and so here we are, folks. this is what it has all come down to, look you see. death, demise and destruction - whilst not necessarily in that order - shall be with us all quite soon. or, at the least, it will be according to some. yes, those who justify any and all outlandish "worst case" prediction by using the qualifying word "could".
in this instance, we are at the end of days once more again due to those clever people what do them computers and that. why they cannot just do them computers and that in a sensible way is lost on me, but i am sure they know what they are doing. any of you who were far too young to experience the pains, the pleasures and the overall disappointment of the exciting named Y2K Bug can, at the least, experience some of the fun of that. this they can do tomorrow, if you are reading this the day before.
what's going on? alas no sexy name this time, just a general problem called the "possible" GPS malfunction. due to a design flaw, or lazy programming, some GPS devices could malfunction as of forty two seconds past fifty nine minutes past eleven pm in the measure of universal coordinated time (UTC), or if you like just before midnight is reached on April 6 2019 UK time.
blimey, sounds quite serious. and it probably is more serious that i am making out, but also i doubt that it is. what's the short, plain speak version of the issue? let me try.
older variations of GPS devices rely on a "binary coded" (which is to say all that 1 and 0 instead of using other numbers or words nonsense) timestamp to work. such devices can (and this is broadly defining it) only handle or store 1024 such "units" of coding, with one unit lasting about an earth week. sorry, people of Mars, you are on your own. anyway, this means that such GPS units have to "reset" themselves every 1024 weeks, or roughly every 20 years. such a time is now with us, then.
impact? no one is entirely sure, so the word "could" is being used to describe all sorts of possible disasters which may befall us. for instance, some nuclear missile installation somewhere might malfunction due to the reset, and it could, presumably for a laugh, elect to randomly fire off all atom loaded rockets in its confusion, just for a laugh. or people with really, really old sat nav devices might find they do not work, go "oh bother" and find that they have to spend £50 or so on a replacement.
what troubles me about all of this is how everyone is assuming we are going to be, or intend to be, right big fannies if and when this happens. my own lifestyle relies a fair bit on using GPS, in truth. however, should i wake on April 7 (allowing for no nuclear holocaust) and find that it doesn't work, i believe i shall not start running around in panic, screaming, naked, smearing myself in assorted excrement at the insanity of it all. it is more likely that i shall just have to put on my big girl pants and work out another way to get to where i need to be.
it has been a while since i consulted the relevant volumes and texts, but from what i recall of history them explorers had a hunch, or superstitious suspicion, that land laid beyond the horizon, so they just lived a little and sailed in that general direction, hoping for the best. also, when we went to the moon, basically all we did was saw it in the sky, built an enormous rocket and twatted it one in the general direction of what we assumed was some sort of planet capable of landing on. to my knowledge, thousands of years of explorers are recorded as either being successful or failing, with none of them being described as "likely to have discovered such and such country, but the lack of GPS technology prevented them from reaching their dream".
anyway, let us see what happens with this latest computer glitch. or not, if we all end up dead as a result of it. remember, it could happen..........
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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