leap year takes out Fuel stop pump payments

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#3201582 29-Feb-2024 14:01

SaltyNZ:

lxsw20:

Awaits the 2038 problem

Us Y2K vets can expect to triple our retirement nesteggs with the consultancy fees we make in 2037.

Won't be that many of us Y2K veterans left.

Unless you were a callow youth in 1998/99 - and most of us were already hardened and seasoned veterans - you'll be well retired by then.

In 2037 I'll have been retired over fifteen years, but I still remember seeing in the New Millennium with a plastic cup of warm lemonade in my hand, gathered in the Emergency Operations Centre of a critical infrastructure provider. Went home to bed at 00:30, happy that all the effort had proved effective.
When 2038 rolls around, I'll just be hoping the entertainment systems in the Retirement Village keep going. Or I won't care because I'll be pushing up daisies. LOL

freitasm

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#3201583 29-Feb-2024 14:04

PolicyGuy:

Won't be that many of us Y2K veterans left.

I was there on the front lines. Working at Unisys, making sure Telecom New Zealand prepay, voice-mail and calling card platforms did not stop on 01/01/00.

"Calling card" kids. It was something back them. The youth these days.

invisibleman18

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#3201586 29-Feb-2024 14:11

Have to be at the airport to catch an early morning flight tomorrow and car was almost empty so just attempted to fill up. Pak n Save was out, so went to New World and also out. Didn't really want the hassle of the extra time getting petrol in the morning (and Lower Hutt to Wellington Airport is probably a bit far to try and go on empty) so had to reluctantly go to BP across the road from PnS at 20c a litre more. It's almost like you need some sort of warning about this date happening or something. If only there was some way it could have been anticipated...

Earbanean

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#3201611 29-Feb-2024 14:45

tehgerbil:

This has mad Y2K vibes haha.

I mean this has only happened every 4 years since 45BC.... Something, something Hanlon's razor..

Note, 4 years ago, 29th was a Saturday and that wasn't a good bank date. So conceivably a payment related issue wouldn't have occurred then. It's more likely that a software change in the last 4 years is responsible, but the bug could be older than 4 years.

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#3201613 29-Feb-2024 14:46

Thankfully the weather was fine and the Vespa was fully charged this morning otherwise I probably would have been caught up in it as my fuel light came on on the way home last night.

bagheera

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#3201614 29-Feb-2024 14:47

freitasm:

PolicyGuy:

Won't be that many of us Y2K veterans left.

I was there on the front lines. Working at Unisys, making sure Telecom New Zealand prepay, voice-mail and calling card platforms did not stop on 01/01/00.

"Calling card" kids. It was something back them. The youth these days.

I was on the telecom ChCh building roof watching the fireworks, as the veteran said go up on the roof and enjoy, I will send for you if needed - I learned so much from him, and was a sad day when management decided that as he ran a very good ship down there, and nothing happens why have anyone there. (I was Auckland base but ship down to help out for Y2K as he was the only person looking after the internal servers down there.)

SaltyNZ

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#3201615 29-Feb-2024 14:50

PolicyGuy:

Unless you were a callow youth in 1998/99 - and most of us were already hardened and seasoned veterans - you'll be well retired by then.

In 2037 I'll have been retired over fifteen years, but I still remember seeing in the New Millennium with a plastic cup of warm lemonade in my hand, gathered in the Emergency Operations Centre of a critical infrastructure provider. Went home to bed at 00:30, happy that all the effort had proved effective.
When 2038 rolls around, I'll just be hoping the entertainment systems in the Retirement Village keep going. Or I won't care because I'll be pushing up daisies. LOL

I was relatively fresh with a year's grown-up employment behind me. My company, Logica Aldiscon, provided (amongst others) the SMSC for Vodafone NZ at the time, so if there was going to be trouble the Sydney office would be the first to know.

They gave us a global deal where there would be two 8-hour shifts for everyone - one on-call overnight and one in the office the next day at a total pay rate that we frankly thought was a mistake until it turned up in our November pay (it was the same amount in GBP for all staff all over the world ... apparently there was some worry that the Bangalore crowd might go MIA considering how many months pay it worked out to for them). I drew next day office so I got to go out modestly on NYE.

