That time when Y2K turned into Y M I here?

Twenty years ago today I was sitting alone in an office at Monongahela Power Company's Fairmont headquarters, catching up on some not-so-important work, watching the power outage reporting system tick down toward zero and hoping that every computer in the world didn't crash at midnight when the dreaded Y2K finally arrived.

(I may also have been playing Solitaire on the company computer, but please don’t tell.)

I had a bad case of the flu but my boss insisted I drive over here from Hagerstown, Md., and be available to answer the flood of media calls that we were expecting as midnight arrived. A computer glitch that had something to do with the number of digits used to display the year in date formats had threatened to blow up every computer in the world when the calendar rolled over from the six-digit 12.31.99 to the eight-digit 01.01.2000.

So it was that on the last New Year’s Eve of the millennium, after hours of doing virtually nothing of value, I turned on a 13-inch TV/VCR combo that sat on a credenza in the office and watched the new year begin in places like Korea, Japan, Australia and other distant time zones where today was already tomorrow, waiting for the phone to ring and pleased to see that the computer catastrophe we all feared had failed to materialize.

As night fell, I think I called in to my supervisor to report the relevant statistics:

Number of computer crashes worldwide: 0.

Number of Mon Power customers without service: 0.

Number of media calls I received: 0.

The event had turned into such a waste of time that I was seriously considering dragging my flu-infected body out to my car and driving back to Maryland when, around 11 p.m. or so, I got a call from the local TV station requesting a live on-camera interview, which would air a minute or two before midnight. I agreed, of course, and a while later a young woman who couldn’t have been more than a week out of college showed up with a camera and a microphone to interview me.

She wanted me to go outside -- without a coat – on a hill overlooking the office so the name of the company would be visible in the background, so she dragged me up to the Giant Eagle parking lot next door. My nose was running, I was sneezing intermittently and I think I was shaking uncontrollably in 10-degree weather.

You always want to look your best for a live on-camera interview.

After we got up the hill, she informed me that we had to wait a few minutes for the station to break away from its national coverage for a “cut-in” segment during which she would ask me about Y2K. When the time came and she gave me the signal, I managed to tell her without sneezing that everything was fine, there were no power outages anywhere in our territory and all of the computers were working perfectly, thank you very much. I was ready to head back toward the office when, out of the blue, she asked me to predict what gas prices would be like in the year 2000.

It was such a stupid question I’m sure I must have hesitated before answering, all the while hoping my nose wouldn’t start to drip and trying to think of something intelligent to say. I didn’t know if she was asking about gasoline prices or natural gas prices, but it didn’t really matter because we were the power company. We sold electricity, not gasoline or natural gas, so I said something like, “I really couldn’t say. We don’t sell gas.”

And that was the end of the interview.

I had driven for two and a half hours with a bad case of flu on a freezing cold day to sit in an office, stare at a computer screen and watch TV from late morning until 11:58 p.m., so I could stand shivering in the cold and tell one reporter who didn’t know what she was taking about that everything was going to be fine. Everything except me, that is. I still had to drive home.

That was the night when Y2K became Y M I here? For all the hoopla, anxiety, fear, years of planning, terrifying stories in the media about the end of the world and millions of hours of work put in by engineers and computer specialists around the world, Y2K was without a doubt the biggest non-story of the millennium.

And I was there to witness it all...which turned out to be all of nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. It did provide me with a good story to write a blog about on the last day of the 2010s...and so I did. Tomorrow begins the 2020s, which I hope are a better decade for all of us. Only time will tell.

So Happy New Year, friends. See you around the corner in the two-ohs.

Christmas is over when it’s over

I love the holiday season.

I get into the Christmas spirit about an hour after trick-or-treat ends on October 31. The next warm, dry day after Halloween, I string my outdoor Christmas lights. (No sense waiting until it’s freezing cold to do it, right?) Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t turn them on for the first time until Thanksgiving Day. I mean, I’m not that guy…but I could if I wanted to.

I put up my Christmas tree in mid-November and start decorating the inside of the house. I do a fair amount of interior decorating, so it takes several days. I used to do it all at once but I’m much too old for that now. I don’t turn everything on right away, but everything is in place when the Thanksgiving turkey has been put away. I usually manage to buy one or two new things every year. I have enough Christmas decorations in my garage to open a store.

I do my shopping early, wrap the gifts and ship the ones that go out of town. This year, I even wrapped a dozen empty boxes so there would always be gifts under the tree. I hate it when everyone opens their presents and takes them home, leaving only a tree skirt and some stray needles where wrapped boxes used to be.

