As Far Back As I Can Post

I found this note on my computer just after midnight...

This is it. January 1, 2000, 12:01 AM. The exact time the Y2K bug destroyed all existing computers and infrastructure around the world, thus beginning a new dark age for all humanity that lasted for the next 5 centuries. Then a time machine was invented, and I was selected to travel back in time to the late 20th century in order to prevent the catastrophe. I spent the time immersing myself in the native culture: watching TV and movies, reading books and comics, and playing both the board and video variety of games. Customizable Card Games (CCGs) had yet to be invented.

As the 20th century drew to a close, I kept putting off the measures I was instructed to take in order to prevent the earth-shattering catastrophe that was Y2K. You see, around that time a computer program known as "napster" came out that let you have three wishes, as long as those wishes were for unlimited free songs off the internet. All of this was before lawyers had discovered the world wide web, so at the time it was still perfectly legal to help yourself to other people's copywrited works. Even President Clinton said as much in his 1999 State of the Union Speech just before mentioning how much he was looking forward to seeing The Phantom Menace. Clinton's exact quote was "I propose a 28 percent increase in long-term computing research," but "computing research" was well known 1337-speak for mp3 queries on college campuses across the country, so we all knew what he was talking about.

So December 1999 rolls around, and I still have yet to do anything about Y2K. Then Boris Yeltsin resigned as President of Russia on December 31, and former KGB agent Vladimir Putin stepped in. I watched repeating coverage of that several times on CNN Headline News. Only hours later, the clocks around the world started striking midnight, and I had not done a single thing to prevent a Y2K catastrophe.

You know what happened? Absolutely nothing. No one died. No one lost their life savings. No one even had their computers freeze in the middle of free-cell.

Actually, that's not entirely true. One thing did happen. A fairly big thing. Doomsayers across the world quickly scratched December 31, 1999 off their lists and instead began selling books about the next world-ending date on their list: December 12, 2012. Hurry! Only twelve years left before the 2023 books start appearing on the shelves.

Also, I went to Disneyland.