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Y2K projects... most unusual problems found and fixed?

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Peter de Jager Professional Speaker| de Jager & Co Ltd Brampton, Ontario, Canada
What were the challenges you faced on your Y2K projects?
Looking for war stories and the scars he have from those days.

Think of the scene in the Movie Jaws where they’re exchanging scar stories.

Strangest one I’ve heard recently. A stock brokerage company... using FTP to transmit trades to a clearing house... 2 hour window to accomplish this.

FTP stops connecting properly. No clue what is going on.

Within 6 hours the problem has escalated to the board room... c-level execs and in-house lawyers. They are on the hook for Incompleted trades and ALL profits lost. Potentially millions of dollars.

Turns out that during the first millisecond in the handshaking protocol... the dates don’t match... one computer has feb 29th... the other has Mar 1st. No error message. Just a failure to connect.
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Stéphane Parent Self Employed / Semi-retired| Leader Maker Prince Edward Island, Canada
I, fortunately, don't have Y2K scar stories to share.

What's interesting about the story you shared is that they would have thought themselves home free on January 1, just to find out the leap year problem, two months later. Somebody forgot to test for that...
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1 reply by Peter de Jager
May 19, 2020 12:20 PM
Peter de Jager
...
Turns the problem had been patched earlier in the year.... but the patch had been described as ‘cosmetic’ only
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Peter de Jager Professional Speaker| de Jager & Co Ltd Brampton, Ontario, Canada
May 19, 2020 10:31 AM
Replying to Stéphane Parent
...
I, fortunately, don't have Y2K scar stories to share.

What's interesting about the story you shared is that they would have thought themselves home free on January 1, just to find out the leap year problem, two months later. Somebody forgot to test for that...
Turns the problem had been patched earlier in the year.... but the patch had been described as ‘cosmetic’ only
...
1 reply by Stéphane Parent
May 19, 2020 1:48 PM
Stéphane Parent
...
I can see it now: "why should we bother applying that patch? It's just cosmetic..."
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Stéphane Parent Self Employed / Semi-retired| Leader Maker Prince Edward Island, Canada
May 19, 2020 12:20 PM
Replying to Peter de Jager
...
Turns the problem had been patched earlier in the year.... but the patch had been described as ‘cosmetic’ only
I can see it now: "why should we bother applying that patch? It's just cosmetic..."

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