I checked the c-span schedule to see when it started and the length of the hearing but the site has not been updated.

It is on now - 10:00 Eastern Time. Don't know when it started or when it will be over. Rob.

-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@net.com), February 05, 1999

Answers

Any monitoring sites on the net? Our rural area = no cable. Mr K

-- Mr_Kennedy (y2kPCfixes@motivatedseller.com), February 05, 1999.

Great find Rob. Now Bennett is talking to Cargill president Tyrone Thayer. Bennett saying to store 72 hours. Thayer saying it would be bad too "overstockpile." 10:24 am est

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

Thayer says for info on overseas Cargill operations Cargill relies on info from USDA and Garter Group.

Bennets asks about Cargill contingency plans for possible overseas infrastructure failure. Thayer says he's working on establishing communicating with overseas suppliers and governments.

Bennett says y2k might cause a worldwide flight to quality. Asks if Cargill will pull out of foreign situations. Thayer says no.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

Please let us know if they advertise a re-broadcast time. I'd like to get this on tape. I'm at work right now and cannot run home to kick off the VCR. Thanks

-- Arnie Rimmer (arnie_rimmer@usa.net), February 05, 1999.

Now talking to Suiza Foods (processessor and distributor of dairy products)and Arizona Farm Bureau. These folks are a step above Cargill in the food distribution system. Right now Suiza is giving a spiel about their own compliance efforts. 10:32 am est

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

Puddin-

My CSPAN shows "school choice" LIVE at 10:32. What am I doing wrong? Are there *2* CSPANS? Help...hurry!!

Blessings...Mercy

-- Mercy (prepare@now.com), February 05, 1999.

Mercy- Yes, there are 2 C-Spans. It's called "C-SPAN2" (Original, huh?) Not all cable systems have both.

-- bill dunn (bdunn@snet.net), February 05, 1999.

Grrrrr...thx Bill. Dang it. "School choice :( And I homeschool. Figures.

Blessings...Mercy

-- Mercy (prepare@now.com), February 05, 1999.

Suiza says its y2k readiness efforts 50% complete. Now talking to Ken Evans of Arizona Farm Bureau. (Hey, pardon all the typos and stuff that doesn't make sense. It's hard to type and listen at the same time.)

Evans says y2k is most difficult task he's ever faced. Says he's been worrying about y2k in 1988. Says many farmers use GPS and other technology. Says tractor manufactured by Case autmoatically senses failures and automatically calls dealer with service request. Says many farmers ill-equipped to deal with technological failures.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

Evans says y2k testing fried IC control panels on center pivot irrigation sprinklers. Evans says even after all maneuvers, comliance will not be known until 2000. Evans says that those who are least complian have the least amount of money to become compliant. Manye REAs don't have funds. Evans says non-compliant REAs not only have potential to bring grid down, but if they fail, they have high probablity of bringing down grids.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

Hey Pudd' That's a lot different than what Glickman said.

-- bill dunn (bdunn@snet.net), February 05, 1999.

Suiza says there is not enough generator capacity to run their plants. They depend on grid which will depend on rail. Bennett says he is satisfied that large power plants will be OK.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

Says tractor manufactured by Case autmoatically senses failures and automatically calls dealer with service request. Says many farmers ill-equipped to deal with technological failures.

Especially with parts shortages possible, all simultaneously.

Thanks for the snippets, Puddin-

Mr K

-- Mr_Kennedy (y2kPCfixes@motivatedseller.com), February 05, 1999.

Hey Pudd' BTW, thnx for the play-by-play (the Vin Scully of the internet!) My boss actually thinks I'm working!

-- bill dunn (bdunn@snet.net), February 05, 1999.

Evans says rural electric can trigger brown outs and balckouts. Question of how long to restart grid. If multiple entities goe down, system is programmed to give selective blackouts of 500,000 people at a time. Time of outage depends on isolation of REAs. REA says Evans has little ability to assess embedded chip problem. Evans says the chip that failed in the irrigation pivot was one chip out of 80 chips on a board and it cost $3,000 to fix the circuitry.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

Bill: Get back to work. I'll keep you posted.

-- Your Boss (your_boss@quitwastingtime.com), February 05, 1999.

No holds barred. Talking adout insurance co, that tested over weekend and a few days later got many complaints from cust that their ins had been cacelled.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), February 05, 1999.

.....thx for the play-by-play!

Blessings....Mercy

-- Mercy (prepare@now.com), February 05, 1999.

Nedd help with play by play, my phone is ringing.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

Question! What are they saying about don't test because testing can break the device?

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

Bennett fakes left...drives right. He stops, he pops...Good!

-- bill dunn (bdunn@snet.net), February 05, 1999.

Bennett just asked Evans if he plans to stock up. Evans said, Yes sir...food, fuel, generator.

-- bill dunn (bdunn@snet.net), February 05, 1999.

