You shouldn’t unless you were one of the thousands of workerswho spent millions of person-hours over the last few years sweatingthe millennium bug out of your company’s systems. If that was you,congratulations; you’ve made this last new year slightly morememorable than Hands Across America Day. Now it’s time for anyfood-hoarding doomsayers to get busy: You’ve got a lot ofstockpiled chips and salsa to get rid of.

Numerous companies and government officials have now had time tocredit costly Armageddon-avoidance measures for saving the countryduring the 2000 rollover. Lights stayed on; escalators didn’tstall; and whatever device keeps Dick Clark functioning didn’t evenshort circuit. And, they say, what was learned from these effortswill come in handy during the countdown to the next imminentapocalypse, whatever and whenever that might be.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy (A Y2K-compliantagency as, come to think of it, aren’t we all?) the domesticelectricity, gas and oil industries spent about $5 billion on Y2Kremediation and rapid response systems. “The fact the firedepartment didn’t have to put out many fires this weekend doesn’tmean we shouldn’t have a fire department,” said Energy SecretaryBill Richardson. “I believe the American people are happy andpositively surprised that things are going so well.”

Well, probably not. But at least we’re not dealing with amicrowave popcorn famine or shortage of clean, dry underwear. Now,one can only hope all the Y2K fixes won’t prevent a Y3K crisis. Whoare we to deny our distant descendants the thrill of a computermeltdown on what will doubtless be a truly machine-run planet?

Joe Fisher, Houston

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