[y2k] Interesting profile of Peter de Jager — the man who spent a decade fighting the Y2K computer problem — on how he feels a year after the non-event. Unsurprisingly, he’s not a happy man… ‘On the evening of New Year’s Eve, Mr. de Jager kissed his wife and boarded the transatlantic flight. At 10 seconds to midnight the pilot began his countdown. “Understand, I was living and breathing Y2K,” he says. “I had absolutely no concern.” The New Year hit, the plane stayed aloft. “I’m officially unemployed,” Mr. de Jager proclaimed to a reporter who was on the flight with him. Early on New Year’s morning, Mr. de Jager awoke in a London hotel room to the ringing of a telephone. Another reporter. “So it was all a hoax!” the reporter said. Later, interviewers alleged he was a shyster.’ [via Slashdot]

[y2k] Another look back at Y2K — this time from Matthew Fort. ‘A year that marked more debate over the role of alcohol in social violence even witnessed a spot of bother at a tea dance: a 77-year-old grandfather sent a 71-year-old rival to hospital with a broken wrist, broken nose and cuts after being accused of interfering with the ladies. The would-be pugilist was given a suspended sentence, but left court defiant, saying, “I am a gentleman and, anyway, I’m impotent.”‘

[y2k] Jon Ronson looks back at Y2K…. On Tony Martin: ‘Martin had, for 18 months before the shooting, worked himself into a frenzy. He had sealed his windows, patrolled his property with a loaded gun and yelled at passers-by, “I’ll blow the heads off thieves and machine-gun Gypsies.” But as a metaphor he became a downtrodden rural Englishman protecting his castle against the worst sort of foreign invader, a Gypsy. Hague assured the Gypsy-haters that under a Tory government the “floods of Kosovars and Romanian Gypsies swamping soft-touch Britain” would be locked in detention centres.’