Drove to work at 6am from my house. A trip that usually took over 2 hours on a good day took me about 40 minutes. I didn't see another car on the road. It was like the first day of L4 lockdown.

Rocked up to the office, already aware there had been no calls. Availed myself of free hot buffet breakfast and then settled in to watch Blackadder DVDs and play C&C Red Alert. After about 4 hours the boss called to confirm there hadn't been any other calls, then sent us home.

Anyway, I'll be just barely retired / happy to come out of recent retirement for $1000/hr in 2038.

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#3201616 29-Feb-2024 14:51

freitasm:

PolicyGuy:

Won't be that many of us Y2K veterans left.

I was there on the front lines. Working at Unisys, making sure Telecom New Zealand prepay, voice-mail and calling card platforms did not stop on 01/01/00.

"Calling card" kids. It was something back them. The youth these days.

Y2K is the perfect embodiment of the old adage:
"When everything breaks, everyone asks what are we paying you for.
When nothing breaks, everyone asks what are we paying you for!"

neb

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#3201634 29-Feb-2024 15:39

freitasm:
How can leap year cause problems with software that's been in use for years?

My immediate reaction was "let me guess, this software is under four years old?". If that is the case then it'd never have been tested in such a situation, and the developers just assumed whatever libraries they were using would get it right, along with end-of-year rollover and other date-related things.

neb

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#3201649 29-Feb-2024 15:58

lxsw20:
Awaits the 2038 problem

Already happened in some cases when you've got equipment with 20-year windows, where it hit in 2018. Except for some special cases which couldn't handle times beyond 2036, so it hit in 2016. I've got date-handling code that's several pages of A4, mostly comments, for detecting all the ways C libraries can break with dates around 1970 and 2038 and how to detect and work around them.

And then try portably handling UTC local time conversion during a DST changeover (this is a trick question, you can't do it).

freitasm

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#3201655 29-Feb-2024 16:07

neb:
freitasm:

How can leap year cause problems with software that's been in use for years?

My immediate reaction was "let me guess, this software is under four years old?". If that is the case then it'd never have been tested in such a situation, and the developers just assumed whatever libraries they were using would get it right, along with end-of-year rollover and other date-related things.

Tests are mostly automated these times. Surely, a "Test for leap year" is in the books instead of "Nah, don't worry. Let's wait for an actual leap year and see if it works"

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#3201656 29-Feb-2024 16:11

neb:
lxsw20:

Awaits the 2038 problem

Already happened in some cases when you've got equipment with 20-year windows, where it hit in 2018. Except for some special cases which couldn't handle times beyond 2036, so it hit in 2016. I've got date-handling code that's several pages of A4, mostly comments, for detecting all the ways C libraries can break with dates around 1970 and 2038 and how to detect and work around them. And then try portably handling UTC local time conversion during a DST changeover (this is a trick question, you can't do it).

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neb

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#3201661 29-Feb-2024 16:13

freitasm:
Tests are mostly automated these times. Surely, a "Test for leap year" is in the books instead of "Nah, don't worry. Let's wait for an actual leap year and see if it works"

I don't know if date-handling was even on the radar for things to test, it'd be more handling a million types of network errors and payment-processing exceptions while assuming that the substrate it's built on is OK. It's an interesting question, how far down do you test, and what do you test for? For example for times, will it handle times in the past? Ten years in the future? Twenty? A request sent at xx:59 and a response at x+1:01? :00? Two hours apart? a DST changeover apart, where the time can be negative, or more than an hour for a sub-second exchange? etc.

neb

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#3201663 29-Feb-2024 16:15

SaltyNZ:
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Naah, we need it to keep programmers alert.

Kookoo

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#3201693 29-Feb-2024 16:54

freitasm:

Tests are mostly automated these times. Surely, a "Test for leap year" is in the books instead of "Nah, don't worry. Let's wait for an actual leap year and see if it works"

Ah yes, test automation. Let see...

1) run the tests

2) wait for the script to crash because someone changed something in the test environment without asking

3) disable automated testing for these features

4) pass it all because the release date is approaching, there's no headcount to test it manually anyway and we can always deploy a hotfix if the customers ever notice an issue.

Test complete.

Hello, Ground!

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