Y2k

Power grids might not have crashed, the phone system might not have failed to function and water taps might not have run dry. But don't tell the owner and several patrons of Kawasaki restaurant in downtown Baltimore that the rollover to 2000 was totally smooth. They have the bad memories, paperwork and, in some cases, lingering problems to prove otherwise. Because of a glitch in software that processes credit card and debit card transactions that went undetected for several days early last month, the restaurant kept billing and billing and billing.

Add one more item to the short list of problems linked to Y2K: the Baltimore-Washington area's emergency blood supply is lower than normal at the end of the holiday season. The American Red Cross, which needs 1,100 pints of blood a day to meet the needs of area hospitals, is down to a day's supply or less of the three most common blood types. Red Cross spokesman Patrick Smith said the agency frequently has blood shortages in late summer and after the Christmas and new year holidays, but this one is worse.

The computer world's brightest minds may have licked the Y2K bug and stopped it from mucking up the new year. But 17-year-old Matt Ashburn thinks the nation's nerds shouldn't get too cocky. On his new Web page the high school senior from Martinsville, Va., has documented more than a hundred Web sites that succumbed to the millennium bug, usually in the form of screwy dates. "We just find it funny that, even after months of preparation by the entire world, some sites have had date and year-related follies," he writes on the site.

THE INITIAL public offering market had its best year ever in 1999, raising a record $69.2 billion, according to Thomson Financial Securities Data. That accounts for almost 20 percent of the total raised since 1989, and while the total number of deals was down, the dollar amount was far and away the highest. The next highest was $49.9 billion raised in 1996. What is the forecast for 2000? Will investors still snap up hot new issues? Will Internet stocks continue to generate a frenzy? What about other types of companies?

WHAT a wonderful anticlimax the turning of the year, decade, century and millennium (or at least calendar) turned out to be. The world did not end. That's the main thing. The power stayed on. Everything worked. No bombs at celebrations, not even a panic. The Inner Harbor, Times Square, the Mall were all splendidly joyful. What impressed the most people everywhere was the television portrayal of celebrations hour by hour in such places as Tonga, Sydney, Beijing, Moscow, Bethlehem, Rome, Paris, London, New York and Baltimore.

Governments and businesses around the world began closing down their Y2K crisis centers yesterday as the first work day of the year 2000 came and went with barely a hint of the digital catastrophe some had feared. Office workers, bankers, brokers, hospital and school administrators and home PC users reported mostly minor and easily remedied glitches linked to the digital rollover from '99 to '00. The happy ending to the Y2K melodrama drew reactions ranging from relief to a nagging feeling the whole thing had been a hoax.

Anybody need 15 gallons of bottled water, two dozen flashlight batteries, a Coleman lantern, two jars of applesauce and five cans of Chef Boyardee fat-free ravioli? If we held a household Y2K yard sale today, those items would be on the table. And at first blush, it appears that the money we spent on them bought us little more than peace of mind. That's because Doomsday did not arrive on schedule. The planet rolled into the year 2000 with a worldwide fireworks extravaganza but barely a hiccup from the computers that control our communications, power, water and transportation systems.

As the Baltimore area and the rest of the world heaved a collective sigh of relief at the lack of major Y2K computer problems over the weekend, experts warned that the ballyhooed bug might rear its head in some places today, the first weekday of 2000. Many businesses and government agencies that were closed or short-staffed over the weekend will be back to full operations, creating the possibility that computer gremlins that lay dormant for the first two days of the new year could show up today and in coming days.

YOU PROBABLY thought this morning, as you finally shook off the effects of the champagne or crouched among your canned goods, that you were finally done with the millennium. But, as Yogi Berra pointedly observed, "it ain't over till it's over." Even though many newspapers, including this one, have repeatedly run articles about the start of the millennium -- and The Sun even had one of those digital clocks in the lobby ticking off the seconds until the great event -- the 20th century and the second millennium A.D. still have 12 months to run. How, you wonder sourly, have we come to this?

New Year's Day came and went without much of a computer hitch. Those little nines on computer systems across the country turned to zeros and nothing exploded. Not a plane fell out of the sky. Not a light failed to glow. Not a bank account froze. Not a phone went dead. (At least not any that caused a 2000 meltdown.) It was the NOT heard round the world. At least for the first 24 hours. America, stand by. The Big Glitch may still be coming, though. That's what the experts cautioned yesterday.