Y2K is geek shorthand for "Year 2000" -- which is ironic because if it weren't for geek shorthand, there might not be a Year 2000 problem in the first place. Programmers have been using two-digit numbers, such as 98, to stand for four-digit years, such as 1998. Then, a few years ago, some genius figured out that if these programs decide to refer to the year 2000 as 00, important calculations -- such as, say, the price of every stock traded on Wall Street or the entire government payroll -- might get rolled back to the year 1900, with predictably disastrous results.

But don’t go tying this computer snafu into any Biblical end-of-the-world prophecy. The Y2K bug has nothing to do with the year 2000. It has to do with the turn of the century, not the millennium. See, if mankind had invented computers back in the 1800s, we would have had this problem back in 1900. Just bad timing for this annoying computer bug to occur at seemingly apocalyptic time.