My father was in the CCU. That's the Critical Care Unit, not just ICU for Intensive Care Unit. We literally didn't know that month if he would survive until Christmas (he did), never mind New Year's Eve.
My mother had to go to Boeing to make SURE all the computers in her department worked on the stroke of midnight, January 1st, 2000. (She worked in the Time Systems Standards Analysis department, aka literally gauging how long a task should take versus how long it does take, so that the planners can adjust when various thing happen to the airplanes at various stages of construction.) As a part of her work, she helped design the computer systems...and then helped recode them to avoid the Y2K problem.
She went to work before midnight, and stayed there for 6 hours (admittedly earning triple-time pay), missing out on sleep and being with her family and especially her critially ill beloved husband. She had to stay that long, because she had to make sure the computers synchronized properly with a small company Boeing was affiliated with in Hawai'i (iirc, mind you this was 24 years ago, so my memory may be off).
My sister and I weren't allowed to visit past certain hours, so that the night shift nurses could get their work done, since there were fewer on duty at that hour. So my sister and I had a relatively pathetic NYE celebration. I think we watched Almost New Year's...? (Who cares about NYC constantly dropping the ball eat NYE? WE BLOW UP THE SPACE NEEDLE!! 8D )
Anyway, Y2K was very real for my household. Billions--not millions, but billions--of dollars were riding on the coding efforts of all the IT, etc, workers at Boeing that night.
When Good happens...well, Good is quiet and peaceful. Evil is NOISY and SCARY, so When Bad Things Happen, you NOTICE it.
But when everything goes right, When Everything Is Good...you don't notice.
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