The new millennium dawned Saturday morning, and the world's computers hummed along as if it were just another day, the feared Y2K bug barely noticeable.
"It's like the systems knew we're on the watchout," said Sergiu Iliescu, in charge of the rollover in Romania, which reported even fewer incidents than usual in the country's ill-equipped computer industry.
From nuclear power plants to ATMs to airplanes, few problems surfaced as the year 2000 began in the South Pacific and swept west before ending in the American Samoa.
"The Mouse That Didn't Roar," read a headline in Saturday's Bangkok Post.
"I'm honest enough to say I'd rather have spent the night home with my family," said a tired Gerhard Barth, head of information systems at Dresdner Bank. "But we're happy that everything was so boring."
Still, the millennial bug — a simple computer glitch when the date changes from 1999 to 2000 — was responsible for a few problems.
A computer linked to radiation monitoring devices at a Japanese nuclear plant failed, but officials said it wasn't considered serious enough to shut the plant. Ticketing machines on some buses in Australia briefly jammed. Forecasting maps at the French weather service initially got the New Year Day date as "01/01/19100." Taxi meters broke down in a China province.
Three dialysis machines stopped functioning in Egypt hospitals, but the problem was quickly fixed.
But the problems didn't compare to the dire predictions that spurred years of preparations and an estimated $500 billion spent worldwide to avoid the worst.
"The reason we're in the position we're in is because we spent that money. Had we not spent this money, we would be facing worldwide calamity," said Matt Hotle, vice president of the technology consulting firm Gartner Group.
And experts warned there remained a potential for damage.
In Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and other parts of the world considered most at risk for Y2K meltdowns, officials reported nothing out of the ordinary.
Russian nuclear weapons sites and the country's 29 nuclear reactors, which rely on clumsy Soviet-era technology, suffered no problems. Aging atomic power plants ran without a hitch in Ukraine, which in 1986 suffered the world's worst nuclear disaster with a meltdown in Chernobyl.
ATM machines in Dublin delivered Irish pounds without trouble. "I was kinda hoping the Irish machines would go nuts and cough up the money like a slot machine," said Ray Barnaby from New Haven, Conn.
A Y2K glitch in Japan caused vending machines for prepaid train cards to stop working briefly in 13 stations. Phones, electricity and ATMs worked fine in Croatia, though the free phone line to answer Y2K questions was disconnected. Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka posted a notice on their Web site saying they were Y2K compliant.
As the countdown ticked off before the midnight hour, many countries shut down vital systems to be safe. Airports in several countries canceled flights. Subways in Cairo and Istanbul were closed. Large ships were banned from the Bosporus strait. ATMs in Beijing were shut. Indonesia cut oil production.
Some of the world's best-known pieces of machinery survived the turnover completely unaffected by the Y2K computer glitch — since they don't use computers.
Old-fashioned clockworks let Big Ben chime in the new year in London, while the Panama Canal let ships through its mechanically operated locks.
"It was all nonsense," said Jerome Robbins, a mechanic in Kingston, Jamaica, who took his family to see the fireworks over the city's harbor. "People just making a fuss about nothing, nothing at all."