TIME CAPSULE 2000—I MERELY CALL IT HOME

KELLY SASSO OF WTAE PITTSBURGH REPORTS “Western Pennsylvania Students Amazed By What’s Inside Time Capsule From 2000,” WTAE 4 ABC, January 8, 2026: “Students in the Hempfield Area School District had a chance to ‘time travel’ back to the year 2000 on Thursday.”

Image from WTAE 4 ABC.

Sasso recounts, “For students who have grown up with online shopping, cell phones and life on demand, the items inside felt like artifacts.” She quotes Rylan Steininger: “It makes it seem like everything was, like, more joyful back then, kind of,” Ryland said.

My Own Time Capsule 2000. Yes, Ryland, I know exactly what you mean. Indeed, I have another name for my own Time Capsule 2000: home. Here are tidbits gleaned from merely looking around this place.

Preparing for Y2K. Late in the last century (how quaint this sounds today!), I assembled a “Technology Update Y2K: Doomsday or Melodrama?,” R&T, May 1999. Kids these days have more than enough to fret about, but there were people back then getting all wacko about a general collapse of our world with the year 2000.

A wonderful image by Guy Billout from R&T, May 1999.

Two callouts from the article sum up my personal prediction: “There’s a website offering $100 for any documented proof of a Y2K-related automobile failure; none has appeared as yet.” What’s more, “And does it come as any surprise that lawyers have had seminars on how to profit from Y2K?” 

In retrospect, kids, Y2K was no big deal. 

The Inaugural Indianapolis Grand Prix, 2000. We pretty much emptied out the office for this one. Road Test Editor Patrick Hong and I also took advantage of things by performing a virtual telemetry-based test of the Jaguar R1 Formula One car.

My first-corner vest from the event.

Hurrah for Travel! Working at R&T I was blessed with opportunities for world travel, T&E accounts of which occasionally exceeded my salary. 

Two of more than a dozen.

These contain scads of memories: Munich’s Allois Dallmyr and schweinhaxe, Tokyo’s Kabukiza, even learning how to pronounce Llangollen (it’s Welsh: “Thl’an-gothl’n,” sorta, with those thl’s given explosive force).

From the top, Welsh canalboat art, Kabukiza’s new home,  and Munich’s Alois Dallmyr and Schweinhaxe.

Contacts from “At-A-Glance 2000.” Penciled in at the front, before any expense records, are lots of interesting memorabilia: a phone number for the car Chunnel 7 a.m.-10 p.m. One for Healthy Lithuanian Restaurant on S. Halstead, Chicago. Daughter Suz’s Malibu number when she house-sat on the ocean. And a tantalizing one: a PO box and email address for Liz in Fiji.

Local Travels. Driving north in May 1992, Wife Dottie and I obviously gave way to the Gorbachev/Reagan convoy heading up the 101 toward the latter’s Rancho del Cielo digs. We tooted our welcome.

Later, we visited the Reagan Museum in Simi Valley, saw part of the Berlin Wall, and an Air Force One—and celebrated buying a card holder at the gift shop.

In neighborhood travels, Wife Dottie and I were known to slum at antique malls. One of our real finds was a vintage fire horn used in mines. It became part of the family tradition that actuating the thing—by foot pedal—was part of any birthday celebration. The neighbors, kindly, pretended not to notice. 

Computer Memorabilia. I seem to have a hobby of preserving computer hardware and software, though I realize I’m not alone in this. (Note, too, the “RUN\DOS\RUN” T-shirt in my mug shot.)

An Olivetti M10, c. 1983. Wife Dottie was gifted this state-of-the-art laptop on an Italian press junket years ago.

Floppy Disks. Storing and transferring computer files also have time-capsule aspects, ranging from floppy discs (which, indeed, were originally 8-in., thin, and floppy). They evolved into smaller (3 1/2-in. x 3 5/8-in. high) ones, still called floppies though encased in hard shells. Then came CDs and, today, thumb drive storage of amazing capacity (up to 4 Terabytes!). In fact, high-capacity external hard drives of 16TB are available. 

My collection of vintage-2000 floppies. One is hand-labeled “Budapest,” another, “Dellow1.TIF (DRAWING) Dellow2.TIF (4/c MkIIB).” 

Needless to say, I haven’t had a computer reading these floppies for years (though, if I wanted, I could add a remote reader compatible with modern hardware). In fact, my latest iMac 27 (itself, a late-2015 relic) doesn’t have a CD slot incorporated into its screen frame (as did a previous one). I continue to use CDs enough to have added a remote reader. 

Flightsim Stuff. These days, my flightsim hobby is focused on building GMax vintage aircraft for use in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight (also something of a relic; FS2024 is the latest, albeit an apparent disaster). Fact be known, after completing a model and fooling with it a bit, I typically go on to a new GMax project after only a few test flights.

This Microsoft Flight Simulator, copyright 1995, is part of my Time Capsule, though my active FS9 dates from 2004.

Hmm… I wonder if any of those floppies might have interesting vintage flightsim scenery? Maybe I need a floppy reader after all? 

And I hope Liz in Fiji is well. ds

 © Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026