In the midst of the final countdown to the new millennium at 11:59 p.m. on December 31, 1999, people were waiting for more than confetti to fly and the ball to drop. Eyes around the world were locked on computer systems to see if the technology would advance with the clock. As news outlets had warned the public for months, the so-called Y2K bug was expected to affect, and potentially paralyze thousands of computer systems worldwide, and WMATA was taking no chances when it came to making sure Metro would be running when the year 2000 arrived.