Bob, you can believe what you want. Hypothesize to your heart's content. Create any alternate reality that suits your needs. It doesn't change truth. You are doing what so many have done - confused measuring with counting. Look at your ruler. 12 inches. The ruler starts at zero. The first inch is that space from 0 to 1 on the gauge. Not the space from 1 to 2. You don't have a foot until the END of the twelfth inch. A millennium is 1000 years. You don't have 1000 years until the END of the 1000th year. The first 999 years did not have a 1 in the thousands digit. 1000 did. It was still one of the first 1000 years. This year, 1999, is the one thousand nine hundred ninety ninth year. Next year will be the 2000th year since the beginning of ther first day of the first month of the first year of our Gregorian calendar (measuring from time 0, if you like). Only when it has passed will 2000 years, 2 millenniums, have been counted. 2001 will be the first year of the third millennium.

2000 IS the first year of the 2000's. It ain't the first year of the third millennium. Or the 21st century. No way. Party on.