It's been a full 10 days now and still next to nothing has happened. Anthony Finkelstein was right! Who'd have thought?
A few planes were delayed in Washington. A video store in New England charged $290,000 for an overnight rental, a couple of power plants in Japan lost power for an hour, and there was that hospital in Ansan, Korea, that recorded a newborn's birthday as Jan. 1, 1900.
Other than that, Y2K had all the disaster of a traffic jam in Wendover.
Yes, it is entirely possible that the $100 billion we spent in the United States — a figure that worked out to about $365 per American — was largely wasted.
Government Y2K overseers might deny this, saying that all the prevention we bought with our $100 billion is precisely why there weren't any significant problems.
But over in Italy they're sure not buying it. Italy was one of those countries that listened to the Y2K warnings and then turned over and went back to sleep.
This week's headline in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica: "The Bug Was a Dud."
English translation: I told you so.
In Russia, too, where cash-flow problems dictated little if any Y2K compliancy testing and where they nonetheless passed the millennium barrier with hardly a computer glitch, they couldn't resist a little smugness.
There was this New Year's Day quote from Yevgeny Adamov, Russia's energy minister: "I was shoveling snow and the shovel broke. I am sure it was the Y2K bug."
For $100 billion, we get international smack-talking from Yevgeny Adamov.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in London, Anthony Finkelstein is tossing back his neck scarf and gloating big time.
Finkelstein, you may or may not know, is the computer professor at University College, London, whose repeated warnings during the late 1990s about Y2K hysteria fell on mostly deaf ears.
As technology experts braced us for the worst and writers like Gary North predicted a "disaster greater than anything the world has experienced since the bubonic plague of the 14th century," Finkelstein was one of those who claimed it was all nonsense; that we were daft to listen to it.
As computer calm descended on Britain in the new century, this is what Finkelstein, sounding a bit Churchillian, told the London Times: "The public was ignorant, the consultants were drawn by the lure of filthy lucre, the scientists were seized with a mad cow effect in which their advice ceased to be rational, the nutcases were declaring the end of the world, and a sensible and empirically founded approach to risk was lost."
English translation: I told you so.
I suppose I can afford to be a little smug myself
Even though I am American, when it came to Y2K I took the Italian approach. I didn't rent a generator, I didn't stock up on water purifiers, I didn't buy a single can of Spam.
As for my personal home computer, which I purchased in 1993, I took the same approach. I also did nothing.
I turned the computer on for the first time in the new century this past weekend. Then I stood back to see what would happen.
As the machine sprang normally to life, I waited to see the date.
Finally it appeared: "1-8-:0."
It invented its own century! We're in the :0s! Who said computers aren't brilliant?
Fully booted, the screen sat there, shining blue, the cursor blinking at me, silently screaming "Write something!" like it always does.
Business as usual.
I think I'll call Finkelstein and let him know.
Lee Benson's columns runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.