A thread devoted to Year 2000 issues, and any related chat...I'll lead it off with an article I wrote last year...
Are You Y2K Compliant? by Carlo Ravin 12/98
Like many Pagans, I work in the computer business. My job is somewhat mundane in that I book orders all day for companies, schools, and government agencies for computer systems, software, memory, you name it. Order fulfillment may not be as glamorous as website designing, but it's a decent living, and the working conditions are fabulous.
The obvious thing is that we are not far off from the Y2K bug that supposedly will grip by the short and curlies this business, and the world, in less than a year. I get the same question at least a dozen times a day..."Is that system Year 2000 compliant?" The December-January issue of The Mountain Astologer (TMA) features Y2K as a cover story, and a few authors discuss it in depth for almost half the issue.
Yet I started to ponder the question of compliancy before I received my first issue of TMA as a most thoughtful Yule '98 gift. As the owner of an Aquarius Moon, I don't really want to comply with anything. And while Aquarius rules the computer business, it also is the sign most related to the larger issues of humanity, rather than the more individual focus of Aries or Gemini. I have always been one to endeavor to offer my thoughts and assistance to others, helped also in large part by my Virgo Sun, which is the sign of service. So it came to me recently that, hey, are human beings Y2K compliant?
My answer after meditating on this is no, we are probably not. Now, I am normally a very optomistic fellow. My Mercury, Venus, and Mars in Leo help me in this department, and they usually do a good job helping to keep at least a half-smile on my Saturn in Pisces, generally a weaker placement for this old boy. Yet on the issue of Y2K compliancy for Cro-Magnons, I am confident that we will, at the very least, have issues with this momentous and imminent time change in our daily lives.
For example, you will wake up on Jan. 1, 2000. It is a Saturday, and the start of a three-day weekend. You probably will have partied well into the morning, and theYear 2000 is here at last! No real issues other than cell phones and TV remote controls maybe not be working, and maybe your car's "check engine" light is flashing when you head out to have brunch.
The first real test of human compliance with the dawning of the new millenium will be when we engage in normal conversation with others. I think at first there will be a period where people will avoid mentioning the actual year, and will use phrases common to all such as "this year", "next year" and "last year". In the meantime, I am hoping that Hollywood will step in and point the way for us in 1999, otherwise, as time goes by, it will become apparent that we forgot to program ourselves for this whole transition.
Think for a moment how fluidly we deal with the years in our thinking and our conversations now. I have some back issues of Heavy Metal that I would like to unload, most from the early '80s, like '82 and '83. Got around fifty or so, most are near mint to very fine condition, bagged in '92 and I rebagged them in '97. I wonder if I can find my copy of Horns and Crescent from Lughnasadh '98, I would love to take a trip to that Pagan-owned inn in Vermont, what the heck was it called? I know I saw the owners at Manray back in '96, what were there names? Gods, it seems like yesterday that I turned in my '97 lease car, I wonder what the new models go for now? Hey man, want to check out the '99 VW Beetle with me?
No big deal, right? Now, what happens as we progress later into the year...? Will you be going to PSG this year or are you doing it every two years these days? I'll probably make the one in...1... after I get back from Germany, that is if I can get that much time off from work.
We will, ever so cautiously, follow our preprogrammed custom of wanting to refer to the years without the first two numbers, yet this will sound just too stupid for people to handle! Well, maybe I'll go to that gathering in 04, because my sabbatical will be over then, and I will be looking for fellowship again. Yes, my Avatar is getting old, and I am afraid that he will not be around much past 05, for his health has taken a turn for the worse. And I just lost my grandmother back in 03, so I shouldn't let too much time go by...
Yeah, as if!! I am telling you, friends, we are not going to be that uncool, at least not me! Even if we wanted to talk like that, it would not be intuitive, and I am certain that we would not be able to keep it up for long. And even if we do, the 0-whatever business can only last in our present tense for ten years! Then we are in the teens! Then, maybe jokingly we will say things like, yeah, back in 07, boy that was some year for the Bruins. I thought that rookie forward kicked ass in 06, but man was he strong in 07 or what...63 goals, that kid is a monster!
Using the single digit for the year just doesn't sound right either. I plan to buy a house by 6, and then I can get the new wheels maybe by the Spring of 7. Maybe I'll just wait until the Summer of 7 for the new 8s to come out.
Neither do I think that we will be able to get our minds around the "ot" thing. Yes, in ot ot, I will be going to the AFA conference, you know, and I hope that this year Demetra George will go over the transits to my Juno, Eros, Psyche, and Chiron for ot 1 and ot 2, and sign my copy of Asteroid Goddesses! Ot this, fanboy! Isn't that what the our great-great-great 'grandparents used to say?
Yet I will say in defense of the "ot" language, that if you take peoples' credit card numbers all day, as I do, then you may be getting a little used to hearing the ocassional old folks chuckle as they say the expiration date of their cards, because now they are all ot ot, ot 1, or ot 2.
Perhaps we will all simply pronounce the entire full year, actually saying "two thousand and three". Yes, what a time we had at the renfair in 2001...it was like a space odyssey! I believe, however, that nearly every living American has a natural propensity toward abbreviations. Even when we call somebody "dude", or "honey" or we just say "hey", we are unconsciously dispensing with the actual enuciation of the person's full name, and whether we actually know why or not, it is nevertheless a learned behavior our entire lives.
Here is my plan. I am going to start a trend, and it has less than a year to catch on. My Leo planets compel me to have the hippest lingo around. So I am going to say "two", and then the last digit. So, I will be at Free Spirit in 2-1, PSG in 2-2, and maybe in 2-3 and 2-4, I will just do Panthea. I really think that works, so mote it be!
I have already heard the "just get over it, dude,"s, so if you are compelled to comment on this article in that manner, please refrain your comments to the weather. Yet I would be interested in what others think about this. For I truly believe that we are just so used to abbreviating the year in our conversation that we will collectively have a Y2K compliancy problem, and even if folks do not concur with me now, wait and see, for time will most certainly tell how we will certainly , or with uncertainty, "tell" time.
Bright Blessings,
Carlo
OVE alone is eternal and unconquerable.
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