Well folks, things are going pretty well (nice to have hot water, ya know!). I expected things to be more difficult, though not the end of the world. Needless to say, I'm nothing short of ecstatic with how the rollover has gone so far (knock on wood). So in evaluating and coming to a conclusion about Y2k, what turned you on or off to the problem? And please be civil and kind. We all have a great reason to breathe a sigh of relief and thanksgiving.

Why I believed in possible problems: Fear of the unknown, evasive answers to simple questions, overuse of the '99.99%' complete phrase and the inability to find complete audit trails of companies that claimed compliance.

Turn Offs: Chronic cut and paste artists, mean-spirited a**sholes on both sides of the argument, spammers looking to draw attention to themselves, folks who continually reverted to name-calling to evade answering simple questions and folks who seemed to have a perverse delight in discussing a high body count.

No offense is intended toward anyone. So please do not think that this is personally directed toward specific persons.

Best wishes to all of you during the new year. May any inconveniences be minor and manageable.

-- haha (haha@haha.com), January 01, 2000

Answers

"So in evaluating and coming to a conclusion about Y2k, what turned you on or off to the problem?"

My single biggest fascination in all of this: The "experts" vehemently disagreeing with each other. Techies who all have years & years of experience with computers coming to totally different conclusions.

Non-techies like me are finally obliged to guess. I felt like I was at a crap taple surrounded by "experts" yelling out different numbers & then calling each other names. What the hell was I supposed to do...?

Still don't know. Glad to have electricity & hot water, though!

-- pick a number (roll@the.dice), January 01, 2000.

I chose to believe (in a vaguley 'polly' stance) because I instinctively thought the embedded thing was a farce (it was just a guess, but some research helped reinforce it).

And when nothing happened over the summer and into the fall, I found it easy to dismiss the doomer position. Plus there were very few optimistic folks looking to profit from their position, and tons of doomers looking for money (instead of putting their 'expertise' towards helping others fix the problem - made me think anyway).

It's funny, nothing major (by major I mean barely more than a joke) has happened due to y2k in all this time. Yet folks are still waiting for their weird predictions to come true. If there were no bank runs, loss of power grid, loss of water flow, no dow crash, no bad business last year (due to fiscal '00), why the heck are they still predicting a y2k meltdown?

It's ok guys. Most of the country's is enjoying unseasonably warm weather. Get out for a nice walk and enjoy the day!

Happy new year! Mike

-- Mike (mike@noemail.net), January 01, 2000.

HaHa

Very well said! On this, the first day of the New Year we should all be grateful that our hopes for the best seem to be the reality. This is not the time to be upset because the worst is not happening. My beef has always been with the extremists that refuse to accept good news. Where are the two loons from Cascadia today? Are you both hiding from the government spraying? And why anyone would continue to listen to Andy is beyond reason. Do not be ashamed for preparing- a prudent measure under any circumstance. Do be ashamed for continuing to buy into the fearmongers predictions of gloom and doom. We live in a world that will present problems on a daily basis. Please, take back control of your mind and except the truth. There are many people that made a bunch of money from Y2K and some of them will try to keep it going. Be smart enough to see through all of this and get on with your lives. Im willing to bet that many of you realize that possibly we were part of an organized hoax. I would prefer to think that my initial fears in 1998 were replaced by a more rational analysis in 1999. Life should be fun so lets get on with it.

-- Look (at@the.facts), January 01, 2000.

Husband is an AC repairman and am seeing the equipment being installed much much more sophisticated than the technicians are ready to be able to fix when problems arise. The basic mechanic was not schooled in repairing mechanical problems while being interconnected with a computer. Then you take into consideration that most mechanics don't exactly make those big bucks, so the repair field is not going to draw people that spend years and years increasing their education to repair our basic necessities of life.

Our 4Runner has now been at 4 shops and has been driven sporadically for the past 3 months while being repaired. Same thing, the mechanics are frustrated with the computers. They are e-mailing each other trying to resolve problems. Heard the new Cadillac has some astronomical number of computers that makes the car function.

We seem to have gotten a little ahead of ourselves and all the while it is for increased comfort. A machine is just a machine and will break, but tie in enough goodies and will there be people around that can repair them?

-- claurann (claurann@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

By the way -- do some of you remember when you could actually repair your car yourselves. Many fathers worked with sons teaching them and spending many hours together, not the case now.

-- claurann (claurann@aol.com), January 01, 2000.

Do you remember when the first cars were criticized because if automobiles became the favored mode of travel, the blacksmiths would be out of work? Do you remember when people protested electricity as more dangerous than natural gas lights? (Well, I don't, but my grandmother did and she told me.) Life goes on....

-- Desha Shepherd (jimdesha@bellatlantic.net), January 01, 2000.