I play Christmas carols on a CD player in my office, on the TV cable music channel and on Sirius radio in my car. I search the hundreds of TV channels we get for Christmas movies and try to watch some of the ones I haven’t seen. I own DVDs of “A Christmas Story,” “Christmas Vacation” and “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which I alternate watching every three years or so.

When I was a kid, I loved when we’d drive around looking at Christmas lights, and I still do, except now I’m the driver. My apologies to everyone who has to wait behind me when I stop to look at a light display or peer into a picture window to see someone’s Christmas tree.

On a day prior to Christmas, usually a Sunday when everyone is off work, my daughter and her family come to visit. We eat pepperoni rolls from Country Club Bakery, they open their gifts from Julie and me and my daughter and I make egg nog. We’ve been doing it since she was a little girl, and I intend to keep doing it every year as long as I am able. She takes it home with her in a gallon milk jug saved for the occasion.  

My favorite night is Christmas Eve. Even as an adult, there’s something magical about the night when Santa Claus flies down from the North Pole to deliver gifts to children, and grown-ups eagerly await the morning to find out what’s in that big box with their name on it under the tree. It still gives me a thrill, knowing that NORAD is tracking Santa on radar as he flies around the world.

Christmas Eve is best when there’s snow on the ground, and it’s perfect if it’s actually snowing hard like the scenes in holiday movies, but even this year when it was 50 degrees and dry, I followed my customary routine. I listened to a solid day of Christmas music, then drove around looking at lights as soon as it was good and dark. This year, we took our dog with us and went to Morris Park to see the Celebration of Lights. Unfortunately, the park was closed on Christmas Eve, which seemed like a missed opportunity to me. I think the dog was terribly disappointed.

Instead, we came back home and I watched “A Christmas Carol” on TV. I own that movie, too – the one with George C. Scott as Scrooge – and it’s the only Christmas movie I watch every year. It’s dark and mysterious with the snow and the fog of London, great traditional music sung by carolers and the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future. A holiday movie with ghosts…what could be better on Christmas Eve?

Then Christmas day came, we opened gifts, tried on clothes, ate turkey and that was it. As much as I love the whole holiday season, I have one rule for Christmas itself. When midnight comes on December 26, Christmas is over. Period. We don’t celebrate Christmas on December 26 or the 28th or any day after the 25th. We just start planning for New Year’s Day.

That’s why I won’t be going back to Morris Park to see the light displays on December 28 or 29 and I won’t be listening to Christmas music on my car radio and I won’t be wearing my Santa hat around the house. Oh, I’ll leave my tree up and lit until a little after New Year’s because I like looking at it, and my outdoor lights still come on at dark and click off six hours later, and the other decorations will remain in place until some time in January when I’ll put them all away.

But from now on, they are all “holiday” decorations and not “Christmas” decorations. I’m very specific about that, because in my world, the Christmas spirit arrives early and stays for a pretty long time, but when it’s over, it’s over. It may have left a beautiful memory – it usually does – but now we’re moving on to other things.

‘You’re damn right we wanted him impeached’

One of the favorite talking points of Republicans defending Donald Trump against impeachment is that Democrats “have wanted to impeach this president since Day One.” They call it a “witch hunt” or a “coup” and think this is a point in their favor.

They’d be surprised to learn that I wholeheartedly agree with them, but not for the reason they might think. I do agree, which is why the next time Meadows or McCarthy or Jordan or Nunes throws that comment into the air, I wish someone would respond to them as follows:

“You’re damn right we wanted to impeach him from Day One. Just look at who he is. We knew from the first day of his campaign that he’s a racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic con man fraudster with a history of womanizing, social misconduct, tax evasion, financial failure and the absolute inability to tell the truth.

“On the day he was inaugurated, he launched his presidency by lying about the weather, his margin of victory and the size of the crowd, and it’s been all downhill from there as his lies have mounted well into the thousands.

“That, and the fact that he appears to be not only stupid and devoid of historical knowledge but also mentally ill make him—in all probability—the least qualified person to ever hold the office of president.

“So yes, Democrats have wanted to impeach Donald Trump since the day he took office, if not before. So have Independents and any Republicans who possess both a backbone and a brain, few of them as there might be. We wanted to impeach him then and we want to impeach him now. We freely admit that is true.

“The real question, Mr. and Ms. Congressional Republican, is why don’t you?”