Evans continues to stress that testing can cause problems.Says he will stock food and fuel. Both talking ice storm analogy.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), February 05, 1999.

another person who appreciates the play by play! Keep it up!

-- me (worker@not.com), February 05, 1999.

Listen and watch on the internet C-SPAN2

Mr. K

-- Mr.K (here@last.org), February 05, 1999.

Last comment by Evans.. Food industry started too late. Bennett expresses concern over testing time. Took three months to fix problem on one piece of equipment and there is not time to miss daedlines.

Hearing adjourned

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), February 05, 1999.

Hearings just ended. Anybody have any info on a re-broadcast?

-- bill dunn (bdunn@snet.net), February 05, 1999.

Evans says to test now rather than risk simultaneous failure which would be the worst. Evans greatest fear is fear of fear. Second greatest fear is apathy which would prevent testing.

Benntt asks what Evan is doing. He says have fuel, food large generator to operate business. 72 hours of fuel to buy time. Evan says "heading to the hills" is generating extra business for them now but it's not good because it hurts credibility.

Evans recommends general preparedness for any disaster. Says framers used to isolation and lack of control of variables. Evans says he'll have food and water on hand "for a few days"

9 steps have been outlined, but they are only in Evan's written testimony. Neither Evans nor Bennett seemed eager to have oral testimony on those 9 steps, maybe just to save time.

Evans says government doing now what it should have been doing one year ago. As an analogy, Evans said he would not eager to pilot an aiplane that is 60% operational. Misjudging hog slaughter by 10% has caused one of the most catqstrophic losses of all time. Can't afford much error when operating on these margins.

Bennett is concerned about anyone who misses March 30 deadline and then has insufficient time remaining, to wit, USDA.

Hearing adjourned.

Important Disclaimer: Please get the transcript or wathc the interviews for yourself if you want accurate information . I made a lot of typos and I was trying to watch and interpret at the same time, so do your own research and don't rely on this stuff I've typed.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

fascinating...keep goin'...

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), February 05, 1999.

If you have the free RealPlayer software, you can watch C-Span2 live at:

http://play.rbn.com/?cspan/cspan/live/cspan2.rm

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), February 05, 1999.

Pudd'

You da Man! Thanks for all the instant info. (Or I should say, You da Person! to be PC)

-- bill dunn (bdunn@snet.net), February 05, 1999.

Wow Puddintame - Hats Off! I was interrupted (twice)also, but managed to catch at least some of it. As far as a rebroadcast, haven't seen when yet - stay tuned.

IMHO, Evans stole the show so to speak, in that he was the most concerned and very articulate. He spoke about the interdependencies and imported data problems too. One thing that stood out is this 72 hour backup plan - milk was mentioned as an example - so if power is down for more than 72 hours problems may take an exponetial turn for the worse if you extend this to other industries, at least that is my take. I didn't catch all of it but this 72 hour stuff is going to be important I think. One other point: Evans also talked about the fact that testing itself can lead to problems and failures and gave an example, and Bennett remarked how he had heard about this kind of thing in medical devices, but not in the agriculture industry.

-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@net.com), February 05, 1999.

Get this.

I looked into getting a transcript or maybe a video copy from the C-SPAN site. No transcripts. Videos are $30.00 per program hour plus $7.00 processing fee.

No thanks. Get reamed enough.......

Mr. K

Oh, BTW, don't for get, http://cnn.com/discussion CNN LIVE CHAT DISCUSSION Monday, February 8 at 9pm et for a chat about the Year 2000 computer issue.

-- Mr. K (here@last.com), February 05, 1999.

http://flash.al.com/cgi-bin/al_nview.pl?/home1/wire/AP/Stream-Parsed/F INANCIAL/f0015_PM_Year2000

Different people see things different ways. Perhaps some are just blind.

-- Mike Lang (webflier@erols.com), February 05, 1999.

Thanks for the heads up Puddintame.

I notice there will be a second hearing on this subject on Thursday feb. 11 at 8:30AM Eastern.

You can watch todays hearing on RealVideo at the Senate Y2K page here (note: many LAN firewalls do not allow streaming audio/video):

http://www.senate.gov/~y2 k/index.html

-- Lewis (aslanshow@yahoo.com), February 05, 1999.

thanks for the update on this pregram. I caught Ken Evans, Arizona Farm Bureau President. What he said is very frightening. Especially about embedded chips. I thought most had decided that embedded chips were not going to be a problem.

Sen. Bennett said he tought major utilites were going to be ok. He went on to say he was in the control room of one such utility in Utah when they turned the clocks forward.

He said they did work. He went on to say he asked if this had been done before. The answer was "yes". The utulity company did a trail run before Bennett got there. It did not work at that time. They made no mention of how long it took to fix the problem.

Again, everyone should go to the USDA web site and click on Farmer Ready Prepares for Y2k. I realize that with this link you leave the USDA site but it still is a link from a government site.

