Its a quiet Sunday afternoon here at work, so I decided to have a bit of a play with our Iridium SS-66K satelite phone. This is our last means of resort if all other communications fail on the roll-over.

I'm glad that it is the LAST means of communication, because sitting at my desk I find that we only have satelite coverage for around 2 minutes in 12. However if I step out on the balcony outside the control room then there is coverage for around 10 minutes out of 12.

We will just have to hope that if we do need to use this method that our 10 minutes co-incides with the station we are calling.

Malcolm

-- Anonymous, December 11, 1999

Answers

oh great... another nail in the proverbial coffin.

i've ranted countless times on this forum about our 'contigency' plans for communication... the entire us is set up with satellite phones for a worse case scenario.

malcom,

what seems to be the problem? is this the first time that you have attempted to use it? over what period of time?

-- Anonymous, December 11, 1999

Marianne: It is the first time that I have used it, but it has been used here a couple of times during testing. One controller did note that it took a long time for the call to go through. Now we know why.

Our main communications system is a telecom owned fibre optic link which has proved to be very reliable (so far). Our primary back-up system is using power line carriers, so no digital devices in that route at all. The Iridium system is our 3rd system. We do have a VHF radio system as well, but that only works over relatively short distances, like from the control room to the power station.

-- Anonymous, December 11, 1999

It seems obvious to me that unless people are serious about the possiblity of failure, they won't be serious about the development of contingency plans.

-- Anonymous, December 12, 1999

Shameless plug. :-)

It seems obvious to me that unless people are serious about the possiblity of failure, they won't be serious about the development of contingency plans.

Y2K is Not a Bug (continued) (Section "But we've got Contingency Plans -- right?")

-- Anonymous, December 12, 1999

After a quick once over on Lane's article I got the idea all those folks with "non-mission critical" systems, the one's that "don't count" just may be pulling a lot of hair out come the new year.

I've heard more than one person tell me the Y2K bug doesn't have anything to do with them because they don't use computers.

There's been this odd push off of responsibilities that I've been seeing for the longest time. Someone sent me a picture of a yellow line painted on the road, the stripe went right over a dead squirrel. The caption was something like; The ultimate in "Not my Job". The guy spraying the paint couldn't move the dead squirrel.

We are so incredibly interconnected that no one can claim such nonsense as "I don't use computers" as an excuse. Not unless they live in Bunga-Wunga under a bush.

Oh well, I suppose people can cry "I'm not responsible", (synonymous with "I'm irresponsible"), for as long as there are people. Lightning will continue to strike and people will continue to stand in harms way.

I'll continue to remove such dummies from my life, or to make them very much "non-mission critical" to my wellbeing.

-- Anonymous, December 12, 1999

I have a quote in my next article from programmer Karl Vogel: "The 'non-critical' systems that everyone's going to ignore... will become less 'non' and more 'critical'...."

-- Anonymous, December 14, 1999

Malcolm-- here's hoping that you don't have to go to the next level of fiber-optic communication: 2 cans and a string. Keep working on those contingency plans, please; hoping to get the "right" ten-minute time period isn't going to help you guarantee success. Also, thanks for being so forthright with everyone on the forum over the last months. If only we had this in the U.S., instead of this strange and unsettling silence from the utilities.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 1999

Ann: "Strange and unsettling silence" from the US Utilities? I must strongly disagree.

Virtually all major US utilities have statements, FAQ's, Y2k hotlines, web sites, etc. etc. to answer the public's questions about Y2k. And NERC has thousands of pages of documentation as to what utilities have been doing to prepare for Y2k.

I have given dozens of presentations to technical groups, senior citizens, customers and the general public on Y2k, for a total audience numbering in the thousands of people. I've been on the radio, TV, and in the newspaper numerous times. I say this not to brag, but to illustrate why I disagree with your statement.

I've fielded dozens of calls and e-mails from private citizens, and I did not let contact end for any of them until they were satisfied that my company is doing just about everything it can to prepare for y2k. In some cases this meant staying on the phone for hours at a time with a single customer.

If you were a customer of mine, I would tell you the Y2k readiness of every single date-sensitive device in the substation(s) serving your neighborhood, right down to the manufacturer and model number. I've done this for many customers.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 1999

Dan would you please move to Michigan?! When I have contacted our power company over the last fifteen months, I get the same old form letter the next week, even though I have asked very detailed and intelligent questions. "Although the Y2K bug has been a formidable adversary, we are confident that we will be supplying our customers with the electricity they need as we move confidently forward into the next millennium..."

Oddly, though, when I call other power companies which serve just outside of my area and tell them that I do not receive their service, the Y2K spokesperson is always ready to tell me how concerned they are about "the other guy" (my power company), and how their counterpart in ----City is definitely switching to generators on December 30.

Our power company's P.R. reps have made a lot of noise about their preparations for Y2K. One of the company's P.R. reps at a symposium even used the "tests" conducted last April as proof that the power would stay on, but those types of communications are just so much laundry flapping in the wind. If someone from the company had been more open with the truth, as Dan and Malcolm have been, I would be much more confident.

-- Anonymous, December 15, 1999

Malcolm,

Just home from tonight's "drill", NO probs with the sat. phones, better yet, we didn't need them. I don't know if we'll be auctioning them off or keeping them.

cl

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000

CL,

I'm pleased to say that we didn't need ours either.

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000