My own attempt to warn friends and family

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

Howdy--

After seeing a couple of other posts on warning those friends and family that "Don't Get It" I felt compelled to toss in my own effort. Interested parties are welcome to punch it up.

What I've done primarily is cut and paste a number of the articles that I (surprise!) found mentioned first on this forum, so most of yall will have already read them. The theory is that don't believe me, read some mainstream press articles.

I tried to arrange them in a way that leads the reader to a conclusion-the conclusion that they should do some preparing for an uncertain future.

Many here will find my approach too lukewarm. That's fine. I felt the best angle at this point was less inflamatory and more "hey we may have a problem here--why not be smart?"

Would be happy to hear any feedback from yall. And do I need to put one of those "reprinted for educational use only" thingies on there?

Attempted link:

What You Should Know About Y2K

or cut and paste:

http://rampages.onramp.net/y2k/What-You-Should.htm

Best regards,

-- William in Dallas (bcheek@onramp.net), October 10, 1999

Answers

William: You say

"The news is mostly good"

Huh? The SPIN is mostly good. The news is mostly bad, or at best, inconclusive.

-- a (a@a.a), October 10, 1999.


William, m'man, very cool of you to take the time to do this!

-- (always@ppreciates.goodwork), October 10, 1999.

William,

I just sent your piece to E-mail friends and family. Thank you for taking the time and energy to do this. I'm sure it will help a few people, thus be worth it. I say "never give up trying". A person can still go to the grocery store in a day or two and load up on food and water. It's NOT too late!

-- Debi (LongTimeLurker@shy.com), October 10, 1999.


William,

You're to be commended for some very good work. It is not my intent (or right) to belittle it at all. I just think your comments are TOO lukewarm. It's late in the game.

I've been doing the same thing privately for months, some of the same articles - most, in fact. "We may have a problem" doesn't work. They already know that much. When I tried to be casual or personable it didn't work. When I switched from "gee, d'ya think you ought to plan ahead?" to "Godzilla is going to step on your house" I made a couple of converts - as opposed to none.

You're from Texas. So am I. Did you ever hear of "scaring people into Heaven?"

Sometimes it works.

-- Scat (sgcatique@webtv.net), October 10, 1999.


The boss stopped by day before yesterday, asked me what I had planned for the school bus I bought. I told him I was just fixin' it up. Again he asked me what my plans were. I told him it 'might' be my Y2K bug out bus. He laughed and said Y2k wasn't going to be anything at all. I thought about it a while, and went to the car and pulled out the post (by programmer) from a couple of days ago regarding IEEE. I asked him if he didn't used to be an engineer, to which he replied "what do you mean used to be?" So I handed him the post and pointed out that its origin was from the International Electronic and Electrical Engineers, so if he could read it and still convince me it was "no problem", then I would reconsider.

I felt like asking him where he gained such insight about the potentials of Y2K? KIA commercials? But after all, there's still a paycheck or two left before rollover.

Aside- Scat, I still regret acting trollish to you a few months ago . I was just having an emotional episode, please accept my profound apologies.

-- michael (mikeymac@uswest.net), October 10, 1999.



Moderation questions? read the FAQ