Farmer R U Ready is told to have gold on hand, buy 2 years of seeds, have protection for his family and farm, (he is told there might be cattle bandits), have fuel stored, as well as food stored for animals and family.

If our imports from other countries is limited or stopped, we will have to rely on the American farmer for food. After utilities, telecommunications, and finicial institutions it seems like the farmer will play a very important part in the future scenairo. The American farmer must be prepared.

Mr. Evans was asked if he was preparing. The answer is yes. He made it sound as if he thought the problems would only last 72 hours. I think this will be the standard answer we will hearing. I am sure he is preparing a bit more. You could tell the guy beleived there were going to be problems.

He also showed great concern with embedded chips. In order of importance, Mr. Evans sited 1. utilities, 2. telecommunications, 3. embedded chips and 4. finicial institutions.

He gave some examples of his experience with embedded chips and testing. One point he made was not to be afraid of testing even if you have to feel the pain of it. It is better to test now then when the problem hits everyone at the same time. He said his test burned several of his chips and they had to be replaced. Finding the problem took three or four days, getting the chips and repair took 3 months.

Another thing he brought out that I found intersting was that a piece of equipment could be identical to another. One might test out compliant, the other not. Simply because the chip inside may have come from two differnet batches.

Hopefully, we can get a link to this testimony.

-- L.Arnold (adahi@muhlon.com), February 05, 1999.

$3000 bucks for an 80 chip board!!!! Mr. Evans, call me!!! I would just about make em by hand for that price!

Seriously, I have run into this kind of thing a couple times with vertical market companies. They sell a system cheap, then run the price of parts to fix it out the roof. Darned if I have any idea why you would need that kind of parts on a pivot irrigation system though. Only things I can think of don't make sense.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), February 05, 1999.

BTW, I have gone around the vendors and fixed a couple vertical market systems so they worked right. Been called by their lawyers too. Doesn't bother me, they sold the stuff and I worked on it for the owner, not them.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), February 05, 1999.

Thanks everyone for this great thread and all the info!!!

Puddin, you IZ the man :)

Blessings...Mercy

-- Mercy (prepare@now.com), February 05, 1999.

Paul Davis, The witness made some obscure comments about the REA's requiring the farmers to have this electronic equipment. The only reason I could guess about why such circuirty would be on the irrigation system is the farmer might want to make sure that he was buying the cheapest off peak juice he could get or some other power metering function which could control a pumping system that was operated off of grid power. All of this is just a guess.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

I meant "operated on grid power"

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 05, 1999.

I just had a comical vision of Paul Davis in the middle of a cornfield, frantically swapping chips on some gizmo, soldering iron burning his fingers, finding out he will have to wait 3 months for a replacement part before he can continue testing, then getting a strange look on his face and running for the hills.

BTW Paul, that'll be $3000 for the chip you smoked :)

-- a (a@a.a), February 05, 1999.

Coming in late on this after a (brief -- 5 day) vacation, BUT...

DAMN!!! You people ARE _GOOD_!

DAMN!!

Have I landed in a forum, or WUT?!?!?!

(Like the excitement of radio sportscasting, when you can only catch a World Series game on the radio, driving home from work... so you make it count, every bit you hear.) Puddintame, you IZ!!! da MAN!!

And I wonder why -- the people who are runnin' th' country -- are the doofuses out there, an' not the people checkin' this y2k thing, right here.

DAMN!!!

You people are GOOD!!!

(I've got a forum menu screen back to 2/4/99. And I don't want to miss a thing. You people got REAL GOOD while I was away. How'm I spozed to catch up???? Now it's 2/12/99 and i got a job and a sick kid. if i reload the menu, I miss that whole week. i'm clicking every thread and looking into it. how'm i gonnna catch up? stay up all night on th' net, huh?

You people been pumpin' it out. thinkin'. DAMN!!!

some o' you really have this whole thing philosophically in yo' sights. and PLAY---ING!!! YOW! i'm ROTF like nevah before!! (My wife's likely to break into this my secret world if i laugh too loud)

it's gonna be real hard to break away to finish my prep. DAMN!!!

You people are GOOD!!!

y2k bring out the BEST in us? who'd a thought that? who thoughta that?

-- jor-el (jor-el@krypton.com), February 13, 1999.

OK, so my wife brought home the bottle of chardonnay for valentine's weekend, and i got into it cause i came home late and they were already asleep and i got to watch Bill's vote on news and i'd rather be checking in on you all and seeing what you said on 2/6, and 2/7, etc etc.

Anyone else have trouble breaking away from y2k forum (therapy for watching TWAWKI go down) to do y2k preparation? that empty chicken coop in our back yard better not be empty in April.....

I imagine the "Universe" is more forgiving (or random) than we imagine

"Fear not little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom of Heaven."

-- jor-el (jor-el@krypton.com), February 13, 1999.