I'm in a position where I see a lot of media, print especially, from the national to the very local, and it's my impression that in the past two weeks y2k is suddenly front page news. A little weekly paper in Belfast Maine recently (8.13) quoted the president and chairman of the relatively small local bank as saying the Federal Reserve has warned them to expect a 10 percent business bankruptcy rate and a one percent loan default rate due to y2k. And just today (8.18) the Drudge Report, of all places, headlined a Washington Post article about y2k preparedness -- quoting de Jager as saying they're overreacting, of course. Daily papers in Maine have had a series of stories because our U.S. Senator, Olympia Snoew, organized a series of statewide y2k workshops for small business owners this summer. There have been multiple other articles in other papers. Is anyone else seeing this in their parts of the country, and what attitude are the articles taking?

-- J.D. Clark (yankeejdc@aol.com), August 18, 1998

Answers

I'm seeing more of it now also, as I scan lots of media and websites. However, I'm also looking for it, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it. The NYTIMES website has two pieces on its front right now (8/18/98 - 5pm). Unfortunately, the first of those pieces tries to make it sound like a religious doom 'n gloom thing. Both pieces make it sound bad, but don't personalize it.

The thing that I see overall, is sort of a mockery of the whole thing. I believe that we've gotten so used to violence in movies, lying by politicians, and total negativity stuff in the "crap you don't want to have happen to you" local newscasts that we are so dulled out that when something really bad comes along, it's too easy to shrug it off. Either it's "crap that won't happen to me" or "they" will fix it in time. The denialheads have such a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, that they can't see the writing on the wall.

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), August 18, 1998.

Each day Yahoo! post current headlines (many) about Y2K; I cant tell you how to get there from here, but if you want; I'll e-mail their site.

-- Arthur Rambo (buriedtreasure@webtv.net), August 19, 1998.

Another place to catch Y2K news on the 'net is at http://www.y2knet.com. Click on the "news" link.

-- Ron Southwick (fhsnys@dreamscape.com), August 19, 1998.

Two more sites that provide links to the Y2k news articles:

www.y2knews.com

www.year2000news.com

And yes, the number of articles appearing each day has grown a lot over the last month. They've grown more serious and urgent too.

-- G. Ingram (geri498615@aol.com), August 19, 1998.

Aug. 10, Tacoma News Tribune had a long report under their "Top News" column, by staff writer, Joe turner, who covers state government and transportation. (Email- jjt@p.tribnet.com). "The state is spending $83 million to get rid of the Year 2000 but that infests many of its computers, but it may have to spend just as much to purge the defect from its buildings and other facilities." John Saunders, Year 2000 program manager for the state Dept. of Information Systems was quoted, "Nobody has an answer at this point. It's just an open question." The report said officials are worried that prison doors might not lock, that hatchery fish might die because of no water, because of reliance on embedded chips. The report also mentioned concern about the Military Dept's. Op center. Some programs have been fixed and tested, and they work: the State Retirement systems computer that cuts checks to state and school retirees, the Dept. of Social & Health Services computer that disburses money to 50,000 doctors, hospitals, and others, and the drivers licensing system. Saunders said, "We know we can't do everything. There are some things that are not going to get fixed. But of the mission-critical systems, it looks like we're pretty much on track...The big unknowns are the facilities and the embedded chips...We don't have any sense yet of what the tab is going to be that is directly attributable to the embedded chip. But our experience is that youd rill down through layers of complexity and each layer seems to add more money." Another state official, Ms.Boyer, said contingency plans are being made in the event systems fail. For instance, an agency would keep a supply of fuel on hand for generators in the event the heating system failed--much like the plans that are made for floods, earthquakes and other disasters. "We don't have a practice run," she said. "Either we identify the problem and fix it, or a variety of things can happen." (Isn't that a comforting thought!)

-- Holly Allen (Holly3325@juno.com), August 19, 1998.

This is my first post on this forum. I'm a television news reporter at the ABC affiliate in Honolulu. I did a short two part series about Y2k last February. I have suggested doing more Y2K stories, and my news director thinks its a good idea. Our situation in Hawaii is unique- almost everything has to be shipped in. I plan to ask the local utility (Hawaiian Electric) some questions as proposed by Gary North: How lines of code do you have? How many have you rewritten so far? How many embedded chips? What will you do about the embedded chips? How much reserve fuel do you have? Etc.

I will also ask Matson Shipping (they bring everything we need in on large container ships) if they can run the ships manually.

As I do these stories I will post transcripts here.

By the way, my freeze dried food arrived today. I've got the water purification tabs, and my wife is converting our assets to gold.

Aloha Dick

-- Dick Allgire (allgired001@hawaii.rr.com), August 21, 1998.