Hey, I'm a remediation programmer for TIC (Three Initial Corporation, you know, *that* one). We've been remediating for three years now, and our y2k budget is creeping toward a billion dollars. It's a big deal, but hasn't meant any big raises for me, wouldn't you know.

At our peak, we had about 2000 people working on y2k all at once. This was 400 programmers, 200 secretaries, and 1400 managers. (The managers got the raises). By now, the dust is clearing and we're down to 50 programmers, 10 secretaries and 1400 managers. Lots of scaling back.

My portion of this huge project was our internal system for keeping track of the location of all office furniture and supplies. This is almost a million lines of code, and it's been accumulating gradually for over two decades and a dozen programmers. I've been on it almost 8 years, and I can guarantee it's a critical system, at least for me. Through my efforts on this code, I've managed to furnish most of my house for free. Pretty neat.

My code was just filled with dates, and they were all wrong. Not my fault, it was like that when I got assigned to it. We were tracking how old everything was, and how long everyone had stuff, and when all the new stuff got purchased, and when everything was reassigned. And reassignments happen pretty often, because all new furniture goes to managers, and only gets handed down to people like me after it breaks or looks like hell.

I'm sorry to say I won't be finished before the end of the year. Maybe I could have finished, but for a couple of things. First, they don't pay me enough to work that hard. And second, I had to spent a lot of time hiding all the trapdoors I put in there to get free stuff for me and my friends, so it wouldn't be caught by these code reviews they keep saying they're going to have on all fixed code Real Soon Now. Also, they bought this brand new computer, and got a really good deal on it. But most of our code needed a lot of changes to run on it. Mine wasn't too bad on the whole. Some parts still don't work and I can't figure out why, but they're not too important. They don't have any of my trapdoors in them, so I don't really care about them. But the inventory control guys say they still can't get anything to run right. Except when they're talking to the managers, that is.

But on the whole, I think TIC is going to be in great shape. I keep my ears open in the meetings, where we spend most of our time. Of course, all those donuts mean I've put on a bit of weight, but on the other hand my food bill has gone way down. I'm using the money I'm saving to buy a Corvette. Always wanted one.

Anyhow, everyone says we're almost there and looking good. That is, everyone still left by now. For a while last year some people were complaining that there was just too much work and not enough people who understood the code and things were too disorganized and there were too many meetings. Complainer types. But I notice those guys aren't at any of the meetings anymore.

Right now, most of our budget seems to be going for testing and contingency planning. These are closely related, since everything that fails the tests becomes a contingency. So does everything we won't get around to testing, because it's not ready. My code is scheduled for testing in October. The inventory people will be tested in early December, if they can ever get their code ported. They're the last test scheduled, so we're on track to be complete before the actual century change. The inventory guys are a little worried about all the 60-day lookahead stuff their code does, but they say they can cut that to 15 days in a pinch if they need to.

So from what I hear in the meetings, we really don't have any big problems. I don't really understand what the accounting guys are talking about, but I know they're really busy and working hard. For a little while a couple months ago they were complaining about being taken off remediation to keep putting out all these fires we've been having since our new fiscal year started, but the managers told them that was off-topic, so they don't mention it anymore. I assume that stuff is all fixed now anyway.

I just can't figure out why some people think this y2k stuff is such a big deal. Take it from an insider, it's under control. It's just a matter of time now.

-- (Wally@TIC.toc), May 19, 1999

Answers

I enjoyed that one. :)

Related question: what's the only known creature with 1,000 bellies and no brain?

Answer: Congress.

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), May 19, 1999.

Stephen Poole CET (certified exercise therapist)

You missed the point-AGAIN!

-- Johnny (JLJTM@BELLSOUTH.NET), May 19, 1999.

Johnny:

I guess I missed the point also. This WAS labeled a humor post, wasn't it? Was there SUPPOSED to be a point? Can't folks simply enjoy a Y2K-related JOKE once in a while?

Anita

-- Anita Spooner (spoonera@msn.com), May 19, 1999.