A Long Way to Carlisle, part 13: Do you remember the millennium crash that never came?

Nowadays, you can pay your bills in the middle of the night if it suits you, at least in Sweden. Just log on to your bank and fix your bank errands. Another sort of service is the one that we had before, when you just had your bank office to go to, with opening hours only when you worked yourself.

It is possible to write kind of much about these small stuff. The success of the technique gives other options. And all of a sudden, tight-fisted opening hours is opened around the clock. And queues are gone. This article also got a puff on the first page of the newspaper. :-)

But I found more in this article. Also, I had written about the turn of the millennium, that was supposed to be happening about a year after the publishing of the article. Some quotation from the article:

"There are customers who is thinking about emptying there bank accounts so that money won't disappear if computers would crash."

"Handelsbanken has analyzed, prevented and taken measures against problems in connection with the turn of the millennium - for years. This includes all parts of the bank. No money will disappear."

Skandiabanken: "Our bank was founded in 1994, so our computer assists are new and well prepared for year 2000. Still, extensive tests and controls are carried through." "It is important that we, as far as possible, are prepared for problems that could break out if communicating computers at other banks are hit by problems followed by the turn of the millennium. To empty ones account is totally pointless and could put one at risks. A worried person could order a statement of account before the turn of the millennium."

What a thing this was, 1999 would be 2000. And in the end, after all worrying, and all the work, absolutely nothing happened. And probably it wouldn't have without any of that job and well prepared computer systems. After all, it is kind of obvious, but at that time, when everyone incited everyone, you didn't know. Maybe it wasn't that strange after all customers were worried and banks did what they could to reassure their customer that nothing would actually happened, at the same time as they picked some points from each other through put themselves as the most secure bank. That was the time.