Went to the GREENWICH WEBSITE AND THE ONLY TIME I COULD BRING UP ( THE COUNDOWN CLOCK) indicated 0 days-0 hrs- 0 minutes till 2000 and below that said that it was 1999 DECEMBER 31 28 HOURS 45 MINUTES AND 16 SECONDS!! No wonder few utilities are having problems! They have NOT rolled over to the year 2000! I wonder how many hours they can add to a day before this last minute ruse quits working??

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000

Answers

Ann, are you talking about this website:

http://greenwich2000.co.uk/countdown/

If so, the clock seems to be tracking fine. The thing I did notice is when the fireworks graphic appears, it says "Happy Year 200."

Let us know if you are accessing a different site.

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000

Actually, it says "The Year 200 Celebration."

...Too much bubbly.

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000

I watched MSNBC all day long, on the hour to witness the time zones turning or not turning over. Thank God they did! However, I was really puzzled that at 7 pm MSNBC did not cover GMT turnover, which I thought was important because of the military use of GMT. Instead, they aired a "special." I turned the set off at that point and prayed. I still can't believe it wasn't covered. Can anyone confirm this?

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000

Yes, I went to the greenwich.com/countdown site last night and it was reading what I indicated above. Now it is reading correctly. The question arises is the website clock set the same as the official clock?? I have to admit separating the failures from the actual midnight New Years hype would go a long way towards defusing public panic, even if they only could postpone the inevitable by as much as 99 hours by extending the number of hours in the last day of 1999.

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000

I just ran a search on GMT. The promising sites which I clicked on were either "connection not available" or, in the case of accessing what seemed to be a naval site for verifying, GMT, my computer simply froze and refroze and refroze and the download would not proceed beyond 96%. I don't want to mislead/ needlessly alarm anyone, so please, anyone reading this, realize I am a novice at these things and don't really want to get too paranoid. It's just that I keep hearing echoes of Sherlock Holmes along the lines of "when the obvious is eliminated, what remains is the fact..." Exactly HOW do we go from where we were in terms of "readiness" (ala Bonnie's perspective which was so eloguently stated) to a "no problems" scenario? The extreme smoothness of the changeover just does not "compute". Rick, what have you to say?

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000

First, a confession. The special MSNBS aired was at 8 EST. I got CST and EST mixed up. However, I just ran a search on GMT. The promising sites which I clicked on were either "connection not available" or, in the case of accessing what seemed to be a naval site for verifying, GMT, my computer simply froze and refroze and refroze and the download would not proceed beyond 96%. I don't want to mislead/ needlessly alarm anyone, so please, anyone reading this, realize I am a novice at these things and don't really want to get too paranoid. It's just that I keep hearing echoes of Sherlock Holmes along the lines of "when the obvious is eliminated, what remains is the fact..." Exactly HOW do we go from where we were in terms of "readiness" (ala Bonnie's perspective which was so eloguently stated) to a "no problems" scenario? The extreme smoothness of the changeover just does not "compute". Rick, what have you to say? Are you also dumbfounded at the almost (Florida being the exception) perfect rollover?

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000

Ann, You saw what you saw, there indeed was a problem, but with the website, not the actual clock.

JANUARY 01, 06:53 EST Y2K Rollover Passes Smoothly WASHINGTON (AP) [excerpt] "The U.S. Naval Observatory, whose master clock in Washington serves as the nation's official source of time, reported the date as Jan. 1, ``19100'' during the earliest hours of the new year on its Internet site."

Not sure if this was the site you were at.

Regards,

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000

No,Fact Finder that was not the site I was at. Iwas at the official Greenwich time web page. I understand that it is GMT time the utilities use and Not military time, maybe I heard wrong about that though?

-- Anonymous, January 01, 2000