This is my first post and last. I've been following Gary N for 1.7 years and I'm very aware of the fallout concerning Y2K. I've been reading the posts at this site for about a month. I can tell you this; All the telco's I've been in contact with will be fully staffed (bell south;uswest;ameritech;pacbell;altantic bell; etc) during Jan 1st. Hopefully this is just a precationary measure. Perhaps there's some unknown reason for the staffing levels that I'm not aware. The only telco switch I know of that goes TU for Y2K is the ATT 1A switch which is very old and only used in rural areas in recent times. All others are fine given the proper updates. If you're in the biz, you know that the switch itself is only 1 component all the circuits need to go though. I'm referring to DACS', mux's etc. I have the (honor?) to monitor the eastern time zone and central time zone trunks within our network at midnight during the rollover to the new century. (no party here) I know some of you are looking for some solid info confirming some unfortunate failure but I suspect that the telco system will be fine. This may be way off base but I'm reminded of the struggle Russia went through during WWII and if there's any huge fallout from Y2K, you should read the history books and learn of their ability to overcome dramatic situations through willpower and drive. If there's massive unemployment and trouble, our society will persevere. I'm certain that I'll be attacked by some of you. That's fine. Y2K is too close for me to give a hoot anyways. Last post. Bye

-- unknown (bellhead@ringing.com), December 17, 1999

Answers

Thank you for the good news. If you would read on in today's posts you would see that somebody else also posted good news about Texas...though that seems to be somewhat in dispute at the moment. Everybody was cheering. If you follow the forum, then you know that most of us LIKE hearing good news...we aren't kidding when we say that we hope for the best. Sorry that you are leaving. Hope that you read this.

If you get more good news, please relay it here. I for one, am listening.

Best of luck at rollover!

-- Ynott (Ynott@incorruptible.com), December 17, 1999.

unknown,

I work for AT&T and have recently gotten a chance to see the Y2K contingency plans for the local CMD posts. I have to say that they do give me a faint glimmer of hope, they have thought things out pretty well overall. My major concern is if failures are numerous and we have electrical outages that are beyond our capacity to deal with...things could get rather hairy. Also, I have found that very few of my fellow employees are at all concerned about this issue, the complacentcy factor is very high amongst the rank and file and that worries me. There are still FAR too many wildcards to predict what will happen, but it was reassuring to see that the paper plans were so detailed. Now it's up to the wetware to see how things are dealt with.

-- anon...this post only. (anon@and-on-and-on.com), December 17, 1999.

Please please please the phones stay dial GOOD NEWS!
The juice stays glowing, the water flowing, the banks crank, the oil no turmoil, please please please these and every other thing ...

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), December 17, 1999.

Ashton & Leska,

Remember that hospital I mentioned a while back that was going ape looking for compliance information on their bio-med equipment? Well Monday night I got the pleasure of taking up residence there again for 24 hours.

Of course I had to drill them and check out the situation with their equipment. I was subjected to the use of a good variety of it~~ They have these brand new Y2K compliant infusion pumps, the newest ultrasound machine is impressive, they said they could watch a babies mouth move with it, everything has been checked right down to hand held personal calculators. Amazing amount of money they had to spend to get the hospital compliant. A big change from two years ago when I went into the bio-med shop and asked about their Y2k compliance and was told by the head bio-med tech that they didn't have any Y2K problems *grin*.

Too bad they don't replace those stupid dinamaps, after a little too much hepren for too long my blood pressure was taken and the damn cuff continued to inflate beyound endourance. I finally ripped it off. The back of my hand was riddled with popped capularies as the overly thinned blood started coming out of the pores.

No it was not a Y2K problem, just poor maintenance on the dinamap, maybe they have been too busy getting everything Y2K ready that they haven't been doing their regular periodic checks and periodic maintenance on the regular equipment.

A funny thing happened at 4 am, this guy comes in with this thick romanian accent and said; "Hi I'm Vladimer, I'm here to take your blood." It was too wierd getting woken up to that!

The point for telling you this is, although they didn't think they would be impacted two years ago, they finally got the message and did what they had to do. Their early complacency ended up costing them big time. I'm sure there are ather situations like that in all areas of Y2K remediation, but I believe that after getting hit over the head with a hammer, most entities have done the same thing. Which, to me, makes it appear that the the situation over Y2K will not be as overwhelmingly bad as it would have been if the rollover had happened even one year ago. I believe you can worry a lot less than you have been.

Now if people can start doing jobs right the first time instead of "sliding" and spending more effort trying to get out of work then it would take to do a job right in the first place.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), December 17, 1999.