New Year

With the decade winding down I am reminded of where I was at the end the last one. It’s a sure sign of old age when you start thinking of your life in 10 year spans. But this is a little different because ten years ago was a special year. The man known as Love symbol #2 actually wrote a song about it in the 80’s where he sang about partying like it’s 1999. If we had only been smart enough in the 80’s to patent the moniker Y2K, we would not be reading this because we could have retired.

Boy we were all scared the electric was going to shut off, the water stop working, street lights would be green and red or neither, our cars wouldn’t start, our 56k modems would not let us download email. What were we going to do, our doors would unlock, or lock, our kids would start showing respect, hold on that wasn’t one. Our Christmas trees would burst into flames because of electrical issues. Our microwave ovens would stop working, a tragedy for this generation.

For a facility guy or gal, this was nothing less than a natural disaster on the horizon. We were absolutely certain, without a doubt, our HVAC, fire alarm, electric doors, card access system, security, irrigation, light panels, emergency generator, etc, were not only going to stop working, they may actually explode at the stroke of midnight. Someone actually fed this to us, and we ate it up like a Thanksgiving dinner.

Depending on the size of your operation at the time you spent thousands or tens of thousands on consultants, equipment, supplies, overtime for your engineers, who no doubt wanted holiday pay for working New Years Eve (I know I did and I got it). I was at work at 11, stayed until 2, realizing little by little we were all duped.

As I checked system after system, I became enlightened that Y2K, was actually BFJ, with the B standing for Big, the J standing for joke and you fill in the blank. A group of people got rich quick and we all helped them do it.

Once nothing happened we had to then say, we were prepared, to justify our actions. With the Y2K hoax in our rear view mirror, someone, Al Gore, had to create a new crisis. This time they did it a little smarter than last. You see until the icebergs actually melt, completely, there is always a scare the Earth is actually warming. Quite genius of them this time, something that cannot be proven either way for a long, long time. Both sides have been caught lying so much who can you believe. Well I didn’t believe Al Gore when he said he invented the internet, said he won the 2000 Presidential election and I don’t believe him now. As a matter of fact I wouldn’t take him in a spelling bee with Dan Quayle.

So as for me and my house in KY, the only Green thing I plan on doing is recycling cans at a local small church for foreign missionaries. That is until the water from the icebergs reach downtown La Grange, then, I am definitely switching to paper from plastic.

Happy New Year