Y2K watch: Bug bite highlights.(Knight-Ridder Newspapers)

OK, so this isn't the Emmys.

But after covering this year 2000 thing for nearly 17 months, it's time for the first and only Bug Bite Highlights, our way of drawing attention to the good, bad and indifferent of the Y2K world.

Here goes:

Lamest excuse to cloak concerns about Y2K ...

Goes to eBay, the online auction site. This notice was posted on the Web site this week:

``The eBay system will be unavailable ... from 23:00 PST, Friday, Dec. 31, to 03:00 PST, Saturday, Jan 1. During this downtime, we will perform routine maintenance on the database.''

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Most off-the-wall Y2K prediction ...

Goes to Gary North, a Tyler, Texas, Christian-oriented historian and poster boy of the Y2K doomer crowd. In a Jan. 7, 1999, online interview in which he questioned himself, and provided his own answers, North said:

Q. You're saying that all production will stop (because of Y2K problems)?

A. Close enough to ``all'' to threaten your life and the lives of a billion or more people. ... I worry about the industrial world. ... Two billion people could die.''

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Worst financial advice ...

Goes to Y2K doom-and-gloom author Jim Lord, a Maryland software consultant and author of ``A Survival Guide for the Year 2000 Problem.'' Here's his stock market advice from March 1998:

``The risk is too significant that there will be serious, even terrible, problems with the stock market and the economy in general. I think the prudent person should get out. And I think Dec. 31, 1998, is the latest point in time to pull the plug.''

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has since risen more than 2,300 points _ about 25…