ran the test, but when the real December 31, 1999 arrived, the plant kept producing steel like it does through every other midnight. Many hours and dollars were spent in advance to make sure that the problem was solved before it happened. This was done in countless other factories, businesses, hospitals, airlines, and such (not to mention every software development company) so that when January 1, 2000 arrived, all the hardware and software would handle it.

The people who were expecting nationwide blackouts or planes to start dropping out of the sky at midnight were surprised to find that the number of actual problems was very small. Many people assumed that this meant the whole "Y2K problem" was overblown or some kind of industry hype. It wasn't. It was a real problem with an absolute deadline that could not slip. It was solved in time thanks to the combined effort of thousands of software developers (who, admittedly, created the problem in the first place) and IT professionals who put in a lot of effort so that people would never know there was a problem.

This, of course, is part of the thankless world that IT professionals live in – if they do their job properly, you don't notice them. You might even mistakenly think that they do nothing. Every morning, you arrive at work and check your email or internet connection and find that everything is working properly. How many of those mornings have come after nights where the IT staff were up until 4am fixing some network or hardware problem? I'm sure you don't know, but I'll bet that it's more than zero. Tell ya what – next time you see your sys admin walking through the halls at work, say thanks.

The big trade and the other big trade

This week was quite a landmark week in Toronto sports. Roy Halladay, quite possibly the best pitcher in Toronto Blue Jays history, and Colin Doyle, quite possibly the best player in Toronto Rock history, were both traded – Halladay left Toronto while Doyle returned. Halladay's trade was expected and, I suppose, logical, but saddening, while Doyle's return is a cause for celebration.

I am really going to miss Roy Halladay. He is the best home-grown pitcher the Jays have ever had, and rivals Roger Clemens for the best overall pitcher in Jays history. He won a Cy Young, and finished in the top five in Cy Young voting five times. His stats over the past few years have been staggering; according to Wikipedia, "From 2002-2008, Halladay has a .698 winning percentage, 113 wins, 9 shutouts, 37 complete games, and 7.14 innings per start, all of which are the best in the American League in that time frame." Think about it – no AL pitcher (and only one NL pitcher) won more games during that time span, and Halladay played for some pretty mediocre Blue Jay teams. And 37 complete games in seven years – nobody else even has 20. Last year Halladay had nine – the only other pitcher to have more than four was Zack Greinke, the Cy Young award winner, who had six.

But the stats aren't the whole story. Halladay is simply a joy to watch. I loved watching an opposing hitter look at strike three from Doc. Rarely did you see the batter argue that it wasn't a strike; more often, you would see the "Holy crap, that was a nice pitch" look on his face. Doc was widely known for his work ethic and his stamina (the complete games I mentioned above). He first came up looking like a star and then totally forgot how to pitch. He was sent all the way down to A ball, a move which would destroy the confidence (and likely career) of lesser mortals, but Halladay worked his ass off and used that opportunity to rebuild his delivery. When he made it back to the majors, he became untouchable. And in this era of an athlete's fall from grace becoming commonplace (Kobe, the Steroid Kings of baseball, even Tiger), you will never find a classier athlete than Doc anywhere. The deal isn't finalized yet, so it's not clear who the Jays are getting in return, but it looks to be at least three good prospects that the Phillies don't want to give up. I figure if Pat Gillick wants to hold on to them, they're likely players we want to have.

Colin Doyle was the Toronto Rock's best player for many years. He won five Championships with the Rock, was named Championship Game MVP three times, and League MVP once. He was first or second in team scoring every year that the Rock existed, including their year as the Ontario Raiders when Doyle won NLL Rookie of the Year. Almost three years ago, Doyle was inexplicably traded to the San Jose Stealth and the Rock's fortunes departed with him. Of the three seasons he was in San Jose, the Rock missed the playoffs twice, while the Stealth made the playoffs all three years. Doyle is a scorer – a powerful forward who can plow through defenders on his way to the net – but he can also be a playmaker. Indeed, Doyle hasn't finished with less than 53 assists since 2002, putting him in the top five every year. He, like Halladay, has a strong work ethic and is a fan favourite. He has the ability to make those around him better, and thrives under pressure. Doyle was the captain of the Stealth and is the logical choice to succeed Chris Driscoll as captain of the Rock. As good a player as Lewis Ratcliff is, Doyle is better and I think the Rock just made a big step forwards towards making the playoffs for the first time in three years.

