Its official folks - y2k is really happening. This forum is posting many examples of failures as we speak, and 22 days to go...

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

Prep until you can't prep no more....

-- bb (b@b.b), December 10, 1999

Answers

Agreed. But, hey. Have a merry Christmas!!

-- Familyman (prepare@home.com), December 10, 1999.

If there are failures NOW then they can't be due to 00 but instead due to software that has already been remediated, albeit imperfectly. Seems to me that having failures spread out over time is preferable to everything quitting at the stroke of midnight.

And, don't forget that failures are ALWAYS happening. What we see now may have nothing to do with y2k--does anyone have conclusive evidence to the contrary?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 10, 1999.


Come on Lars, pull your head out of the ground man. Its a happening....

-- bb (b@b.b), December 10, 1999.

due to software that has already been remediated, albeit imperfectly.

Sounds like a great tombstone message.

Here lies an anonymous person, died January, 2000, due to.....

;-)

-- cgbg jr (cgbgjr@webtv.net), December 10, 1999.


So WHY are failures occurring before 00?

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 10, 1999.


Because any program which looks into the future even a month is seeing zeros where it expects something else.

-- Powder (Powder@keg.com), December 10, 1999.

It's happening? Without me noticing? Great! That is the kind of "Y2K- problem" scenario that I've been hoping for - one I wouldn't notice. Let's hope the trend continues into and through next year. I'm prepared for up to a 9+, but it would be so depressing. All the problems announced so far add up to about a 1.5 - that would be lovely!

I'm still convinced it will be a 7+ at least, but the thought of being proven a fool doesn't bother me at all.

-- Gus (y2kk@usa.net), December 10, 1999.


Condiser it a snowball rolling down a hill...

-- Powder (Powder@keg.com), December 10, 1999.

Consider it a snowball rolling down a hill...

-- Powder (Powder@keg.com), December 10, 1999.

Someone pointed out that we are *currently* living in the BITR scenario. Ooooh!

-- Pearlie Sweetcake (storestuff@home.now), December 10, 1999.


Over in c.s.y2k, we've starting tracking the system problems. Yes, the pollies, mostly -bksie- but a few others are denying that the 6 child support payments problems, the several bank problems, payrolls, etc. amount to anything.

They're correct, at this point, the problems are contained.

I'm building a database of the events and hope to use it to predict the damage-wave. If you spot something new, post it here for everyone to see and I'll save a copy to my database.

I'm especially interested in published failures that include details on the kind of system (S/390, PeeCee, DEC, etc.), duration of the outage (1 hour, 1 day, etc.), number of people affected (1,600 single parents), report source(Wall Street Journal, MSNBC).

It's odd that 10 days into December, the problems are starting.

Thanks all, let's finish our preps.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net), December 10, 1999.


Yea, it's all taken care of. I locked up my laptop computer this afternoon trying to install the lousy Microsucks updates. All it says is "Microsoft is shutting down" but the damn thing won't shut down. Shut it off and turn it back on and it says it is shutting down.

If those bastards can't get it right for a personal user, why thing the big guys are any better off.

Not only does this really piss me off and is a fore taste of things to come but I need help. The damn thing doesn't even recognize the restore discs....any help?

-- Todd Detzel (detzel@jps.net), December 10, 1999.


Try this, Todd. While running on battery and unplugged from the wall pop the battery out. Killing all power sources shoud shut it down good. You'll probable get scandisk, and might get a safe mode prompt. Which patches were you installing? Was it Windows 95 or 98?

-- Powder (Powder@Keg.com), December 10, 1999.

Powder:

Despite the fact that we're getting into the 30-day lookahead range, I haven't seen any newsworthy problems with unremediated systems. Every one I've seen has either been with whole new implementations (the large majority) or with incorrectly remediated code returned to production. I haven't seen any reported problems in parts of the world where y2k remains largely a mystery.

I consider it a neutral-to-good sign that such problems are happening in advance of rollover. This reduces the post-rollover problems almost entirely to actual date mishandling. Still a goodly number of problems, to be sure, but suffering (and recovering from) a lot of the biggies in advance should take some of the curse off it. I hope.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 10, 1999.


Powder,

I use non-upgraded Windows (waiting for the disc). I was truing to install the update for MS Virtual Machine 2435. Said the machine had to be restarted and had a "yes" box. I clicked on it and now all I get is "Windows is Shutting Down." I'll try the power pull and leave it off until morning and see what happens.

Thanks,

Todd

-- Todd Detzel (detzel@jps.net), December 10, 1999.



Lars

Township 'recovering from bout with Y2k computer glitch (Michigan)

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001yVj

-- (a@look.ahead), December 11, 1999.


The fact that some of the most dire predictions of the doomer-gurus have failed to reach fruition gives me hope that civilization as we know it will not end, and that y2k could end up being very boring. Lots of annoying glitches but no Great Depression.

I think recession next year is all but inevitable for a combination of reasons, one of which includes actual y2k problems and the panicky reaction to them. Oil price increases and expanded inventories, alone, will shock the system and promote the cautious, introverted psychology required to shrink the economy next year.

The great wild cards remain, though, and I am not too hopeful that they will play well. Embedded chips: lots of stuff might blow up. Lots of oil and critical resources might just evaporate. Another factor is terrorism (domestic and foreign): we are already under cyber attack from Russian gangsters loosely affiliated with the ex-Soviet intelligence apparatus; we have already uncovered plots by people who want to destroy the electric power grid in the US; we already know that lots of paranoid schizophrenics believe that they are on a mission from a punitive god....etc. etc. It does not look good. Not being in their shoes, I can hardly be in a position to criticise the FBI for wanting to keep a lid on the violent plots but at the same time they seem to be making a good lot of us thoroughly paranoid and are doing a great job of fomenting "us vs. them" attitudes.

It is possible that, if we all remain cool and calm, that we will get through this bruised but not KOed. KO remains possible, though, if people are stupid or malicious enough.

-- coprolith (coprolith@fakemail.com), December 11, 1999.


Starting over in 1900 (AK - Y2k computer glitches)

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001xsA

-- (a@look.ahead), December 11, 1999.


Lars,

The problems may or may not be Y2K related. Your assertion that computers always have problems is correct.

But, today's date isn't the determining factor as to whether a system is having Y2K date handling problems. The problem lies in whether the systems is looking ahead beyond 12-31-1999. As we close in on that date more routines will be looking ahead - monthly, weekly and daily, hourly look-aheads. After 12-31-1999 looking back into the 20th century will cause problems. Moreover, on the rollover date some systems will be operating on 21st century local time and the rest will be operating in the 20th century - we'll experience simultaneous look-ahead and look-back errors.

I'm experiencing "confounding" errors in my system at work already. My government agency relies on its internal servers but we also connect to the mainframe used by all departments of the local government. The closer we come to 12-31-1999 the more frequent the problems: passwords expire inexplicably, User ID's disappear, printers refuse to print - and the errors can't be duplicated when we test. Those same people who can't log on at the beginning of their shift are able to do so later. Three nights ago I had five employees attempt to log on without success. Each received error messages as to why they couldn't log on - all five received different messages. The messages all had one thing in common: certain registry files seemed to have vanished from the mainframe. My IT people are at a loss because the mainframe seems to be the problem - and its out of their realm of control...it belongs to another IT department.

Its nice to know, by the way, that our local government is 92% complete. They seemed to get to this point by doing the easy work first. Last week they started changing out the main routers and hubs for the LAN/WAN. On the 18th they are shutting the mainframe down to install a huge generator. Let's see how long it takes to re-boot the mainframe.

-- Darby (DarbyII@AOL.com), December 11, 1999.


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