A day like no other

Here are some things that happened to me today, all of which are out of the ordinary:

• For various reasons, I left home almost an hour late. Actually, leaving late isn't all that unusual, but rarely that late.
• Because the car had a flat yesterday and was in getting fixed, I drove the van to work.
• The van doesn't have an iPod adapter, so I did not bring my iPod. Instead I listened to CDs (actual disks!) and the radio.
• Because my TimCard is in the car, I used cash at Tim Horton's for breakfast.
• A friend at work borrowed my kids' Lightning McQueen RC car last week - she made an awesome Lightning McQueen cake and used the car as a model. She returned it today so it was sitting on my desk all day.
• I played in a band at work – me and two other guys played guitar, another played keyboard, and four or five more sang Christmas songs. I can count the number of times I've played the guitar in a band – counting today, three.
• I had a full turkey lunch, complete with veggies, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and dessert.
• It took me two hours and fifteen minutes to get home from work (in the van, without my iPod). This was obviously annoying but strangely, I wasn't as pissed off when I got home as I usually am after such a long commute.
• I had a peanut butter sandwich for dinner.
• I came home to an empty house. It was movie night, so Gail and the boys were over at the school. I went and joined them after "dinner".

All these weird things happened in one day. It seems very surreal when I look back on it.

Sorry, must cut this article short – I need to take the rhinoceros out for a walk.

Driving in winter

If you're not from Ontario (I used to think it was just the Toronto area, but apparently Ottawa suffers from this as well), it might interest you to know that there are three types of winter drivers:

1. "Oh, it's snowing. I guess I will slow down a little, put my headlights on, and pay a little more attention to the road and other vehicles. No need to panic."
2. "Snow, schmow. I have a 4x4 and winter tires, so I can go as fast as I want, regardless of the weather or traffic conditions, and I will always be able to stop or turn whenever and wherever I want."
3. "OMFG there's like little white thingies falling from the sky! I better slow down to like half the speed limit just in case my car slips on one and I spin out. I knew this guy once? In school? Who was driving? In the snow? And he spun out? And he like died and stuff! Oooh, I know! I'll drive slow in the fast lane to force other people to slow down too – just to make sure that nobody else gets hurt by these White Flakes of Death. Stop honking at me people! I'm trying to save your life! And you're making me nervous! I better slow down some more."

Thankfully, the majority of drivers are in group 1. But considering this is freakin' Canada, there are a surprising number of people who seem to forget everything about driving in snow the moment the last flake melts in the spring.

A Kind of Magic

My sister Trudy is a little over two years my junior. As kids, we got along pretty well. We had our share of physical fights – I remember giving her a bloody nose once while waiting in the car for our parents to come out of a store – but they were usually pretty minor. There was a while during our teen years where we didn't get along all that well, usually because I stuck to the rules and didn't get in trouble while Trudy rebelled and did, but she also had a lot more fun on Saturday nights than I generally did. But by the time we hit our twenties, we were buds again and we remain friends now.

When we were kids, we liked to perform "shows" for my parents, as many kids do. Mostly they'd be puppet shows, where we'd move my dresser out a couple of feet from the wall and stand behind it - it was too hard to kneel down and perform with the puppets over our heads, so we just stood and said "pretend you don't see us". Occasionally there were "gymnastics" shows, where we'd do tumbling and tricks, which usually involved running across my room and diving onto the bed. But at least once there was a magic show, where Trudy and I performed some amazing feats of magic to the delight of my parents. Well, "delight" may be a bit strong, but they did laugh.

I'm sure most of the tricks we did were card tricks that were set up beforehand – rather than "pick a card, any card", it was "pick the top card, look at it, and put it back here". I don't remember any of the tricks in any detail, except a sleight-of-hand trick that ended up being the last trick of the show – it wasn't the finale, but it was the end of the show nonetheless. I had been teaching Trudy for weeks (well, at least a day or two) (or maybe half an hour) how to take a small item, roll it around in her hand, tell the audience she is about to make it vanish, and casually slide it up her sleeve. She could then show them her empty hands and bask in the crowd's wonder and admiration. She wanted this to be her trick, not one that we performed together, so she really worked at it, concentrating on putting the item – a plastic letter with a magnet in the back for sticking to an easel – up her sleeve as smoothly as possible.

The show was moving along nicely, and it was soon time for Trudy's disappearing letter trick. I stood to the side while Trudy stood in front of the rapt crowd (mom and dad), and took out her magnetic letter. She carefully showed them the letter, and then put her hands together, magically rolling the letter between her hands. She then said in the standard mysterious voice used exclusively by magicians:

I will now make this letter go up my sleeve.

I don't know which one of us shouted first – Trudy because she realized what she had done, or me because she'd messed up the trick I'd spent so long teaching her. Our parents, admirably keeping their laughter under control, tried to tell her that it was OK, she could just keep going, but Trudy was inconsolable. I remember being angry with her at first, but I have a vague feeling that I quickly came around and agreed with my parents that she should just keep going and forget about it. Of course she didn't. The show pretty much ended there, as Trudy left the "stage" crying.

To this day, Trudy hates magic shows.